Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses (12:1). This episode raises several concerns. God nominates male priests, male Levites, and male elders to run the enterprise of Israel, whereas women are all but absent. The only women we meet are Moses’ sister Miriam, who speaks (out of turn), and his Ethiopian wife, who is silent. In Exodus 15:20, Miriam had been designated as a prophet, and she now claims a prophetic role for herself. Yet, although Miriam and Aaron both discuss Moses’ wife, it is only Miriam who is punished for her words.
The question of God’s partial administration of justice is the only one of these issues that is explored in the Rabbis’ discourse on this parashah. The tannaitic Midrash Sifrei B’midbar 99 raises the inequity of Miriam’s treatment and answers with the words: “This shows that it was Miriam who first raised the issue.” That is, Miriam was responsible for initiating the critical conversation about Moses’ wife and thus was the person punished. Yet, not all the Rabbis were happy with this superficial solution. In BT Shabbat 97a, Rabbi Akiva argues that Aaron too was afflicted with leprosy, based on the notice in v. 9 that God was “incensed with them” (plural). However, this is a minority view; the general opinion in that talmudic passage is that Aaron was not similarly stricken. Another halachic midrash, Sifra, M’tzora 5.7, identifies tzaraat as the quintessential punishment for slander, and it emphasizes that Miriam’s contraction of tzaraat (Numbers 12:10) was the result of her denunciation of Moses, essentially because she slandered him behind his back.
The sages were also interested in solving the apparent contradiction between what we hear about Moses’ marrying an Ethiopian woman and what we know about his marriage to the Midianite woman, Zipporah (Exodus 2:21). Earlier Jewish Hellenistic literature suggested that young Moses—while still an Egyptian prince—had carried out a campaign against Ethiopia and there married an Ethiopian princess (Josephus, Antiquities 252–3). Yet the Rabbis do not adopt this solution. In their opinion, the Ethiopian woman is none other than Zipporah herself, and thus they need to explain why she is called Ethiopian—and why Miriam and Aaron found it necessary to speak about her. Already in Sifrei B’midbar 99, we learn that Miriam spoke against Moses because he had refrained from having sexual intercourse with Zipporah ever since God had begun speaking to him face to face. The Rabbis tell us that Miriam and Zipporah had been standing together when the news came that Eldad and Medad were prophesying. Zipporah remarked that she felt pity for their wives, for they would now suffer her fate, meaning that their husbands would no longer sleep with them. Miriam then said to Aaron, “Why does Moses have to behave this way? Has not God also spoken to us, and we have not refrained from sex with our spouses?” (Sifrei B’midbar 99). Obviously the question that bothers the Rabbis here is a contrived one, not actually found in the Bible: namely, the connection between holiness and refraining from sexual activity. It is likely that this discussion originates in rabbinic knowledge of contemporaneous non-Jewish practices that advocated celibacy of religious leaders.
If the wife that Moses took, and about whom Miriam and Aaron spoke, was actually Zipporah, the Rabbis still needed to explain why she was designated as Ethiopian. They explained that the term kushit, usually translated as Ethiopian or Cushite, in fact refers to exceptional beauty. Just as Ethiopians are unusual in their skin color, so was Zipporah unusual to behold (Sifrei B’midbar 99). This interpretation removes from the biblical text any hint of bigotry, but leaves one with the lingering feeling that Ethiopian skin color is at some level an issue.
Much of rabbinic interpretation on this episode is concerned with correct hierarchy and gender ordering. The same midrash that states that it was Miriam who initiated this conversation about Moses’ wife comments that it was unusual for her to speak to her brother Aaron before she was spoken to (Sifrei B’midbar 99). Another early midrash teaches that if Miriam was punished for speaking against her younger brother, one should all the more so refrain from speaking against one’s superiors (Sifrei D’varim 1). Midrash D’varim Rabbah 6.12 notices the absence of the title “prophet” here in connection with Miriam and suggests that this is a warning that slanderous talk brings about loss of status. Midrash B’reishit Rabbah 45.5 cites this episode to denigrate women in general as overly talkative. The import of all these texts is that women are viewed as subordinate to men and that society should endeavor to maintain men’s gender-based prerogatives.
Yet the Rabbis too are aware of Miriam’s unique status. In Mishnah Sotah 1:9, the notice that “the people did not march on until Miriam was readmitted” (12:15) is interpreted as proof that “a human being is treated according to how that person treats others” (Mishnah Sotah 1:7). Miriam herself had many years earlier waited for her infant brother Moses after his mother had set him afloat in the Nile (Exodus 2:4). For this, according to the Rabbis, she was rewarded at the end of Numbers 12, when the Israelites did not continue their march without her.
—Tal Ilan