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Numbers

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Chapter 12

1 Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married⁠ (for he had married an Ethiopian woman).⁠ 2 They said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us?” And the Lord heard it. 3 (Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth.) 4 The Lord spoke immediately to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam: “The three of you come to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them went. 5 And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent; he then called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward.⁠ 6 The Lord said, “Hear now my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision; I will speak with him in a dream. 7 My servant Moses is not like this; he is faithful in all my house. 8 With him I will speak face to face, openly and not in riddles, and he will see the form of the Lord.⁠ Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” 9 The anger of the Lord burned against them, and he departed. 10 After the cloud had departed from above the tent, there was Miriam, leprous like snow. Then Aaron turned toward Miriam, and realized that she was leprous.⁠ 11 So Aaron said to Moses, “O my lord, please do not hold this sin against us, in which we have acted foolishly and have sinned! 12 Do not let her be like a baby born dead, whose flesh is half consumed when it comes out of its mother’s womb!”⁠ 13 Then Moses cried to the Lord, “Heal her now, O God.”⁠ 14 The Lord said to Moses, “If her father had only spit in her face, would she not have been disgraced for seven days? Shut her out from the camp seven days, and afterward she can be brought back in again.” 15 So Miriam was shut outside of the camp for seven days, and the people did not journey on until Miriam was brought back in. 16 After that the people moved from Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.

Texts in conversation

Compare Numbers 12:1 and Pseudo Jonathan Numbers 12:1

Hebrew Bible · Targum

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Summary

Numbers 12 says that Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses for marrying a Cushite woman, a detail left unexplained. The Aramaic translation in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan explains this by saying she was Ethiopian royalty, a tradition also found in Josephus.

Passages

Numbers 12:1

Hebrew Bible
1 Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married (for he had married an Ethiopian woman). 2 They said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us?” And the Lord heard it. 3 (Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth.)
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Numbers

Pseudo Jonathan Numbers 12:1

Targum
And Miriam and Aharon spake against Mosheh words that were not becoming with respect to the Kushaitha whom the Kushaee had caused Mosheh to take when he had fled from Pharoh, but whom he had sent away because they had given him the queen of Kush, and he had sent her away. And they said, Hath the Lord spoken only with Mosheh, that he should be separated from the married life? Hath He not spoken with us also? And it was heard before the Lord. But the man Mosheh was more bowed down in his mind than all the children of men upon the face of the earth; neither cared he for their words.
300–1200 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Pseudo Jonathan Numbers

References

"... Adding Detail ... Vermes’s second category comes into play when the biblical text “lacks sufficient detail.” One Targumic example, out of many, must suffice here. According to Numbers 12:1, Moses had married a Cushite (Ethiopian) woman; however, this wife is not mentioned in any other passage, and the wife of Moses is otherwise said to be the Midianite woman Zipporah. The Targums fill in this gap in different ways. Onkelos is the most succinct ... Targum Pseudo-Jonathan fills in the gaps in a completely different way ... The targumist sets aside the idea that the woman was Zipporah, or that “Cushite” meant “beautiful,” and draws on an extrabiblical legend that Moses had married a queen or princess of the Ethiopians, as Josephus relates (Antiquities 2.251-53). There was in fact a wife prior to Zipporah, says the targumist, but she was wife in name only and Moses had no relations with her ..."
Edward M. Cook, “The Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Targums,” in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 92–117.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Numbers 12:1 and Pseudo Jonathan Numbers 12:1

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