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.)

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.

 Notes and 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 ..."

Cook, Edward M. "The Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Targums" in Henze, Matthias (ed.) A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism (pp. 92-117) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012

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