The Israelites continue with their whinging and complaining. Then Moses joins in the chorus of whinging as well. This time YHWH provides meat in the form of quail. But apparently, there were still complaints, and YHWH responds by causing a plague to fall upon the Israelites.
We now learn that Moses has a Cushite (Ethiopian) wife. This is apparently not the Zipporah (Medianite) who was the daughter of Jethro. Miriam and Aaron engage in some back biting against Moses, and YHWH punishes them by causing Miriam to turn white because of leprosy.
YHWH now directs Moses to send a recce party through the Negev hills to spy upon the Promised Land. The recce part returns with fruits and glowing reports about the 'milk and honey', but a bleak report about the people. Caleb was keen to enter, but the recce team portrayed a very negative and frightening prospect to fighting the Canaanites.
30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it." 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."
2 comments:
1. This question on whether Moses has one or two wives seem to be an interesting topic for debate on the internet. Some say that Cushite and Midianites refer to people of the same region. Others say that he took a 2nd wife after Zipporah died. Some say that he couldnt have been polygamous given the Moses is supposed to be a Type for Jesus. Not sure if any of these are relevant, except for trying to figure out what was Miriam and Aaron unhappy about with regard to his Cushite wife.
2. Chap 12: 10 - says, "Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth".
Was thinking, wasn't Numbers written by Moses? hehhe!! Ok, he might not have been the author of that statement, just the compiler.
I think people get too locked into a mental model of who Moses should be like, and ignore the reality he was just an ordinary person of that time called out to do God's work. Does it matter he had 2 wives, or even more than 2? Probably not, since all the patriarchs had more than one wife, plus others....
In any case, Cush generally refers to Ethiopia, and it's quite clear who the Midianites were (largely Semitic people)....so hard to confuse those 2 ethnicities.
Also when Miriam and Aaron 'attacked' Moses' wife, it was probably out of an ethnic prejudice, which is more likely to occur if Moses wife was Ethiopian, (african)than if she were just Midianite. Also her punishment was quite telling as she was turned all 'white'.
With regards to the authorship/compilation, that brings us into all kinds of issues about authorship which we probably don't want to go into...hehheh.......
(if want some background can read here, but not saying this is Church Orthodox view...!)
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