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Welcome, I'm Cliff Hedges. This is Pastor Cliff's Notes. This is a podcast where we are studying the Bible. We're working our way through the book of Numbers. Today is episode 1619, and we're looking at Numbers chapter 12, verses 1 through 16. Well, in chapters 1 through 10 of the book of Numbers, God's getting the Israelites ready to go from the Sinai area to the promised land, to Canaan. The cloud lifted up, the people moved out. It was very orderly, very controlled, very organized. But then three days later we see grumbling set in. The first instance is at Taborah. This was the grumbling that the wilderness was full of hardship, and the Lord's fire burned on the outskirts of the camp. But Moses prayed and the Lord relented. Then didn't tell us how long, but it seems shortly thereafter at Kibroth Hatah, the complaints were about food. They were tired of manna and they wanted meat, and the complaining spread throughout the camp, and even affected Moses, and he complained about the people. God's response to that was he provided help for Moses. He had Moses choose seventy elders, and he put his spirit upon those seventy elders to help Moses. Then he provided meat that they wanted, thirty days worth that they just became sick of it, there was so much of it. But a plague struck down those who craved the meat. So now we get to the third instance of grumbling. Numbers chapter twelve, verse one. Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses because of the Cushite woman he married, for he had married a Cushite woman. Well, let's start off with that this first sentence gives us a clue about who the instigator of this is, because it says Miriam and Aaron. Miriam's listed first, and then the verb criticized is in the feminine form. That's a clue right there that Miriam is the instigator in this, and Aaron is just going along with it. Now there's debate about this. And the Cush people were thought to have settled down in Africa, the area of Ethiopia. Now, Moses' wife Zippara was a Midianite. She was the daughter of Ruel, also called Jethro, and some speculate, well, maybe either just calling her a Cushite was more of a slander because she was not Israelite, but the Bible then says because he had married a Cushite. So maybe the particular clan of Midian had intermarried with some of the Cushite people, and that's why they're calling her that. Most people think, no, this is probably a second wife. We don't see anything about Zippra in quite a while. Maybe she has died and Moses has taken a second wife who was a Cushite woman. Now is that wrong? Is the question. Well, we saw no criticism of him taking the Midianite wife. In Exodus 34, 16, they're told, Do not intermarry within the Canaanites. So the people who inhabit the promised land do not intermarry with them. It did not specifically prohibit all marriages of foreign people. So a Cushite would not be one of the Canaanites, so it would be allowed. But they're criticizing and saying this this is some kind of mark against Moses. Verse 2. They said, Does the Lord speak only through Moses? Does he not also speak through us? Well, the answer is yes, he does speak through them. Back in Exodus 1520, specifically called Miriam a prophetess. Now remember, Miriam, she is the older sister of Moses. She was the one who, when Moses' parents put him in the basket in the Nile River among the reeds, she watched over him. And then when Pharaoh's daughter finds him, Miriam's the one who goes up and says, Hey, I got just the person who could nurse this baby for you, Moses' mother, and arranges that. So Miriam's a hero in the Israelite society. She is a prophetess. She is sister of Moses. She's the one who protected Moses, saved Moses. So she's quite the person. And as a prophetess, God speaks through her. Aaron is the high priest. And we have quite often the Lord speaking to Moses and Aaron. A couple of times directly to Aaron without Moses mentioned. So does the Lord speak through Aaron and Miriam? Well, actually, yes, he does. And their challenge, well, does the Lord only speak through Moses? Does he not also speak through us? And what's their point here? Well, why is Moses in charge? Why aren't we higher up? So, question, does he not also speak through us? And the Lord heard it. Verse 3, Moses was a very humble man, more so than anyone on the face of the earth. We read that, say, okay, yeah, we got that. But you think about it. Um, didn't Moses write numbers? Well, yeah, most of us think so. And so Moses writing numbers writes, Moses was a very humble man more so than anyone on the face of the earth. That doesn't sound very humble. So can the most humble man on the face of the earth write that he is the most humble man on the face of the earth? Well, speaking the facts, maybe. Some say, okay, maybe in a later edition, others say, well, maybe humble isn't the best way to translate this. Because a lot of these Hebrew words can be translated in a variety of ways. Places you'll find this word could be translated as humble, afflicted, needy, lowly, miserable. So you could imagine what we had just seen Moses going through with the lament about the people, saying, Moses was a very miserable man, more so than anyone on the face of the earth. Hard to say. But we do know something about Moses, and he is a humble man. Verse 4. Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, You three come out to the tent of meeting. So the three of them went out. Then the Lord descended in a pillar of cloud, stood at the entrance to the tent, and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When the two of them came forward, he said, Okay, this is full of drama here. The Lord has come down in a cloud, and sometimes he comes down and gives him good news, sometimes he comes down and gives judgment. And he has heard their complaints about Moses. So it started out with criticizing his wife, and then quickly move to how come he's the number one prophet? Uh so obviously the wife thing is probably a smoke screen, unless they're saying that should preclude him from being the number one prophet. But then we have this statement of God, verse six. Listen to what I say. If there is a prophet among you from the Lord, I make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my household. I speak with him directly, openly, and not in riddles. He sees the form of the Lord. So why were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? All right, he starts off talking about your everyday prophet. And basically he's saying these are your prophets. The prophet from the Lord, I make myself known to him in a vision, speak to him in a dream. So this is how God generally speaks to prophets in a dream, in a vision, not clearly face to face. And often it is in very figurative language, sometimes highly confusing, sometimes very hard to understand. But he said, not so with my servant Moses. He's faithful in all my household. So Moses is not your average prophet. Yes, Miriam's a prophetess, yes, Aaron is the high priest, but Moses is different. He speaks to him directly, openly, not in riddles. He sees the form of the Lord. He goes to God face to face. While God speaks to the others, because he summoned the three of them to the tent of meeting. None of them have been face to face with God the way Moses has. And as challenges there, why were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? Some translate that, why were you not terrified to speak against my servant Moses? Probably the thing that just preceded this with the grumbling, even Moses' grumbling, resulted in the 70 elders with God's spirit being placed on them. And maybe that made him think, well, Moses may not be that special. If God can put his spirit on seventy others to help him, then Moses is not so standalone special category all by himself. And God's arguing, well, yes, he is. Verse 9, the Lord's anger burned against them, and he left. As the cloud moved away from the tent, Miriam's skin suddenly became diseased, resembling snow. So this is what we would call a serious skin disease, as you remember from back in Leviticus. And what happens with someone with a scary serious skin disease? They're examined, examined again, and if it's incurable, they are ordered to live outside the camp forever, until for whatever reason the Lord heals them. Continuing to verse 10, when Aaron turned toward her, he saw that she was diseased and said to Moses, My Lord, please don't hold against us this sin we have so foolishly committed. Please don't let her be like a dead baby whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of the mother's womb. That's kind of graphic, but that's I guess the way she looks. She looks in pretty bad shape. One question is why was a Miriam stricken but not Aaron? Well, as we saw from the first sentence, Miriam's the instigator in this. And quite often the instigator suffers a worse fate. We saw earlier the plague struck those who craved the meat. So she's been struck with this serious skin disease. Verse 13. Then Moses cried out to the Lord, God, please heal her. Simple prayer, immediate prayer to the point. Lord, please heal her. Verse fourteen. The Lord answered Moses, If her father had merely spit in her face, wouldn't she remain in disgrace for seven days? Let her be confined outside the camp for seven days, after that she may be brought back in. So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on till Miriam was brought back in. Okay, so God does heal her. But he makes the point here, and this is not a biblical command, but apparently it was something they practice, that if a daughter had showed disrespect to her father, he could spit in her face, and then her disgrace would be upon her for seven days. And the Lord's saying, How much bigger deal is this? What she has done with not only her disrespect to Moses, but her disrespect to God. So her just being confined outside the camp for seven days, she's getting away with a lot. This is a very high level of grace that God is giving her. Where his immediate judgment on her with the serious skin disease that would ostracize her from the camp for life. Now just turns into seven days of disgrace. And the people wait until the seven days are up, and they bring her back in. Verse 16. After that, the people set out from Hazaroth and camped in the wilderness of Perin. Well, first we see Hazaroth, so obviously that's where they are now. We had the first grumbling event at Tabora, the second grumbling event at Kibaroth Hateri, and now the third grumbling event at Hazaroth. And now they get move on to the wilderness of Peron. And this is the staging area at the edge of Canaan. So here we are, basically at the edge of the promised land in Numbers chapter twelve. Thanks for joining me. Join me again next time as we continue working through Numbers.