God and interracial marriage

[Eucharisted]

Numbers 12
1 While they were in Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses on the pretext of the marriage he had contracted with a Cushite woman.
2 They complained, “Is it through Moses alone that the LORD speaks? Does he not speak through us also?” And the LORD heard this.
3 Now, Moses himself was by far the meekest man on the face of the earth.
4 So at once the LORD said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the meeting tent.” And the three of them went.
5 Then the LORD came down in the column of cloud, and standing at the entrance of the tent, called Aaron and Miriam. When both came forward,
6 he said, “Now listen to the words of the LORD: Should there be a prophet among you, in visions will I reveal myself to him, in dreams will I speak to him;
7 Not so with my servant Moses! Throughout my house he bears my trust:
8 face to face I speak to him, plainly and not in riddles. The presence of the LORD he beholds. Why, then, did you not fear to speak against my servant Moses?”
9 So angry was the LORD against them that when he departed,
10 and the cloud withdrew from the tent, there was Miriam, a snow-white leper! When Aaron turned and saw her a leper,
11 “Ah, my lord!” he said to Moses, “please do not charge us with the sin that we have foolishly committed!
12 Let her not thus be like the stillborn babe that comes forth from its mother’s womb with its flesh half consumed.”
13 Then Moses cried to the LORD, “Please, not this! Pray, heal her!”
14 But the LORD answered Moses, “Suppose her father had spit in her face, would she not hide in shame for seven days? Let her be confined outside the camp for seven days; only then may she be brought back.”

To give you the context of these verses: A Cushite woman is black skinned, and Miriam was protesting against Moses because he had married a black woman. She thought it was unjust for the Lord’s prophet to have a Cushite wife, and she assumed herself better and purer than her because she was white skinned. The Lord was so furious that He made her a leper - giving her exactly what she wanted: to be the “purest” woman in the world.

 

[aborodki]

This is interesting, are you saying that God sees nothing wrong with interracial marriages? Why would HE?

 

[Jesus_123]

Numbers 12
1 While they were in Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses on the** PRETEXT** of the marriage he had contracted with a Cushite woman.
2 They complained, “Is it through Moses alone that the LORD speaks? Does he not speak through us also?” And the LORD heard this.
3 Now, Moses himself was by far the meekest man on the face of the earth.
4 So at once the LORD said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the meeting tent.” And the three of them went.
5 Then the LORD came down in the column of cloud, and standing at the entrance of the tent, called Aaron and Miriam. When both came forward,
6 he said, “Now listen to the words of the LORD: Should there be a prophet among you, in visions will I reveal myself to him, in dreams will I speak to him;
7 Not so with my servant Moses! Throughout my house he bears my trust:
8 face to face I speak to him, plainly and not in riddles. The presence of the LORD he beholds. Why, then, did you not fear to speak against my servant Moses?”
9 So angry was the LORD against them that when he departed,
10 and the cloud withdrew from the tent, there was Miriam, a snow-white leper! When Aaron turned and saw her a leper,
11 “Ah, my lord!” he said to Moses, “please do not charge us with the sin that we have foolishly committed!
12 Let her not thus be like the stillborn babe that comes forth from its mother’s womb with its flesh half consumed.”
13 Then Moses cried to the LORD, “Please, not this! Pray, heal her!”
14 But the LORD answered Moses, “Suppose her father had spit in her face, would she not hide in shame for seven days? Let her be confined outside the camp for seven days; only then may she be brought back.”

To give you the context of these verses: A Cushite woman is black skinned, and Miriam was protesting against Moses because he had married a black woman. She thought it was unjust for the Lord’s prophet to have a Cushite wife, and she assumed herself better and purer than her because she was white skinned. The Lord was so furious that He made her a leper - giving her exactly what she wanted: to be the “purest” woman in the world.

• Eucharisted . . . you didn’t read the above portion of Sacred :bible1: Scripture carefully enough . . . the interracial marriage was just a pretext used by Miriam and Aaron to try to pridefully place themselves . . . on a par . . . “equal” . . . with the most holy . . . tempered-by-God over many, many years on the backside of the desert . . . soul of Moses in all his holy meekness before God . . . God’s own chosen holy messenger and lawgiver . . . whose goodness of soul and relationship with God was far higher and of such an infinite depth of holiness . . . that it far out-surpassed anyone else on the face of the earth . . .and far outranked/out-surpassed the office of a holy prophet of God . . . and was** way beyond **the spiritual level Aaron and Miriam were living . . .

There isn’t even the slightest whisper that Moses interracial marriage was looked upon with anything other than honor and respect and with gracious loving favor by our **Wonderful God **. . . in fact . . . Scripture teaches God used Moses’ wife’s father as a wise counselor and advisor in the problem dealing with the huge throng of Israelites in an orderly manner . . .

Your subject line for your post and your conclusion that the sensitive subject of prejudice was the point of the passage of scripture is error . . . which subject can become highly inflamatory . . . please take greater care when handling **God’s Most :bible1: Holy Word **. . .

God bless . . .

. . . all for Jesus+​

 

[judechild]

I think that it’s more important to consider why God didn’t want the Hebrews marrying outside of the tribes. He didn’t want Israel to adopt the gods and customs of foreigners; it’s not anything about the color of their skin.

 

[chosen_people]

I think that it’s more important to consider why God didn’t want the Hebrews marrying outside of the tribes. He didn’t want Israel to adopt the gods and customs of foreigners; it’s not anything about the color of their skin.

Exactly right

 

[aborodki]

I think that it’s more important to consider why God didn’t want the Hebrews marrying outside of the tribes. He didn’t want Israel to adopt the gods and customs of foreigners; it’s not anything about the color of their skin.

Agreed.

 

[WJL]

It is commonly asserted that Moses married a black woman. Actually, there is nothing prior to Numbers 12 about the death of Zipporah, and so we must assume that the chapter refers to her. Zipporah was a Midianite, and her people were related to the Hebrews through the fourth son of Abraham’s wife Keturah. The Midianites lived in the land of Cush, which is modern-day Ethiopia. This does not mean that Zipporah was a Cushite or a descendant of Ham. Haydock’s Catholic Bible Commentary agrees: “Sephora, the wife of Moses, was of Madian, which bordered upon the land of Chus, or Ethiopia; and therefore she is called an Ethiopian: where note, that the Ethiopia here spoken of, is not that of Africa, but that of Arabia, (Challoner) on the east side of the Red Sea, Exodus ii. 15.”

As Matthew Henry wrote, the sedition of Miriam and Aaron was “because of Zipporah, whom on this occasion they called, in scorn, an Ethiopian woman, and who, they insinuated, had too great an influence upon Moses in the choice of these seventy elders.” Miriam and Aaron, consumed with jealousy, most likely tried to slur Zipporah by calling her an Ethiopian. Though not inspired, the Book of Jasher gives an alternate account (33:31-34): "…they [the Cushites] gave him [Moses] for a wife Adoniah the Cushite queen, wife [widow] of Kikianus [deceased king of the Cushites]. And Moses feared the Lord God of his fathers, so that he came not to her, nor did he turn eyes to her. For Moses remembered how Abraham had made his servant Eliezer swear, saying unto him, 'Thou shalt not take a woman from the daughters of Canaan [brother of Cush] for my son Isaac.’ Also what Isaac did when Jacob had fled from his brother, when he commanded him, saying, ‘Thou shalt not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan’…"

 

[patrick457]

Numbers 12
1 While they were in Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses on the pretext of the marriage he had contracted with a Cushite woman.
2 They complained, “Is it through Moses alone that the LORD speaks? Does he not speak through us also?” And the LORD heard this.
3 Now, Moses himself was by far the meekest man on the face of the earth.
4 So at once the LORD said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the meeting tent.” And the three of them went.
5 Then the LORD came down in the column of cloud, and standing at the entrance of the tent, called Aaron and Miriam. When both came forward,
6 he said, “Now listen to the words of the LORD: Should there be a prophet among you, in visions will I reveal myself to him, in dreams will I speak to him;
7 Not so with my servant Moses! Throughout my house he bears my trust:
8 face to face I speak to him, plainly and not in riddles. The presence of the LORD he beholds. Why, then, did you not fear to speak against my servant Moses?”
9 So angry was the LORD against them that when he departed,
10 and the cloud withdrew from the tent, there was Miriam, a snow-white leper! When Aaron turned and saw her a leper,
11 “Ah, my lord!” he said to Moses, “please do not charge us with the sin that we have foolishly committed!
12 Let her not thus be like the stillborn babe that comes forth from its mother’s womb with its flesh half consumed.”
13 Then Moses cried to the LORD, “Please, not this! Pray, heal her!”
14 But the LORD answered Moses, “Suppose her father had spit in her face, would she not hide in shame for seven days? Let her be confined outside the camp for seven days; only then may she be brought back.”

To give you the context of these verses: A Cushite woman is black skinned, and Miriam was protesting against Moses because he had married a black woman. She thought it was unjust for the Lord’s prophet to have a Cushite wife, and she assumed herself better and purer than her because she was white skinned. The Lord was so furious that He made her a leper - giving her exactly what she wanted: to be the “purest” woman in the world.

If I might nitpick though…how exactly is Miriam “white-skinned”?

The word Kush in the Bible can describe the Cassites, east of Babylon of the later period (Genesis 10:18), or Ethiopia (Isaiah 20:3; Nahum 3:5; et al). Another suggestion is that it would refer to Cushan of Habakkuk 3:7, perhaps close to Midian, and so the area Moses had been. Whether the 'isha hakkushit was of darker skin than the Hebrews would be hard to say, since the Bible gives no further detail.

I do agree with Jesus_123 however that Miriam and Aharon are envious of Mosheh’s leadership, but they use an occasion – his marriage – to criticize him. Often the immediate criticism is simply a surface issue for a deeper matter. And, I also agree that it is ironic that Miriam is afflicted with a skin disease, turning her “leprous as snow”.

And, just as an extra, Numbers 12:1 in the Septuagint and the Targumim:

Septuagint: And Mariam and Aaron spoke against Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman whom Moses took; for he had taken an Ethiopian woman. “And they said, Has the Lord spoken to Moses only? has he not also spoken to us?”

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: And Miriam and Aharon spoke 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, “Has the Lord spoken only with Mosheh, that he should be separated from the married life? Has He not spoken with us also?”

Targum Yerushalmi: And Miriam and Aharon spoke against Mosheh about the Kushaitha whom he had taken. But observe, the Kushite wife was not Zipporah, the wife of Mosheh, but a certain Kushaitha, of a flesh different from every creature: whereas Zipporah, the wife of Mosheh, was of a comely form and beautiful countenance, and more abundant in good works than all the women of her age. And they said, “Has the Lord spoken only with Mosheh, that he should be separated from the married life? Has He not spoken with us also?”

Targum Onkelos: And Miriam and Aharon spake against Mosheh, because of the fair woman (ittha shaphirtha) whom he had taken, because the fair woman who had been sent away he had taken. And they said, “Has the Lord spoken only with Mosheh? Has He not spoken with us also?”