Numbers 12:3 says that “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” But why the sudden mention of it at this point?
There’s a clue in the context, which is about “Miriam and Aaron talking against Moses because of his Cushite wife” (1). To them it was sufficient reason for criticizing Moses, and even questioning his right to be their sole leader (2). But why now? They’d never had a problem with Moses marrying Zipporah his Midianite wife, but now all of a sudden their younger brother marrying a foreigner was an issue for them.
And how brutal it must’ve been for Moses too, having his older brother and sister turn against him like this, and especially his sister Miriam who’d saved his life as a baby, and faithfully stuck by him as the three of them led Israel out of Egypt (Micah 6:4). Miriam was a “prophetess” too, and a highly inspirational leader (Exodus 15:20-21). But now this sudden change in her, so what happened?
Had her lofty position in Israel led to a spark of arrogance in her mind? – hinted at in the previous chapter too, when Moses “brought together seventy elders” (11:24), and Yahweh then “took of the Spirit he’d put on Moses and put it on the elders” so that they “prophesied” (25). But hadn’t Yahweh selected only Miriam as the one doing the prophesying? So what did Moses think he was doing wanting seventy others prophesying too?
And what right did Moses have to make such a decision in the first place when, in Miriam’s mind, he’d made such a bad decision marrying a foreigner (12:1)? Miriam was building a case against Moses, even suggesting in verse 2 that he wasn’t the only one Yahweh had chosen to speak through, because “Hadn’t he also spoken through us (Aaron and Miriam) too?” Was this a coup driven by arrogance in the making, then?
It looks like it, because Yahweh jumps in “at once” (4), has all three – Moses, Aaron and Miriam – “come out to the Tent of Meeting,” where he has a few choice words to say to Aaron and Miriam (5-6). And it’s in this context that Moses being “the humblest man on the planet” is mentioned, because even when betrayed and belittled by his own flesh and blood he did not retaliate. And what that did was bring Yahweh himself to Moses’ defence, and he then began the process of “Turning arrogance into humility”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 