Jacob Milgrom, The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers
"Because of the Cushite woman" Regardless of whether Moses' wife was Ethiopian or Midianite, the objection to her, it is implied was ethnic. Strikingly, the rabbis raise no objection to her Cushite origin but, to the contrary, defend her, claiming that Moses refused to have sexual intercourse after his descent from Sinai....
"Snow White Scales" Rather, scaly as snow. According to the rabbis, the chief cause of leprosy is defamation or slander. If Cushite means Ethiopian then the whiteness of Miriam would be a fit punishment for objecting to Moses' dark-skinned wife. However, the simile of snow indicates the flakiness associated with the disease, not whiteness.
The Torah: A Woman's Commentary, URJ Press (2008)
Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses (12:I) This episode raises several concerns. God nominates male priests, male Levites, and male elders to run the enterprise of Israel, whereas women are all but absent. The only women we meet are Moses’ sister Miriam, who speaks (out of turn), and his Ethiopian wife, who is silent. In Exodus 15:20, Miriam had been designated as a prophet, and she now claims a prophetic role for herself. Yet, although Miriam and Aaron both discuss Moses’ wife, it is only Miriam who is punished for her words.
The question of God’s partial administration of justice is the only one of these issues that is explored in the Rabbis’ discourse on this parashah. The trannaitic Midrash Sifrei B’midbar 99 raises the inequity of Miriam’s treatment and answers with the words: “This shows that it was Miriam who first raised the issue.” That is, Miriam was responsible for initiating the critical conversation about Moses’ wife and thus was the person punished. Yet, not all the Rabbis were happy with this superficial solution. In BT Shabbat 97a, Rabbi Akiva argues that Aaron too was afflicted with leprosy, based on the notice in v.9 that God was “incensed with them” (plural). However, this is a minority view; the general opinion in that Talmudic passage is that Aaron was not similarly stricken. Another halachi midrash, Sifra, M’tzora 5.7, identifies tzaraat as the quintessential punishment for slander, and it emphasizes that Miriam’s contraction of Tzaraat (Numbers 12:10) was the result of her denunciation of Moses, essentially because she slandered him behind his back.
The sages were also interested in solving the apparent contradiction between what we hear about Moses’ marrying an Ethiopian woman and what we know about his marriage to the Midianite woman, Zipporah (Exodus 2:21). Earlier Jewish Hellenistic literature suggested that young Moses-while still an Egyptian prince-had carried out a campaign against Ethiopia and there married an Ethiopian princess (Josephus, Antiquities 252-3). Yet the Rabbis do not adopt this solution. In their opinion, the Ethiopian woman is none other than Zipporah herself, and thus they need to explain why she is called Ethiopian – and why Miriam and Aaron found it necessary to speak about her. Already in Sifrei B’midbar 99, we learn that Miriam spoke against Moses because he had refrained from having sexual intercourse with Zipporah ever since God had begun speaking to him face to face. The Rabbis tell us that Miriam and Zipporah had been standing together when the news came that Eldad and Medad were prophesying. Zipporah remarked that she felt pity for their wives, for they would now suffer her fate, meaning that their husbands would no longer sleep with them. Miriam then said to Aaron, “Why does Moses have to behave this way? Has God not also spoken to us, and we have not refrained from sex with our spouses?” (Sifrei B’midbar 99). Obviously the question that bothers the Rabbis here is a contrived one, not actually found in the Bible; namely, the connection between holiness and refraining from sexual activity. It is likely that this discussion originates in rabbinic knowledge of contemporaneous non-Jewish practices that advocated celibacy of religious leaders.
If the wife that Moses took, and about whom Miriam and Aaron spoke, was actually Zipporah the Rabbis still needed to explain why she was designated as Ethiopian. They explained that the term kushit, usually translated as Ethiopian or Cushite, in fact refers to exceptional beauty. Just as Ethiopians are unusual in their skin color, so was Zipporah unusual to behold (sifrei B”midbar 99). This interpretation removes from the biblical text any hint of bigotry, but leaves one with the lingering feeling that Ethiopian skin color is at some level and issue.
Much of rabbinic interpretation on this episode is concerned with correct hierarchy and gender ordering. The same midrash that states that it was Miriam who initiated this conversation about Moses’ wife comments that it was unusual for her to speak to her brother Aaron before she was spoken to (Sifrei B’midbar 99). Another early midrash teaches that if Miriam was punished for speaking against her younger brother, one should all the more so refrain from speaking against one’s superiors (SIfrei D’varim 1). Midrash D’varim Rabbah 6.12 notices the absence of the title “prophet” here in connection with Miriam and suggests that this is a warning that slanderous talk brings about loss of status. Midrash B’reishit Rabbah 45.5 cites this episode to denigrate women in general as overly talkative. The import of all these texts is that women are viewed as subordinate to men and that society should endeavor to maintain men’s gender-based prerogatives.
Yet the Rabbis too are aware of Miriam’s unique status. In Mishnah Sotah 1:9, the notice that “the people did not march on until Miriam was readmitted” (12:15) is interpreted as proof that “a human being is treated according to how that person treats others” (Mishnah Sotah 1:7) Miriam herself had many years earlier waited for her infant brother Moses after his mother had set him afloat in the Nile (Exodus 2:4). For this, according to the Rabbis, she was rewarded at the end of Numbers 12, when the Israelites did not continue their march without her.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers
Why is Zippora called the Cushite woman? Rashi offers three explanations: because her undeniable beauty is indicated in the undeniable blackness of an Ethiopian; because of the numerological value of the word "Cushite," which is equivalent to the word beauty; and because referring to her as black, instead of its opposite, beautiful, wards off the evil eye. She is, moreover, referred to twice as the Cushite woman because her beauty is both moral and physical. Miriam conveys a certain tension around her beauty, a sense of being immaculate but endangered, of exotic otherness.
It is striking that the midrashic narrative centers on Moses' separation from his beautiful, virtuous wife. This secret meaning inverts the obvious meaning of the story. It is not Moses' marriage but his abandonment of it that agitates his siblings.
Joseph Kaspi (from Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in BaMidbar)
I am surprised at the ancients, who are so much more perfect than me... how it ever ocurred to them to explain a text of the Torah the very reverse of its written meaning. What was Onkelos' warrant for rendering the Hebrew adjective Kushit (black or Ehtiopian) "beautiful", the very opposite of what was stated, black being opposite to white?
I therefore maintain that the text bears no other interpretation but that Moses took a Cushite or Ethiopian woman. Had Moses adopted a life of celibacy and separated himself from woman, Moses would not have been the most perfect man that ever walked the world.
Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)
Zipporah of the tawny skin, Zipporah of the flowing body. Zipporah of the night-black eyes. Zipporah of the luxuriant, crinkly hair that covered her shoulders like a great ruff of feathers. Zipporah of the full, dark red lips. Zipporah of the warm, brown arms. These were the pictures that went with Moses all day long as he herded Jethro’s sheep. Night and the time to go home was always too long coming. He loved her little songs, her childish delight in the Egyptian ornaments he had given her and others he bought for her from traders. She was beautiful when she was weaving. She was irresistible when she danced and played. She was always doing something that kept him enthralled. He spent no more evenings in the big tent with Jethro any more.
And how is the black Mrs. Pharaoh making out this morning?”
“Who are you talking about, Miss Miriam?” “Oh, you know I’m talking about that dark-complected woman that Moses done here trying to make out she’s a lordgod sitting on a bygod. All dressed up every day like King Pharaoh’s horse. She needn’t think because her papa is some kind of a chief in Midian and she’s married to Moses that she can come dictating to me.”
“Is she done took to dictating, Miss Miriam? I didn’t never hear of her saying nothing to nobody.”
“She don’t have to. But you seen her flourishing herself all over the place trying to get the influence of people’s minds.” “You reckon?”
“No! I know it. She come here with the idea of getting control of the women folks and to root ne out as a leader-after I done worked like a fool to get us free. Her idea is to get you all back into slavery again. You just swapped on Pharaoh for another one, to my notion. You don’t want to go back into slavery, do you?”
“I sure don’t. I used to get so tired of kneading dough for then rich Egyptians to eat. My knees was all wore out from kneeling down all day and half the night over then bread troughs. No, sir! I sure don’t want no more slavery. Though I sure would love a loaf of that good old Egyptian bread”
“Well, you women better get together and do something or you will find that Ethiopian woman and that Moses will have us all out here in the woods using us for slaves.”
“What can we do to head it off?”
“Get together as many women as you can and go stand around the tent of Moses and holler for him to get rid of that Ethiopian wife of his.”
“Thought you said she was a Midianite?”
“OH, don’t try to take me up on every little point. Even if she was born and raised in Midian her folks could still come from Ethiopia, couldn’t they? Tell me! Look how dark her skin is. We don’t want people like that among us mixing up our and all. That woman has got to go. Go get up some people to protest. When enough of you all get around this tent, my brother Aaron and me will go see Moses and demand him to get her off the place. Got us round here looking like her servants.”
Miriam walked and talked all day so that by three o’clock that afternoon tow or three thousand women were milling around the tent of Moses and muttering. Finally Moses sent Joshua out to demand what was wrong out there. Aaron and Miriam stepped out of the crowd and answered him. “It’s no wonder the people is dissatisfied,” they told Moses. “You got that strange woman around here"
“What strange woman you talking about?” Moses asked shortly.
“That one in your tent,” Miriam said perversely.
“She might be strange to you, but she sure ain’t no stranger to me. She’s been my wife more than twenty years. I hope you don’t aim t tell me that I can’t have my wife with me. I hope you ain’t messing in my business to that extent.”
“I mind my own business and I let other folks’ business alone. Anybody that knows me can tell you that.” Miriam evaded for the moment.