“And Miriam spoke, and Aaron, against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married: For he had married a Cushite woman” (Numbers 12:1).
Of the one woman, we know much; of the other, we know very little.
Of Miriam, the prophetess, we are familiar with her deeds in Egypt and her song by the sea. We know her parents, Yocheved and Amram, and her brothers, Moses our teacher, and Aaron the High Priest. Of their likeness in Jewish history, none compare.
In the wilderness, no family was held in higher regard, and to the best of our knowledge, no woman was held in higher esteem. Upon Miriam’s death, we are told that the Congregation immediately thirsted for water (Numbers 20:1-2). The Talmud remarks that it was on account of Miriam’s righteousness that water flowed from the rock all those years in the wilderness (Taanith 9a).
In contrast, who is this other, “Cushite,” woman Moses reportedly has taken for a wife? She has no name, no family, no back story. However does she find herself in the camp of Israel and married to Moses, of all men?
The first-century Jewish historian Josephus, perhaps to impress his Roman audience, records in his “Antiquities of the Jews” that in Moses’ younger years — as Prince of Egypt — he led a military campaign through the land of Ethiopia, and there took an Ethiopian princess, Tharbis, as his first wife. But if such a tradition about Moses existed in Israel’s collective memory — passed on orally outside the biblical canon — it likely would have found its way into early rabbinic texts such as the Midrash or Targum. No such text exists, making Josephus’ claim highly suspect.
Slightly less implausible is an attempt to identify this Cushite woman with Moses’ Midianite wife, Tzippora, daughter of Yitro (see Rashi). But this raises difficulties. The Torah states twice in one verse (in case we doubted it) that Moses married a “Cushite woman.” Cush in the Bible begins in Ethiopia (below Egypt) and continues southward into Africa, quite a distance from the Midianite settlements in the Jordan-Arabia region. Imagine mistaking Sacramento for San Diego, or a Londoner for a Parisian.
The simplest explanation, and the most credible, is that Moses took a second wife. We do not know the why or the when; and of the woman herself, we know little beyond her nationality. But perhaps half the lesson may be derived from the impoverished description of her personality, for it lays bare a stark difference in status and power between herself and Miriam.
How much more awful is the slander when a great woman such as Miriam, esteemed for her accomplishments and privileged by her familial bonds, criticizes a seeming “nobody,” an unnamed outsider from a distant and foreign land. With no blood ties to the Jewish people, or known accomplishments, her importance is derived from her husband. Without intrinsic worth, she is flippantly dismissed as Moses’ Cushite wife.
The Torah does not detail what Miriam, and to some lesser extent Aaron, found bothersome about Moses and his wife. Perhaps Moses was neglecting his husbandly duties of intimacy with his beloved, or so claims Rashi. Perhaps Miriam and Aaron thought Moses’ Cushite wife to be unattractive; so writes Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra. More likely, Miriam thought it wrong that Moses should marry a foreigner instead of taking an Israelite wife. That Tzippora had been a foreigner could be forgiven, for at the time, Moses was living far from his brethren in Egypt when he took her as his wife. But later in the wilderness, among the Children of Israel, certainly Moses could have found a more fitting Israelite bride (Shadal).
Far more remarkable is what Miriam’s punishment says about her crime, for the Bible always metes out justice measure for measure. Miriam is publicly humiliated. First, Miriam’s skin turns flaky white by her having contracted tza’arat, the biblical skin disease. Second, she is shut outside the Israelite camp for seven days. In the Torah’s words, her personal shame was like that of a daughter whose “father spits before her face” in disgust (Numbers 12:14).
But how does this reprimand fit her offense?
Conceivably, if Miriam used the term “Cushite” as a racial slur referring to skin color, it may be thought quite just that Miriam’s skin turned a sickly white color in rebuke. Additionally, if “Cushite” was used to convey the foreignness of Moses’ wife, it is fitting that Miriam is in turn made to feel the outsider as she is set apart outside the camp.
Thus, in an instant, Miriam, an insider, comes to know the difficult predicament of being an alien — a predicament she should never have forgotten considering Israel’s sojourn in Egypt.
What an apt lesson for minding the social divide between privileged and underprivileged, between those in the center and those on the fringes. After all, what an Israelite can suffer in Egypt, an Ethiopian can suffer in Israel. In God’s eyes, she who was superior today can become subordinate tomorrow, and vice versa. If Miriam can succumb to forgetfulness and pride, prejudice and xenophobia, we’d do well to doubly guard our words and deeds.
Rabbi Yehuda Hausman is the spiritual leader of the The Shul on Duxbury, an independent Orthodox minyan. He is a teacher at the Academy for Jewish Religion, CA, and a lecturer at American Jewish University’s Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies. He writes about the weekly parasha on his blog, rabbihausman.com.
