have called her a Cushite, whether because the Cushite tribes dwelt in Arabia, or in a contemptuous sense as a Moor or Hamite, the author would certainly not have confirmed this at all events inaccurate, if not contemptuous epithet, by adding, “for he had taken a Cushite wife;” to say nothing of the improbability of Miriam having made the marriage which her brother had contracted when he was a fugitive in a foreign land, long before he was called by God, the occasion of reproach so many years afterwards. It would be quite different if, a short time before, probably after the death of Zipporah, he had contracted a second marriage with a Cushite woman, who either sprang from the Cushites dwelling in Arabia, or from the foreigners who had come out of Egypt along with the Israelites. This marriage would not have been wrong in itself, as God had merely forbidden the Israelites to marry the daughters of Canaan (Exo 34:16), even if Moses had not contracted it “with the deliberate intention of setting forth through this marriage with a Hamite woman the fellowship between Israel and the heathen, so far as it could exist under the law; and thus practically exemplifying in his own person that equality between the foreigners and Israel which the law demanded in various ways” (Baumgarten), or of “prefiguring by this example the future union of Israel with the most remote of the heathen,” as O. v. Gerlach and many of the fathers suppose. In the taunt of the brother and sister, however, we meet with that carnal exaggeration of the Israelitish nationality which forms so all-pervading a characteristic of this nation, and is the more reprehensible the more it rests upon the ground of nature rather than upon the spiritual calling of Israel (Kurtz).
verses 2-3
Miriam and Aaron said, “Hath Jehovah then spoken only by Moses, and not also by us?” Are not we - the high priest Aaron, who brings the rights of the congregation before Jehovah in the Urim and Thummim (Exo 28:30), and the prophetess Miriam (Exo 15:20) - also organs and mediators of divine revelation? “They are proud of the prophetic gift, which ought rather to have fostered modesty in them. But such is the depravity of human nature, that they not only abuse the gifts of God towards the brother whom they despise, but by an ungodly and sacrilegious glorification extol the gifts themselves in such a manner as to hide the Author of the gifts” (Calvin). - “And Jehovah heard.” This is stated for the purpose of preparing the way for the judicial interposition of God. When God hears what is wrong, He must proceed to stop it by punishment. Moses might
