Numbers 12

¹ Miriam, and Aaron too, spoke against Moses in connexion with the Cushite woman[*a] he had taken. (For he had married a Cushite woman.)

² They said, ‘Has Yahweh spoken to Moses only? Has he not spoken to us too?’ Yahweh heard this.

³ ‘Now Moses was the most humble of men, the humblest man on earth.

⁴ Suddenly, Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, ‘Come, all three of you, to the Tent of Meeting’. They went, all three of them,

⁵ and Yahweh came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the Tent. He called Aaron and Miriam and they both came forward.

⁶ Yahweh said, ‘Listen now to my words: If any man among you is a prophet I make myself known to him in a vision, I speak to him in a dream.

⁷ Not so with my servant Moses: he is at home in my house;

⁸ I speak with him face to face, plainly and not in riddles, and he sees the form of Yahweh. How then have you dared to speak against my servant Moses?’

⁹ The anger of Yahweh blazed out against them. He departed,

¹⁰ and as soon as the cloud withdrew from the Tent, there was Miriam a leper, white as snow! Aaron turned to look at her; she had become a leper.

¹¹ Aaron said to Moses: ‘Help me, my lord! Do not punish us for a sin committed in folly of which we are guilty.

¹² I entreat you, do not let her be like a monster, coming from its mother’s womb with flesh half corrupted.’

¹³ Moses cried to Yahweh, ‘O God,’ he said ‘please heal her, I beg you!’

¹⁴ Then Yahweh said to Moses, ‘If her father had done no more than spit in her face, would she not be a thing of shame for seven days? Let her be shut outside the camp for seven days, and then let her be brought in again.

¹⁵ Miriam was shut outside the camp for seven days. The people did not set out until she returned.

¹⁶ Then the people left Hazeroth, and camp was pitched in the wilderness of Paran.