Numbers 12:1 ¶ And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman. 2 And they said, Hath the LORD indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us? And the LORD heard it. 3 (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)
Moses has taken another wife and Miriam and Aaron challenge him on this. We don’t know if Zipporah is dead, went back home permanently, or if this is an extra wife. It is doubtful that this is a case of racial bigotry only as we tend to impose our own history and social customs on Bible characters which can be misleading. For instance, before England became involved heavily in the slave trade even to the point where the Anglican Church’s missionary society owned more slaves than it had missionaries there were recorded instances of free Englishmen and women of African origin marrying white Englishmen and women, in one text I read even using this passage in Numbers as a justification. As well, a French traveler to the United States in the late 1700s noted that in South Carolina he met a free black slaveowner who had worked himself high in society, even to marrying a white woman and having his daughter given in marriage to another slaveowner who was white. But, when we think backwards we tend to think of the end of a thing as always being so and it most certainly is not. So, just be careful.
Ethiopia covers a large area south of Egypt and would have included the kingdoms of Kush and the area of Nubia. The Ethiopians had a strong presence in Egypt and there were even Ethiopian pharaohs later in a dynasty that scholars report lasted from 744-656BC. Note the attempted invasion of good King Asa’s Judah by Zerah with an army of a million whom God overthrew.
2Chronicles 14:9 And there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host of a thousand thousand, and three hundred chariots; and came unto Mareshah… 12 So the LORD smote the Ethiopians before Asa, and before Judah; and the Ethiopians fled.
This challenge to Moses’ authority flies in the face of his meekness toward God. Moses is certainly not a meek man in our understanding of the word in regard to relationships to other people. But, he is a man who stands in awe of, reference for, fear of, and apparently devotion to the God who created Him and who speaks to Him physically on a regular basis. He is a unique individual in his generation in his relationship to God, much like Abraham was.
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