“Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, ‘Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?’ ” (Numbers 12:1-2). According to the timeline of the Biblical narrative, these three siblings were all in their 80s; yet doesn’t this look like the squabbles of teenage sibling rivalry?

Aaron and Miriam describe Zipporah, the wife of Moses (Exodus 2:21) and the daughter of Jethro (Exodus 3:1), as a Cushite woman. This seems odd, when we think that Midian was northeast of Egypt, while Cush (Ethiopia) is south. But the people of Cush were black-skinned, African, as opposed to the brown-skinned people of Israel and Egypt, Middle Eastern. When someone has a skin color different from ours, that is often one of the very first things we notice. We have to wonder whether Miriam and Aaron felt confident that the people of Israel would side with them in their accusation of Moses, because everyone could see that Zipporah’s skin was too dark.

The Lord descends to the tent of meeting and calls Aaron and Miriam to account (Numbers 12:5), sings Moses’s praises (12:6-8), and angrily asks how they dared speak against Moses (12:8-9). The judgment comes immediately: Miriam is full of leprosy (12:10). Why just Miriam? Aaron is right there, too. Aaron cries out to Moses, “Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned ” (12:11). He knows he’s part of this: don’t punish “us;” “we” … committed this sin.

But Miriam now has a disease that has turned her skin “white as snow” (12:10). If Zipporah’s skin is too black, what if Miriam’s skin is too white? Moses prays for God to heal her (12:13); the text does not directly say whether God did so or not. Instead we get a proverb-sounding saying of the Lord: “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days?” (12:14). So Miriam must reside outside the camp for seven days: but the people of Israel would not leave their campsite without her (12:15).

It is indeed a difficult passage, troubled by racial overtones, with blaming and shaming the woman, with God’s arbitrary harshness in judging one sinner while ignoring the other. Those difficulties cannot be explained away: they are just there. But let us notice that Miriam is remembered by Moses as a bad example (Deuteronomy 24:9), yet remembered by the children of Israel as a prophet and worship leader (Exodus 15:20-21), and as one of the great leaders of the Exodus (Micah 6:4).

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A leper came to Jesus, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”  Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean” (Mark 1:40-41).

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Help us, O Lord: for our hearts are troubled. So often we get angry when someone has more authority than we do. So often we make decisions to include or exclude people on the basis of their skin color. So often we practice blaming and shaming, instead of recognizing that we are all sinners who need your grace.

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