Numbers 12:7

The passage opens with “the LORD spake suddenly”. The Hebrew adverb pithʼôwm means abruptly or unexpectedly, and it ties God’s action straight to what has just happened. The verse before has told us how meek Moses was, so the first move comes from God, unasked. He steps in for his servant swiftly, and the speed shows how seriously he takes a challenge to the one he has appointed. He speaks to Moses as well as to Aaron and Miriam, because Moses is the one God has spoken through, and he is to be present when the LORD gives his verdict.

The challenge was serious because of who made it and what it touched. Moses led the people and was the prophet through whom God gave his word, Aaron was the high priest, and Miriam was a prophetess and a leader among the women (Exodus 15:20). When two of the three most honoured people in Israel questioned Moses’ standing, the whole people’s respect for the order God had set could be shaken. In Israel, to challenge a leader God had appointed was to challenge the LORD who appointed him, as Moses told the people when they grumbled: “your murmurings are not against us, but against the LORD.”

All this took place in the wilderness, in a time full of complaint. The people had just complained and been struck with a plague (Numbers 11), and harder rebellions were still to come, at Kadesh (Numbers 14) and under Korah, whose challenge to Moses and Aaron ended in an even more terrible judgment (Numbers 16:1–35).

“Come out ye three” is a direct command, and “they three came out” tells us that they obeyed at once. Whatever their quarrel, all three answered when the LORD called.

The LORD who acts in verse 5 is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s covenant name, which speaks of him as the eternal, self-existent one who had bound himself to Israel. The verb yârad, “came down”, is the ordinary word for going or coming down. The pillar of cloud had led Israel since they left Egypt, a cloud by day and fire by night (Exodus 13:21–22), and when the tabernacle was finished the cloud covered it and the glory of the LORD filled it (Exodus 40:34–38). Now the LORD comes down in that cloud to the door of the tabernacle and meets the dispute in person. A visible appearance of God like this is called a theophany.

God came in the most familiar sign of his presence in Israel’s life, so that everyone would know the summons came from him. What had been a grievance among brothers and a sister became a public reckoning at the heart of Israel’s life with God.

He “stood in the door of the tabernacle”. The verb ʻâmad simply means to stand. The door was the entrance where Israel came to God, where sacrifices were offered and where God’s word was often given, and there the LORD takes his place, as a judge would, to give his decision.

Then he “called Aaron and Miriam: and they both came forth.” All three had come to the tent, and now the two who had spoken are called forward by name, apart from Moses, each to answer for what they said. They come at once, and with the cloud standing before them we can understand the awe in which they came.

“Hear now my words” calls for full attention, because what follows is the LORD’s own answer to the question Aaron and Miriam raised. He begins with prophets in general. A prophet, nâbîyʼ, is one who speaks for God and carries his messages, warnings and promises to the people. “If there be a prophet among you” grants that God did raise prophets in Israel, and Miriam herself was called one.

To such a prophet, God says, “I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.” The emphatic “I the LORD” says that he is the one who acts. A prophet’s revelation is God’s gift, given when and how God chooses. A vision, marʼâh, is something seen, often while the prophet is awake, through which God shows himself or his message. A dream, chălôwm, is the ordinary word for a dream, used both of the dreams of sleep and of dreams through which God gives a message.

Scripture records both. God spoke in dreams to Abimelech (Genesis 20:3), to Joseph (Genesis 37:5–10) and to Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:1–3). The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision (Genesis 15:1), and Isaiah, Ezekiel and Amos saw visions (Isaiah 1:1, Ezekiel 1:1–3, Amos 7:1–9). The book of Job speaks of God speaking to people in dreams and in visions of the night (Job 33:15–16). The nations around Israel also looked to dreams and visions as the ways their gods spoke, so God here uses means people understood, and in Israel those means carried true revelation from him. They often needed interpreting, as the dreams in the stories of Joseph and Daniel did.

This is the usual way God speaks to his prophets, and he sets it out first so that what he says next about Moses stands out against it.

“My servant Moses is not so” sets Moses apart from the prophets God has just described. The Hebrew lo-khen, “not so”, answers Aaron and Miriam’s claim to equal standing directly. Whatever God has given them, Moses stands with God in another way altogether.

The word ‘ebed, servant, can mean a slave, and in a king’s court it also meant a trusted official who served the king closely. When God calls Moses “my servant”, it is a title of honour. Moses is God’s own man, devoted to his will, acting for him and entrusted with his people. God names him, Môsheh, a name drawn from the verb meaning to draw out, and so this is God’s personal commendation of one man.

The reason God gives is that Moses “is faithful in all mine house.” The verb ‘âman in its simplest form means to support or to nurse, as a foster-parent does, and in another form it means to be firm and established. Here “faithful” describes a man who is firm and can be relied on. The house, bayit, is God’s household: the tabernacle, and with it the whole people of Israel whom God had taken as his own. Moses had charge of all of it, the law, the worship, the ordering of the camp, the judging of disputes and the journey through the wilderness, and God says that in every part he has proved trustworthy. He had stayed faithful under heavy pressure and repeated rebellion from the very people he led.

God’s praise of Moses also carries a warning, the same one a psalm gives: “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm” (Psalm 105:15). God guards the servant he has trusted with his house.

“With him will I speak mouth to mouth” is the heart of God’s answer. Peh is the Hebrew for mouth, and peh el-peh is an idiom for speaking directly and personally, as one person speaks to another. Exodus says the same of Moses in other words: “the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11).

“Even apparently” uses marʼeh, a word from the verb to see, meaning sight or appearance. In the KJV’s English, “apparently” means openly, in plain view, so God’s speech to Moses was clear and distinct. The “dark speeches” set against it, bəḥîḏōṯ in Hebrew, are riddles or obscure sayings that need working out. Visions and dreams came to the prophets in forms that often had to be interpreted, and to Moses God spoke plainly.

Israel remembered this as Moses’ own privilege. Deuteronomy closes with the words, “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10), and God had promised to raise up a prophet like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15). Moses’ nearness to God went with his task. He was the lawgiver through whom God made his covenant at Sinai and set up Israel’s worship, and he had to hear God clearly.

The word for anger, ʼaph, properly means the nose or nostril, and it came to mean anger from the hard breathing that goes with strong feeling. “Was kindled” is chârâh, to glow or grow warm, and so to blaze up. The same verb is used of human anger, and here it pictures God’s anger flaring like a fire against Aaron and Miriam. In God that anger is holy and just, his displeasure at sin, and here at a challenge to his choice of Moses and to the word he gave through him. As Hebrews says, “our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29).

Then “he departed.” The verb yâlak is the common word for walking or going. The LORD who had come down and stood at the door now leaves, and the cloud withdraws from the tabernacle. The sign of his presence, which meant favour, guidance and protection to Israel, was gone from the scene, and that withdrawal was itself a judgment. Scripture speaks elsewhere of sins that separate people from their God (Isaiah 59:2), and a psalm tells of a time when Israel provoked the LORD and he forsook the place where he had dwelt among them (Psalm 78:58–60). The verse is two short clauses, and the judgment follows as quickly: once the cloud is gone, Miriam is found leprous (Numbers 12:10).

Moses, God’s chosen prophet and mediator, points ahead to Christ, the prophet like Moses whom God promised (Deuteronomy 18:15). Jesus too had his authority questioned and his claims about his Father challenged (John 8:48–59, Matthew 21:23–27). God answered for him by raising him from the dead (Acts 2:24), declaring him “the Son of God with power” (Romans 1:4), and exalting him to the highest place (Philippians 2:9–11), so that all power in heaven and in earth is given to him (Matthew 28:18). As God answered for Moses at the tabernacle door, he answered fully for his Son.

Hebrews takes up the very words of verse 7. Moses was faithful in all God’s house “as a servant”, and Christ is faithful “as a son over his own house”, the one who built the house and rules it (Hebrews 3:1–6). His faithfulness was obedience to the Father unto death on the cross (Philippians 2:8). He is the good shepherd of God’s flock (John 10:11), the chief corner stone of God’s spiritual temple (Ephesians 2:20) and the head of the church, which is his body (Colossians 1:18), and by his own blood he obtained eternal redemption for us (Hebrews 9:12).

What verse 8 says of revelation is fulfilled in him as well. God spoke with Moses mouth to mouth, and in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, the brightness of his glory (Hebrews 1:1–3). “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), so in Jesus God dwells among his people as he once dwelt in the tabernacle. Moses beheld the similitude of the LORD, and the Son, who is with the Father, has made him known (John 1:18), being himself “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). Through him we have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18).

Verse 9 points to him too. Aaron and Miriam were called to account at the tabernacle door, and all people will stand before Christ, whom God has ordained to be judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42). The holy anger that burned against them is the anger against sin that Christ bore as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), the propitiation for our sins (Romans 3:25, 1 John 2:2). The LORD departed from Aaron and Miriam, and for those who are in Christ, the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), his presence abides through the Spirit, the Comforter Jesus promised (John 14:16), under the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20).

These verses show a God who hears what is said against his servants and answers for them himself. Moses kept silent, and the LORD spoke suddenly. The same God speaks to his people, in visions and dreams to the prophets, mouth to mouth with Moses, and at last in his Son. He sees the faithfulness of those who serve in his house, and he calls Moses “my servant” twice in one answer.

His anger here is real, and so is his holiness. Aaron and Miriam were his own priest and prophetess, and he still called them to account. So the passage carries a warning against speaking against those God has set over his people out of envy or pride, and it carries comfort for those who are wrongly spoken against, because the LORD sees and will vindicate his servants. His question, “wherefore then were ye not afraid”, is one worth hearing before we speak. The church is now God’s house, and the faithfulness God praised in Moses is what he looks for in all who serve in it.