Should you second-guess your intuition?

What happened when Aaron and Miriam doubted Moses.

Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as I attempt to read the Bible with fresh eyes, as if I don’t know anything about it, and without consulting experts on what it “really” means.. Let’s see where this takes us!

I’m reading Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Numbers 12

Moses had married a Cushite woman.

Cush, like Canaan, was a son of Ham. Symbolically, Ham and his descendants represent the lowest or basest version of ourselves. Historically, however, Cush (or Kush) was a land in present-day Sudan, close or adjacent to both the Nile River and the Red Sea.

Since Cush was a long way off, who knows how this Cushite got in with the Israelites. Maybe she had been in Egypt and joined them. Maybe she was from a family of traders who met the Israelites.

Moses’s first wife was a Midianite, a descendent of Abraham. The Cushite, however, wasn’t “one of us,” which apparently annoyed Miriam and Aaron. Although not against the letter of the law, marrying the foreigner seemed to violate the LORD’s intentions for Israel. By marrying foreigners, are we not…