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Numbers 12

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1 And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had taken; for he had taken a Cushite as wife.

2 And they said, Has Jehovah indeed spoken only to Moses? has he not spoken also to us? And Jehovah heard it.

3 But the man Moses was very meek, above all men that were upon the face of the earth.

4 Then Jehovah spoke suddenly to Moses, and to Aaron, and to Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tent of meeting. And they went out, they three.

5 And Jehovah came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forth.

6 And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I Jehovah will make myself known to him in a vision, I will speak to him in a dream.

7 Not so my servant Moses: he is faithful in all my house.

8 Mouth to Mouth do I speak to him openly, and not in riddles; and the form of Jehovah doth he behold. Why then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?

9 And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against them, and he went away;

10 and the cloud departed from off the tent. And behold, Miriam was leprous as snow; and Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous.

11 Then Aaron said to Moses, Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not this sin upon us, wherein we have been foolish, and have sinned!

12 Let her not be as one stillborn, half of whose flesh is consumed when he comes out of his mother's womb.

13 And Moses cried to Jehovah, saying, O ùGod, heal her, I beseech thee!

14 And Jehovah said to Moses, But had her father anyways spat in her face, should she not be shamed seven days? She shall be shut outside the camp seven days, and afterwards she shall be received in [again].

15 And Miriam was shut outside the camp seven days; and the people did not journey till Miriam was received in [again].

16 And afterwards the people journeyed from Hazeroth, and encamped in the wilderness of Paran.

   

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.