The Cause And Cure Of Dissension Among The People Of God

Now, let’s read the text together. You’ll see the first part of the familiar pattern right away. “And Miriam and Aaron started to speak against Moses on account of a woman of Cush whom he had taken [in marriage]; for he had taken [in marriage] a woman of Cush.” (v. 1—jlw translation) Now, that portion of the passage is what I call the “red flag” reason. It’s the propaganda. In fact, it’s almost the big lie.

A – The Big Lie (The Propaganda—Numbers 12:1)

It doesn’t really matter whether this controversial wife of Moses is a second wife, an Ethiopian woman, or is actually Zipporah, Moses’ wife from Midian. It isn’t the real issue. Aaron and Miriam were dragging up anything controversial in order to create opposition to Moses, but they’ll give us, in their own words, the REAL reason for their opposition to Moses in verse 2. But before we get to that, let me deal with this bogus issue for a moment. A lot of people grabbed hold of the King James translation of this wife as being Ethiopian and used it to teach against interracial marriage. Now, there are a few of us who are Caucasians married to Asian wives who would have a problem with that if it was correct.

The problem with that interpretation is that the Hebrew noun used in this passage is “Cush.” And in the Hebrew Bible, Cush CAN mean “Ethiopian” but it can also refer to what is now Saudi Arabia, the largely desert area where Midian was located. And whether Moses’ wife was a second wife, a black one, or a first wife, a Midianite, Aaron and Miriam were trying to suggest that she was inappropriate for a leader of God’s people. Somehow, they suggested, she wasn’t a good pastor’s wife. We don’t know if it was because she was an “extra” wife as with polygamy, a “second” wife after Zipporah died or was divorced, or if it was Zipporah herself, but we can be sure that the issue wasn’t really the wife.

You know, many a pastor has had his ministry curtailed by the perceptions of, actions of, or reactions to his wife. Now, it’s very likely that (as with my property controversy or the devotional retreat controversy I mentioned) if it hadn’t been one thing, it would have been another, but the fact remains that the sneaky, diabolical force, the disloyal opposition, the Satan who wants to disrupt churches has very often used the wives of leaders to rally against. The Satan knows he can get to the leader easier through wife and family than any other way.

But it isn’t always, as in this case, a “red flag” that rallies around the leader’s wife. It could be a dispute about the Bible translation read from the pulpit, a disagreement over the type of music to be used in worship, or even major splits over (and these are all real): the color of the carpet in the sanctuary, the color of paint for the nursery, oversized pink offering envelopes over short white ones, the use of the church kitchen, changing the time or frequency of church services, borrowing of church folding chairs for personal use, the side of the church on which the piano was located, the way the Lord’s Supper is served, the amount of time the pastor gets off, the use of spiritual gifts, pastor’s and staff salaries, inauguration of some new ministry effort, a pastor wearing a robe in the pulpit, and a pastor who used his academic title (causing jealousy in a deacon who had procrastinated earning his equivalent degree). All of these and more have caused church splits of which I’m aware. But they weren’t the REAL reason.