Why Doesn’t God Use Me Like He Uses Others? (Numbers 10:10-12)
Have you ever felt jealous over how God seems to use others more than you? This frustration is nothing new. In Numbers 11, the people are back to their grumbling ways.
Numbers 10:10-12
Today's Scripture Passage
A Few Thoughts to Consider
Have you ever felt jealous over how God seems to use others more than you?
This frustration is nothing new. In Numbers 11, the people are back to their grumbling ways. They are tired of God's manna and say in verse 5, “We remember the free fish we ate in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic.” It gets so bad that families are openly “weeping at the entrance of their tents.”[1]
Hearing this, God is angry, and Moses is provoked. In a raw exchange, Moses says to God, 11 “Why have you brought such trouble on your servant? Why are you angry with me, and why do you burden me with all these people? 12 Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth so you should tell me, ‘Carry them at your breast, as a nursing mother carries a baby,’ to the land that you swore to give their ancestors?”
Despite his anger, God miraculously provides the people with more quail than they can eat, even as they continue to complain. While it was one thing for the people to grumble against God and Moses, the grumbling hits home in Numbers 12 when Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ siblings, also turn on him. Verses 1-2 tell us, 1 “Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses because of the Cushite woman he married (for he had married a Cushite woman). 2 They said, ‘Does the Lord speak only through Moses? Does he not also speak through us?.’”
We can’t be sure if this “Cushite woman” is a reference to Moses’ wife, Zipporah. If so, it’s possible Miriam and Aaron are making an ethnic slur “by likening Zipporah’s darker skin to that of an African.”[2] But “most commentators think [this woman] may have been Moses’ second wife and that she had come from Ethiopia (e.g., Gen. 10:6).”[3] Nevertheless, as Gordon Wenham writes, “The text does not explain why Miriam and Aaron objected to this woman, because in reality their objections to her were only a smokescreen for their challenge to Moses’ spiritual authority.”[4]
However, they’ve attacked the wrong man. Verse 3 makes this simple yet profound statement: 3 “Moses was a very humble man, more so than anyone on the face of the earth.” And in verses 4-8, God issues Miriam and Aaron a stunning rebuke.
4 Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “You three come out to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them went out. 5 Then the Lord descended in a pillar of cloud, stood at the entrance to the tent, and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When the two of them came forward, 6 he said:
“Listen to what I say:
If there is a prophet among you from the Lord,
I make myself known to him in a vision;
I speak with him in a dream.
7 Not so with my servant Moses;
he is faithful in all my household.
8 I speak with him directly,
openly, and not in riddles;
he sees the form of the Lord.
So why were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?”
In only a few words, God not only sticks up for Moses, but he also puts Miriam and Aaron in their proper place. They do not have the type of relationship with God that Moses had. And one of the reasons for this was Moses’ trust in who God was. Because of their rebellion, Miriam becomes a leper and “is the first biblical case of scaly skin disease (ṣaraꜥat) as a devastating, socially stigmatizing divine punishment by which outer decay reflects inner moral ‘leprosy.’”[5]
By giving her a disease that eats away at her physical body, God is giving Miriam and others an internal look at the state of her soul. Only Moses’ intercession to God spares her life.
