Commentaria in Numeros
Chapter the Twelfth. Synopsis of the Chapter
Mary, for murmuring against Moses, is struck with leprosy and cast out of the camp; but, Moses praying for her, after seven days she is healed and called back.
1. And Mary and Aaron spoke against Moses, because of his wife the Ethiopian, 2. and they said: Hath the Lord spoken by Moses only? Hath he not also spoken to us in like manner? And when the Lord heard this, 3. (for Moses was a man exceeding meek above all men that dwelt upon earth,) 4. immediately he spoke to him, and to Aaron and Mary: Come out you three only to the tabernacle of the covenant. And when they were come out, 5. the Lord came down in a pillar of the cloud, and stood in the entry of the tabernacle, calling Aaron and Mary. And when they were come, 6. he said to them: Hear my words: If there be among you a prophet of the Lord, I will appear to him in a vision, or I will speak to him in a dream. 7. But it is not so with my servant Moses, who is most faithful in all my house: 8. for I speak to him mouth to mouth, and plainly, and not by riddles and figures doth he see the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak ill of my servant Moses? 9. And being angry with them, he went away: 10. the cloud also that was over the tabernacle departed: and behold Mary appeared white as snow with a leprosy. And Aaron looking on her and seeing her all covered with leprosy, 11. said to Moses: I beseech thee, my lord, lay not upon us this sin, which we have foolishly committed, 12. let her not be as one dead, and as an abortive that is cast forth from the mother’s womb: behold now half of her flesh is devoured with the leprosy. 13. And Moses cried to the Lord, saying: O God, I beseech thee, heal her. 14. And the Lord answered him: If her father had spit in her face, ought she not to have been ashamed for seven days at the least? Let her be separated seven days without the camp, and afterwards she shall be called again. 15. So Mary was put out of the camp seven days: and the people moved not from that place till Mary was called again.
Verse 1. “And Mary and Aaron spoke against Moses, because of his wife the Ethiopian.” Who was this Ethiopian woman? Josephus, Antiquities, book II, and from him Eusebius, Isidore and others, relate that Moses, while he still lived in the paternal house of Pharaoh, waged war for the Egyptians against the Ethiopians, and subdued them by the betrayal of Tharbis, the daughter of the king of the Ethiopians, whom Moses accordingly took to wife, and that this was the Ethiopian woman. But Scripture makes no mention of this war and victory, nor of this wife of Moses, but only of Sephora. I say, therefore, that Sephora is here called an Ethiopian because she was a Madianite. For the Madianites are called Ethiopians in Scripture, as is plain in Habacuc iii, 7, and 2 Paralipomenon xiv. For there are two Ethiopias in Scripture: one western, beyond Egypt, namely Abyssinia, where Prester John now reigns, which alone is now called Ethiopia; the other eastern, which is Arabia, in which dwelt the Ismaelites, Amalecites, Madianites, etc.: these, therefore, are called Ethiopians. So St. Augustine here, Question XX, Theodoret, Question XXII, Rabanus, Rupert, Lyranus, Abulensis, Eugubinus, Vatablus and Oleaster.
In this marriage of Moses with an Ethiopian woman was allegorically figured the marriage of Christ with the Church of the Gentiles; tropologically, the marriage of the Word with the sinful soul, says St. Bernard, sermon 39 on the Canticle.
You will ask secondly, why did Mary and Aaron rise up against Moses on account of Sephora? It is likely, as Abulensis says, that Sephora, in the manner of women (for this sex, being of feeble wit and judgment, is ambitious and eager for its own honour) wished to set herself above Mary, because she was the wife of Moses, and extolled her Moses, as leader of the people, in her words, and set him before Mary and Aaron: whereupon Mary was first stirred up, and then Aaron, and they began to raise themselves, wishing to put themselves on a level not only with Sephora but with Moses also, boasting that they were as noble prophets as Moses was. That this was so is gathered both from the following verse and from verse 6, where God indicates and sets aside this cause of murmuring, and teaches that they are deceived in their ambition, since Moses is the most excellent, the most faithful, and the most familiar with God of the Prophets, to whom no other can be compared.
Note: In this murmuring Mary sinned most, being a woman, and unsteady; and she seems to have stirred up Aaron against Sephora and Moses; whence she alone was punished with leprosy, not Aaron. Abulensis adds that Aaron was not struck with leprosy because he was the high priest, in whom the highest cleanness, authority and reverence were required. For it would have been a grave disgrace in the worship of God if its pontiff Aaron had ever been a leper. Let Princes and Prelates learn here to keep all disgrace away from their officers and Parish priests, and not to promote or set over the people those who have at any time laboured under disgrace, even though they have now amended; for the people, on account of past disgrace, will despise such men, nay, even laugh at them.
To the type of the Synagogue, he says, belongs this murmuring of Mary, who, ignorant of the sacrament of the Ethiopian woman, that is, of the Church to be gathered from the Gentiles, murmurs against her with daily reproach, and envies that people, by whose faith she herself also will be stripped of the leprosy of her perfidy at the end of the age. So also St. Prosper, part II to Fabiola, at the 14th Station. Where note from St. Jerome that this murmuring took place, and this leprosy was inflicted on Mary, in the fourteenth station, namely at Haseroth, as is plain from the last verse of the preceding chapter.
Verse 3. “For Moses was a man exceeding meek above all men that dwelt upon earth,” as if to say: Because Moses was the meekest of the men of that age, therefore, when Mary and Aaron disparaged and railed at him, he did not answer, and so God took him under his protection, and answered for him.
Note: Moses, praying and entreating for his detracting sister at the request of Aaron, was the meekest in the Old Testament; but in the New, St. Stephen was meeker than he, says Abulensis, who prayed even for his stoners, and for Saul, no one asking him; whence he also obtained Paul for the Church, and of Saul made Paul. Moreover, by this meekness Moses merited converse and an almost continual familiarity with God. Hear St. Dionysius, epistle 8 to Demophilus: “The history of the Hebrews relates that Moses, by the merit of his exceeding meekness, was deemed worthy of divine friendship and familiarity; and if ever it records that he fell from the divine sight, it does not describe this as having happened to him before he had failed in meekness. For he was, it says, very meek, and therefore is called the servant of God, and more worthy than all the Prophets that God should bestow on him the grace of his vision.”
See what meekness obtains with God, see how great a virtue it is, see how magnanimous. Rightly Seneca of the wise man: “The affection of grief is moved by the humility of a mind that shrinks into itself on account of a dishonouring deed or word; but the wise man is despised by none, he knows his own greatness. The fruit of an insult lies in indignation, and in the feeling of being hurt”; and in the book On Anger: “Everything weak is by nature querulous; nor is anything great unless it is at the same time calm.” Doubtless this equanimity and meekness in bearing injuries is the mark of a Christian and truly wise and great mind.
Hear Seneca again, in the book On Anger: “Marcus Cato was struck in the bath by a man who did not know him; afterwards, when the man made satisfaction, Cato said: I do not remember being struck; he thought it better not to acknowledge than to forgive. It is the part of a great mind to despise injuries; it is the part of a petty and wretched man to bite back at the one who bites, like mice and ants, which, if you bring your hand near, turn their mouths: weak things think themselves hurt if they are touched.” And in the Consolation to Helvia: “Aristides was being led at Athens to punishment; everyone who met him groaned, as though not a just man but Justice herself were being condemned; yet one was found to spit in his face; but he wiped his face, and smiling said to the magistrate who accompanied him: Warn that fellow not to yawn so improperly in future.” Of Julius Caesar Cicero said, “that he was wont to forget nothing but injuries,” as St. Augustine relates, epistle 5 to Marcellinus.