At the end of Parshat Beha’alotcha, we find a mysterious and puzzling narrative, the first three verses of which do not seem to follow from each other at all:
1. And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Kushite woman whom he had married; for he had married a Kushite woman. 2. And they said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? has he not spoken also through us? And the Lord heard it. 3. And the man Moses was very humble, more than any other men which were upon the face of the earth.
I am intrigued by verses 1 and 2 and the disconnect between them. What precisely is the complaint here? Is it that Moses has married a Kushite woman, as verse 1 implies (and if so, why is that a problem?); or is it to do with God speaking through people, as in verse 2 ? These appear to be two entirely different issues.
In attempting to explain the problem with marrying the Kushite woman, plus the connection between the two seemingly unrelated complaints, the Midrash, Rashi, and others suggest a non-literal interpretation: the complaint was that Moses had separated from his wife Tzipporah, and his siblings felt that that this was unnecessary and inappropriate, for they too were prophets and yet had not separated themselves thus from their own spouses.
