Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/1109

 which Moses laid. And if Moses stood in this unparalleled relation to the Lord, Miriam and Aaron sinned grievously against him, when speaking as they did. Num 12:9. After this address, “the wrath of Jehovah burned against them, and He went.” As a judge, withdrawing from the judgment-seat when he has pronounced his sentence, so Jehovah went, by the cloud in which He had come down withdrawing from the tabernacle, and ascending up on high. And at the same moment, Miriam, the instigator of the rebellion against her brother Moses, was covered with leprosy, and became white as snow.

verses 11-12
When Aaron saw his sister smitten in this way, he said to Moses, “''Alas! my lord, I beseech thee, lay not this sin upon us, for we have done foolishly;''” i.e., let us not bear its punishment. “Let her (Miriam) not be as the dead thing, on whose coming out of its mother's womb half its flesh is consumed;” i.e., like a still-born child, which comes into the world half decomposed. His reason for making this comparison was, that leprosy produces decomposition in the living body.

Verse 13
Moses, with his mildness, took compassion upon his sister, upon whom this punishment had fallen, and cried to the Lord, “O God, I beseech Thee, heal her.” The connection of the particle נא with אל is certainly unusual, but yet it is analogous to the construction with such exclamations as אוי (Jer 4:31; Jer 45:3) and הנּה (Gen 12:11; Gen 16:2, etc.); since אל in the vocative is to be regarded as equivalent to an exclamation; whereas the alteration into אל, as proposed by J. D. Michaelis and Knobel, does not even give a fitting sense, apart altogether from the fact, that the repetition of נא after the verb, with נא אל before it, would be altogether unexampled.

Verse 14
Jehovah hearkened to His servant's prayer, though not without inflicting deep humiliation upon Miriam. “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not be ashamed seven days?” i.e., keep herself hidden from Me out of pure shame. She was to be shut outside the camp, to be excluded from the congregation as a leprous person for seven days, and then to be received in again. Thus restoration and purification from her leprosy were promised to her after the endurance of seven days' punishment. Leprosy was the just punishment for her sin. In her haughty exaggeration of the worth of her own prophetic gift, she had placed herself on a par with Moses, the divinely appointed head of the whole nation, and exalted herself above the congregation of the Lord. For this she was afflicted with a disease which shut her out of the number of the members of the people of