Numbers 12:1

Summary

Numbers 12:1 opens a narrative in which Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses regarding his Cushite wife. The verse states the accusation's grounds twice, first via a relative clause and then via a causal clause restating that Moses had taken a Cushite wife.

Key words

• tedabber ("she spoke", H1696G) — piel narrative form, grammatically feminine singular despite the compound subject "Miriam and Aaron."
• be ("against", H9003) — preposition literally meaning "in," used here with a hostile sense, "against/concerning" Moses.
• odot ("[the] causes of", H0182) — feminine plural construct noun, forming the phrase "on account of," introducing the reason for the speech.
• asher ("whom", H0834A) — relative particle introducing a subordinate clause identifying "the Cushite woman."
• ki ("for", H3588A) — subordinating particle introducing a second clause that restates the fact already given.

What the text says

The clause begins with the narrative vav prefixed to tedabber ("and she spoke," H1696G), a piel perfect verb that is grammatically feminine singular. The subject that follows is compound — Miriam (H4813G) ve-Aharon ("and Aaron," H0175) — yet the verb agrees only with the feminine singular form, matching Miriam, who is named first. This grammatical detail is not something an English translation like "then Miriam and Aaron criticized" (BSB) can preserve, since English verbs do not mark gender agreement with compound subjects.

The target of the speech is introduced by be ("in/against," H9003) attached to Moshe, followed by the phrase al-odot ("on account of," H5921A + H0182), which specifies the reason: ha-ishah ha-kushit ("the Cushite woman," H0802G + H3569G), further defined by the relative clause asher lakach ("whom he had taken," H0834A + H3947I, qal perfect). The verse then repeats the same information in a second clause introduced by ki ("for," H3588A): ishah kushit lakach ("a woman, a Cushite, he had taken"), again using the qal perfect lakach (H3947I). This double statement — first as a relative clause modifying "the woman," then as an independent causal clause — creates a rhetorical doubling in the Hebrew that some translations (e.g., BSB, SBLIBRE) preserve as two parallel clauses, while others compress or truncate it.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate text provided (propter uxorem ejus Æthiopissam) presents only a single reference to "his Ethiopian wife" and does not visibly repeat the ki-clause found in the Hebrew and reflected in the LXX (ὅτι γυναῖκα Αἰθιόπισσαν ἔλαβεν, "because he had taken an Ethiopian wife"). The LXX renders kushit (H3569G, "Cushite") as Αἰθιόπισσαν ("Ethiopian"), a geographic/ethnic equivalence rather than a literal transliteration. The Hebrew preposition be ("in," H9003) is rendered as κατὰ ("against") in the LXX and contra ("against") in the Vulgate, both making explicit the hostile sense that the Hebrew preposition itself does not lexically state.