Numbers 12:2-3

12:2 They ¹  said, “Has the Lord only ²  spoken through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us?” ³  And the Lord heard it. ⁴ 

12:3 (Now the man Moses was very humble, ⁵  more so than any man on the face of the earth.)

¹ tn Now the text changes to use a plural form of the verb. The indication is that Miriam criticized the marriage, and then the two of them raised questions about his sole leadership of the nation.

² tn The use of both רַק and אַךְ (raq and ’akh) underscore the point that the issue is Moses’ uniqueness.

³ tn There is irony in the construction in the text. The expression “speak through us” also uses דִּבֵּר + בְּ(dibber + bÿ). They ask if God has not also spoken through them, after they have spoken against Moses. Shortly God will speak against them – their words are prophetic, but not as they imagined.

⁴ sn The statement is striking. Obviously the Lord knows all things. But the statement of the obvious here is meant to indicate that the Lord was about to do something about this.

⁵ tc The spelling of the word is a Kethib-Qere reading with only a slight difference between the two.