Were Miriam and Aaron racist?

[Teritos]

Numbers 12:1
Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the black woman whom he had married for he had married a black woman.

The Hebrew word in this verse for "black" is "Kushi", which refers to black skin color, see Jeremiah 13:23: "Can the Cu****e change his skin or the leopard his spots?" The Cu****es lived in what is now Sudan.

God punished Miriam for this behavior by making her white as snow.(Numbers 12:10)


Were Miriam and Aaron racist at that moment or not?

 

[Teritos]

Why is the word "C*sh*tes" censored?

 

[SalixIncendium]

Why is the word "C*sh*tes" censored?

The language filter picks up the profanity that is in the word. Sorry. Not much can be done about it aside from removing the profanity from the language filter, which isn't practical.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Numbers 12:1
Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the black woman whom he had married for he had married a black woman.

The Hebrew word in this verse for "black" is "Kushi", which refers to black skin color, see Jeremiah 13:23: "Can the Cu****e change his skin or the leopard his spots?" The Cu****es lived in what is now Sudan.

God punished Miriam for this behavior by making her white as snow.(Numbers 12:10)


Were Miriam and Aaron racist at that moment or not?

She is a foreigner, and Moses siblings use it as an opportunity to speak against Moses. The passage does not go into detail about their motives, but the punishment of leprosy implies that they are attempting to divide the assembly over the issue not merely to object to the woman. Otherwise why the punishment? To me it would be arbitrary and arrogant to punish them merely for objecting to who their brother chooses.

I think there is no reason to presume skin color is significant, and there is reason to believe otherwise. In the book Ezra some Israelites have married foreign wives and are forced to divorce and send them away. Apparently there is concern the children haven't been reared properly, but this issue is not raised in Moses case in Numbers. Instead it says that Aaron and Miriam use the issue against Moses.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Were Miriam and Aaron racist at that moment or not?

From The Hebrew Bible commentary on Numbers 12:1 ...

the Cu****e wife. Is this Zipporah? Only is one locates Cush in Midian, which some interpreters find grounds for doing. Otherwise, Cush might be a designation for Nubia or Ethiopia, which would make this wife black. If she is a second wife, the objection might be be simply to the fact that Moses had compromised Zipporah's privileged status by this second marriage (Baruch Levine's view), or it could reflect racial disapproval. If Miriam and Aaron are referring to Zipporah, the objection would simply be to her coming from a different ethnic-national group. In either case, they meant to suggest that Moses's marital behavior is unworthy of a prophetic leader and hence evidence that he does not deserve to be the exclusive vessel of prophecy.​

A more fulsome discussion is offered in Moses and the Ku****e Woman: Classic Interpretations and Philo's Allegory.

Interestingly enough, Ibn Ezra notes: "Onkelos renders Cu****e, beautiful. ... According to Onkelos, Cu****e is an honorific term."

As for the question, I don't know but I doubt it.

 

[RabbiO]

The Hebrew word in this verse for "black" is "Kushi", which refers to black skin color.

The question here is not whether or not a Cush(i)te was a black person, but rather how you came to the conclusion that the Hebrew word for black is Kushi.

 

[Bree]

it was the translator of the text who chose to use the word 'black' Moses used the tribe name she was from 'Cush.ite'

So maybe it was the bible translator who was racist. Which translation did you get that verse from?

 

[Harel13]

Why is the word "C*sh*tes" censored?

We had a thread on this awhile ago. One suggestion was to transliterate the Hebrew into Cusheet. As you can see from other posters, there are also other options.

 

[Teritos]

The question here is not whether or not a Cush(i)te was a black person, but rather how you came to the conclusion that the Hebrew word for black is Kushi.

Cush = "black"
Source: Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and Engish Lexicon

 

[Harel13]

Were Miriam and Aaron racist at that moment or not?

Is there any evidence that the ancients were racists?

 

[Teritos]

it was the translator of the text who chose to use the word 'black' Moses used the tribe name she was from 'Cush.ite'

So maybe it was the bible translator who was racist. Which translation did you get that verse from?

According to recognized dictionaries, this word means "black". If you know more, publish your own Hebrew dictionary. I would be interested to know what your title is, did you study Hebrew?

 

[Teritos]

it was the translator of the text who chose to use the word 'black' Moses used the tribe name she was from 'Cush.ite'

So maybe it was the bible translator who was racist. Which translation did you get that verse from?

By the way, almost every English Bible uses the word "Ethiopian" for "Cu****e". The word Ethiopian means "black" according to the well-known Thayer dictionary.

 

[Teritos]

Is there any evidence that the ancients were racists?

Racism has been around for a long time. I don't have to prove it, it's a human characteristic, just like envy. This is nothing new.

 

[Harel13]

Racism has been around for a long time. I don't have to prove it, it's a human characteristic, just like envy. This is nothing new.

So no evidence.

 

[Rival]

Racism has been around for a long time. I don't have to prove it, it's a human characteristic, just like envy. This is nothing new.

Tribalism we have evidence for; racism such as one finds from the 16th c. onwards, not so much. Places like Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome were home to many skin tones; here are some paintings from Kemet,

Here's one from Early Mediaeval Europe, 990 CE, representing the Germanics, Latins, Celts and Slavs,

 

[RabbiO]

Cush = "black"
Source: Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and Engish Lexicon

Not in any edition of BDB with which I am familiar. Could you direct me to which edition you are citing to - print or online - so I can check it out?

 

[Teritos]

Not in any edition of BDB with which I am familiar. Could you direct me to which edition you are citing to - print or online - so I can check it out?

Strongs's #3568: Kuwsh - Greek/Hebrew Definitions - Bible Tools

 

[RabbiO]

@Teritos -

The BDB on the website is, first off, a dumbed down version of the real thing. Secondly, given that nowhere else does it appear that a BDB edition equates Cush/Cush(i)te having a definition of black, I would say that whoever put that there was adding his or her own idiosyncratic definition.

 

[Teritos]

@Teritos -

The BDB on the website is, first off, a dumbed down version of the real thing. Secondly, given that nowhere else does it appear that a BDB edition equates Cush/Cush(i)te having a definition of black, I would say that whoever put that there was adding his or her own idiosyncratic definition.

Also at biblestudytools, the Brown Driver Briggs dictionary says "Cush" means "black".
Kuwsh Meaning in Bible - Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon - New American Standard (biblestudytools.com)

I have a question for you, if Cush doesn't mean black, what does it mean? In the Biblical Hebrew language, there is no name or word without meaning.

 

[Bree]

According to recognized dictionaries, this word means "black". If you know more, publish your own Hebrew dictionary. I would be interested to know what your title is, did you study Hebrew?

i use the NWT bible because it is translated from the original languages and it uses the word 'cush.ite' in this verse. Many of the bibles in use are based on existing translations rather then original languages so its often biasedly translated. The bible writer though uses the word cush.ite because its identifying, not the colour of the persons skin, but the place or ancestor they are from.

Cush.ites were ethiopians and their forefather Cush, was one of the grandsons of Noah from his son Ham.
Gen 10: The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizʹra·im,+ Put,+ and Caʹnaan.+
7 The sons of Cush were Seʹba,+ Havʹi·lah, Sabʹtah, Raʹa·mah,+ and Sabʹte·ca.

These families spread out over the earth after the flood and Cush and his family settled in northern africa and were later known as Ethiopians. And we can see that the term Cush is associated with a place as is seen from Isaiah 11:11 In that day Jehovah will again offer his hand, a second time, to reclaim the remnant of his people who are left from As·syrʹi·a,+ from Egypt,+ from Pathʹros,+ from Cush,+ from Eʹlam,+ from Shiʹnar,* from Haʹmath, and from the islands of the sea
And when the Septuagint translation was made, the translators used the Greek “Ethiopia” to render the Hebrew word “Cush”

So yes Moses wife was dark skinned as she was of african ancestry, but it certainly was not Moses or Miriam who called her 'black'
That term would not even have been though of back then. Skin colour was not an issue for ancient people as it is for the modern man.