For forty
years, Moses lived in Pharaoh’s palace while his siblings, Miriam and Aaron, lived
in the home of their parents, who were Hebrew slaves.
One day Moses
saw an Egyptian cruelly mistreating a Hebrew, so he killed the man to defend
the slave. When word got around, Moses fled the country and spent the next
forty years among the Cushites, tending livestock and marrying the daughter of
the local priest for whom he worked.
Moses’ third
round of forty years began with the Exodus as God called him to lead the Hebrew
people out of Egypt. Miriam and Aaron came too, but they did not like
his being married to a Cushite (Ethiopian) woman. Maybe they were intolerant of
people with darker skin. Maybe they got jealous of their younger brother’s position
of authority. Regardless, they spoke against Moses – the man whom God Himself
had appointed, which was like speaking against the wisdom of God.
Numbers
12:8 records God’s response from a cloud: “Why
weren’t you afraid to speak against my servant?” As the cloud lifted, they
saw Miriam’s skin turning stark white with leprosy.
Immediately,
Moses prayed:
Numbers 12:13 – King James Version
And Moses cried
unto the Lord,
saying,
Heal her now,
O God, I beseech thee.
From the Book of KJV Prayers - actual prayers from the King
James Version of the Bible (KJV) collected by Mary Harwell Sayler, ©2019
Numbers 12:13 – paraphrased
I’m crying
out to You
as loud as
Moses:
Lord God, please
heal my family!
From the Book of Bible Prayers – actual prayers of the Bible collected
from a variety of translations and paraphrased into everyday English by MaryHarwell Sayler, ©2019
In response
to Moses’ prayer, God said, “Let her be
shut outside the camp for seven days, and afterwards, let her be received again,”
(Numbers 12:14.)
May the people
quarantined in this country and around the world turn to God, pray, and be
healed.
MaryHarwell Sayler, ©2020
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