Numbers 12:12

12 Please do not let her be like the dead, whose flesh is half consumed when coming out from the womb of its mother."

Numbers 12:12 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 12:12

Let her not be as one dead
As she was in a ceremonial sense, being to be shut up and excluded from the society of people, and as defiling by touching as a dead carcase; and, in a natural sense, her flesh, by the disease upon her, was become as dead flesh, putrid and rotten, and unless miraculously cured it would issue in her death:

of whom the flesh is half consumed, when he cometh out of his mother's
womb;
like an abortive, or one stillborn, that has been dead some time in its mother's womb; and therefore when brought forth its flesh is almost wasted away, or at least half consumed: and in such a plight and condition was Miriam already, or quickly would be, through the force of her disease.

Numbers 12:12 In-Context

10 And the cloud departed from on the tent, and behold, Miriam [was] infected with {a skin disease} white like snow; when Aaron turned toward Miriam, behold, [she was] afflicted with a skin disease.

11 So Aaron said to Moses, "Please, my lord, please do not put on us [this] sin [in] which we were foolish and [in] which we have sinned.

12 Please do not let her be like the dead, whose flesh is half consumed when coming out from the womb of its mother."

13 And Moses cried to Yahweh, saying, "God, {please heal her}!"

14 But Yahweh said to Moses, "[If] her father had surely spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be confined for seven days to an outside place of the camp, and afterward she may be gathered."