Numbers 12:12

12 Please don't let her be like a stillborn baby, with its body half eaten away when it comes out of its mother's womb!"

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 But when the cloud was removed from above the tent, Miryam had tzara'at, as white as snow. Aharon looked at Miryam, and she was as white as snow.

11 Aharon said to Moshe, "Oh, my lord, please don't punish us for this sin we committed so foolishly.

12 Please don't let her be like a stillborn baby, with its body half eaten away when it comes out of its mother's womb!"

13 Moshe cried to ADONAI, "Oh God, I beg you, please, heal her!"

14 ADONAI answered Moshe, "If her father had merely spit in her face, wouldn't she hide herself in shame for seven days? So let her be shut out of the camp for seven days; after that, she can be brought back in."