Numbers 12:12

12 Please don't make her like a stillborn baby coming out of its mother's womb with half its body decomposed."

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 When the Cloud moved off from the Tent, oh! Miriam had turned leprous, her skin like snow. Aaron took one look at Miriam - a leper!
11 He said to Moses, "Please, my master, please don't come down so hard on us for this foolish and thoughtless sin.
12 Please don't make her like a stillborn baby coming out of its mother's womb with half its body decomposed."
13 And Moses prayed to God: Please, God, heal her, please heal her.
14 God answered Moses, "If her father had spat in her face, wouldn't she be ostracized for seven days? Quarantine her outside the camp for seven days. Then she can be readmitted to the camp."
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.