Mary, too, and Aaron had complaints to make against Moses; the desert wife he had married was the cause of it.✻

Has the Lord, they asked, sent his word by Moses and no other? Has he not spoken to us too? Such were the complaints the Lord must needs listen to.

As for Moses, whom they attacked, never was a man more patient on the whole face of the earth.

But the Lord at once commanded him, and Aaron, and Mary to come out by themselves to the tabernacle; and when they reached it,

he himself came down, hidden in cloud, summoning Aaron and Mary to him. So they went apart;

and this was his word to them, which he bade them mark well: Prophets there may be among your race; to one I appear in a vision, to another I reveal my thoughts in a dream.

Moses is not my servant on such terms as these; I entrust him with the management of all my household,

speak with him face to face, and when he has sight of the Lord, it is not by means of parable and image. How is it that you were not afraid to slight Moses, my own servant?

Then, in anger, he left them;

the cloud, too, no longer appeared over the tabernacle; and all at once Mary’s skin shewed white as snow with leprosy. And Aaron, looking upon her and seeing her covered with leprous sores,

cried out to Moses, My lord, I entreat thee, do not hold us to account for this mad rebellion of ours.

Must she, then, be no better than a dead woman, cast off like an untimely birth? See, how her flesh is already half devoured with leprosy!

When Moses cried to the Lord, beseeching him to restore her,

the Lord answered, Nay, if her father had spat in her face, must she not have spent seven days hiding her blushes? Let her be shut out from the camp for seven days, and then brought back.

So for seven days Mary was shut out from the camp, and there was no marching on for the people until Mary returned to them.