God Doesn’t Tolerate Prejudice

Moses married a woman from Cush — which is Black Africa, the region around modern Sudan and Ethiopia. She was a Cushite, a Black African woman. The Bible names it plainly, and that detail matters more than you might think.

Because Moses’ sister Miriam had a problem with it. Numbers 12 says she and Aaron “began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife.” Read that slowly: their complaint started with the fact that his wife was Cushite. This is colorism. This is prejudice. And it’s sitting right there in the Bible, named for what it is.

Notice their move, too. They didn’t lead with “we don’t like her skin” — they dressed it up as something spiritual: “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Hasn’t he also spoken through us?” That’s how prejudice usually talks. It hides behind a respectable reason while the real issue is contempt for someone who looks different.

Here’s what should stop you cold: God Himself overhears it, and He immediately takes the side of the woman being disrespected. He calls all three of them out, defends Moses and his marriage, and rebukes the two who looked down on a Black African woman. God doesn’t shrug at prejudice. He confronts it.

Miriam is struck with a skin disease and is set outside the camp for a week — and there’s something piercing about that. The one who held someone’s appearance in contempt suddenly knows what it is to be excluded over how she looks. Moses, the one she insulted behind his back, is the one who cries out to God to heal her.

So when someone tells you the Bible doesn’t deal with racism, you can show them this chapter. God put a Black African woman at the center of His leader’s family, and when she was looked down on, He defended her Himself. Guard your words. Refuse the gossip and the “jokes.” Treat every person, of every background and every shade, with the honor God already gives them.