Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Habakuk 3:7

And the meaning of "And she spoke (Va't'daber)": (With the Hebrew letter beit) - And the meaning of the Hebrew phrase for “and she spoke” with the preposition “of” (the Hebrew letter beit): In a deceitful? manner such as “And the people spoke against God” (Bamidbar 11:5). It is found both as praise and in a prophet’s manner of speaking. There are those who say that Moshes ruled over Ethiopia (the land of Kush) and married the Kushite (woman). Targum Onkelos says that she was beautiful and it was the language of respect just as the Ishmaelites call tar ‘white stuff (ha-lavan)’, so we call the blind person, ‘full of light’ (a euphemism). And thus it isn’t clear whether it is called a word that is meant to be praise that they turned into criticism. Meanwhile, there are those who say that the son of Kish (קיש) the Benjamite was Saul and thus from here on out, [I will translate the word] as the people of Kush (the Kushites). This is already its plain meaning. Thus the correct interpretation in my eyes is that this Kushite was Tzipporah for she was a Midianite and Midianites are Ishmaelites. (These peoples) live in tents (See Habbakuk 3:7: "The tent curtains of the land of Midian were trembling. The earth quaked.) and because of the heat of the sun, they have no whiteness among them. Tzipporah was dark and looked like a Kushite.

על אודות האשה הכושית, “on account of the woman of Cushite origin.” The woman in question was Tzipporah who was a Midianite. Midianites were descendants of the Ishmaelites, nomads, dwelling in tents. We base this on Chabakuk 3,7: “the tents of Cushan, shaken at the pavilions of the land of Midian.” There were no white-skinned people among the Midianites due to the sun being very hot in that country. The reason Miriam spoke out was because Moses had married a “black-skinned woman.” Miriam thought that the reason Moses had separated from Tzipporah was because he did not consider her attractive looking on account of the colour of her skin. If Onkelos translates the word כושית as שפירתא, “beautiful,” this is not to be taken at face value but is meant to save her embarrassment much as we call a blind person “as possessed of a good eyesight,” in order to save that person embarrassment. When the Torah writes immediately that Moses was very humble, this is the answer to Miriam’s suspicion, i.e. that Moses did not even know whether Tzipporah was beautiful or not. It is similar to Avraham who did not become aware of Sarah’s being physically attractive until they were at the boundary of Egypt (Genesis 12,11) [when he had been married to her for decades already. Ed.]

Kush It would be difficult to associate this Kush with the well-known Kush dwelling to the south of Egypt, or with the Kushites that ruled over south Mesopotamia for a lengthy period of time during the second half of the second century BCE. It is more probable that the reference is to western Semitic tribes described as Kwshhw in the second collection of Egyptian execration texts which date back to the second half of the nineteenth century BCE. It appears that these tribes dwelled in the south of the land of Israel or of Jordan and were eventually absorbed by Midian (compare, a Kushite woman, in Numbers 12:1; and the mention of Kushan parallel to Midian in Habakkuk 3:7).