Numbers 12

There's no jealousy like sibling jealousy, a jealousy that burns with the noisome odor of a thousand flaming Barbie dolls. Just think of Thor and Loki, Mufasa and Scar, or King Claudius and King Hamlet. Although my brothers irked me from time to time when I was growing up, I never really felt a sense of rivalry with them--although our interests overlap in some areas, we're all talented in different ways (said Mr. Hoity-Toity). I will never be as good an athlete or as vocally witty as they, but that didn't stop them from annoying me when we were kids.

But in this chapter, we have Miriam and Aaron talking smack about Moses's wife to vent their insecurities about being less spiritually gifted than their brother. Like some grade school principal, God says, "Come out to the tent of meeting, all three of you" (verse 4) and proceeds to remonstrate with them via a nifty little poem. Imagine if your parent or teacher or principal sat you down for a severe lecture, only to burst out in song and exit the room in a huff. To top it off, after you stare at the door in bewilderment, you look down and find out that you're now a leper.

In all honesty, God did rub it in a bit with His poem, possibly exacerbating Aaron and Miriam's deep-rooted sense of inferiority. Or I could just be spewing psychobabble, but the poem is still pretty much a smack down. Verse 8 says, "With [Moses] I speak face to face,  / clearly and not in riddles; / he sees the form of the LORD." Which implies that when God speaks to Aaron and Miriam, He does so enigmatically. Unlike some prophets, Moses enjoys the benefits of lucid explanations and directives from God, a quality that would make many Christians ecstatic.

But why does God speak in riddles? Why not just make His intentions clear instead of sending visions of flying creatures with eyes all over their wings? Is He trying to appeal to our imaginations or our powers of reasoning and interpretation? Anyone who's seen 2001: A Space Odyssey knows that the last 15 minutes or so are a truly psychedelic trip, a scintillating special effects extravaganza achieved without the aid of computer generated imagery. (The ending of Interstellar looks positively prosaic by comparison.) The sequence provides an especially stark contrast to the realism of the rest of the film--well, OK, the actors in monkey suits don't look all that realistic--but what makes it even more mystifying is that it isn't explained. At all. Therefore, one can interpret the trippy ending in myriad ways, which you wouldn't be able to do with the ending of, say, Black Hawk Down. However, Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote the screenplay and formulated the story with director Stanley Kubrick, released a novel of the story that explicated what was supposed to be going on at the end of the film. So why doesn't God release a straightforward explanation of all His visions? Maybe He knows that everyone won't listen anyway, so He might as well have fun creating vivid creatures and imagery to relay His messages.