ספר במדבר

Numbers 12,1-9, “Miriam and Aaron spoke (critically) ‎of Moses; etc.”, “when a prophet of Hashem arises amongst ‎you, I make Myself known to him in a blurred vision, I speak ‎to him in a dream;” I do not speak to Moses in riddles but in ‎a vision as clear as a mirror.” The wording is unclear, ‎G’d could have been expected to say: ‎אם יהיה נביאכם ה' בחידות אליו ‏אתודע‎, i.e. that the difference between their degree of prophecy ‎and that of Moses was that G’d makes Himself crystal clear when ‎speaking to Moses.In order to understand the wording of the ‎Torah here it is pertinent to review a statement in the ‎‎Mechilta on Parshat Bo, 1,1 where we have been ‎taught that every time when the Torah commences a paragraph ‎with the words: ‎וידבר ה' אל משה ואל אהרן‎ “Hashem spoke to ‎Moses and Aaron,” G’d addressed only Moses directly, whereas ‎Moses immediately made Aaron privy to what G’d had told him. It ‎is most likely that also when other prophets received prophetic ‎insights they received those only after Moses had acted as G’d’s ‎intermediary. In order to understand this we must substitute the ‎words: “Moses’ Torah,” for “Moses,” as the prophets we referred ‎to lived after Moses had died. This has all been alluded to in the ‎Talmud Yevamot 49 where the Talmud describes Moses as ‎having seen G’d’s instructions through a clearly transparent ‎window pane, i.e. the source from which all prophets’ visions had ‎emanated, whereas the other prophets received their visions ‎through a blurred transparency. i.e. after having been filtered by ‎Moses.‎We find a similar allusion in our verse above, where G’d tells ‎Miriam and Aaron that if indeed they are prophets this was only ‎due to their visions having first been “filtered” through Moses.‎