Moses had led Israel out of Egypt with his brother Aaron, the high priest, and his sister Miriam, a prophetess. Now the two of them speak against him: “Hath the LORD indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us?” Moses says nothing. Meek does not mean weak, and it is not a soft temperament. It describes what Moses did with his own cause that day: he left it alone, and God took it up.
A note in parentheses
Right there, where Moses might have answered them, the narrator stops the story.
(Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)
Numbers 12:3 (KJV)
The King James prints it in parentheses, a note dropped into his silence. In its whole Old Testament this is the only time the word meek is said of one person. Everywhere else it is “the meek,” a whole group.
Then, in Numbers 12:4, “the LORD spake suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam.” God calls the two of them out and answers for his servant: “wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?”
Angry, and fierce for others
Nobody who knows the rest of his story would call Moses mild. In Exodus 32:19, “Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them.” Worn out by the people, he told God in Numbers 11:15, “kill me, I pray thee, out of hand,” which means kill me at once. In Numbers 20 he called the people rebels and struck the rock God had told him to speak to. And when the people sinned with the calf he pleaded for them in Exodus 32:32, “and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book.”
So the word is not describing his temper. In Numbers 12 it describes where his own cause went. When his standing was attacked by his own family, he did not defend it. Elsewhere he was loud about God’s honor; here he was silent about his own. That silence left his case with the God who would answer for him, and silence is not the virtue in itself: Job complained to God for chapters and was still called his servant. That makes meek a direction you can walk in more than a personality you either have or lack.
Where Jesus found the promise
“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:5, in the King James Version. He is quoting Psalm 37, the same psalm that tells you to delight thyself also in the LORD. At 37:5-6 the psalm says how the meek live: “Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.” Fret not, it says three times.
The King James has “inherit the earth” three times in this psalm and “inherit the land” twice. Its promise was ground to live on: “The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever,” at 37:29. It comes as God’s gift, to people who stopped grabbing for it.
What handing it over looks like
Meek does not mean saying nothing about what happened. In Korah’s revolt, when Dathan and Abiram accused him of making himself a prince over them, Moses was very wroth, and in Numbers 16:15 he took it to God, not to them: “Respect not thou their offering: I have not taken one ass from them, neither have I hurt one of them.” And when an officer struck Jesus before the high priest, Jesus answered in John 18:23, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?”
So you can state the facts to the right person. If someone takes credit for your work, you can say what you did. What meekness gives up is the fight to win your own standing by your own hand: the campaign, the getting even, the need to come out on top. Jesus himself, Peter says in 1 Peter 2:23, “when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.”
What Moses shows in Numbers 12 is about your own standing, not your safety.
Jesus says in Matthew 11:29, “I am meek and lowly in heart,” and the meek of Psalm 37 are promised ground to live on. As for Moses, God answered for him, Miriam was struck with leprosy, Aaron begged him to help, and the only words Moses speaks in the whole chapter, at Numbers 12:13, were for the sister who had come at him:
“Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.”