Was Miriam pleased as well? Perhaps at first. But it seems that in time she gave in to pride. She might have felt threatened, thinking that Zipporah would replace her as the most prominent woman in the nation. In any case, Miriam and Aaron engaged in negative talk. And such talk, as it often does, soon turned bitter and spiteful. At first their talk focused on Zipporah; they complained that she was not an Israelite but a Cushite.a But the talk escalated into complaining about Moses himself. Miriam and Aaron were saying: “Is it only by Moses that Jehovah has spoken? Has he not also spoken through us?”—Numbers 12:1, 2.