It has been a great summer learning about the Minor Prophets and the women of the Hebrew Scriptures and I am amazed each week how wonderful our tent of trees is decorated by the liturgical arts group and how they are able to bring to life these people from ancient Israel. Counting this morning, we only have three more weeks of the series left and during that time we will have the opportunity to become familiar with two more women who were considered prophets of their time and the Minor Prophet Malachi whose book and prophesies end our Old Testament with the proclamation of a great day that is coming.
This morning’s hero is a women who might not be as universally familiar as Eve, but who most people who grew up in church Sunday Schools know of through familiar stories. She is in our lectionary cycle twice, although as the supporting figure of the stories and perhaps not as the figure the preacher would dwell on within the sermon. And the complexity of her personality is not scene in those texts, but in a chapter from the Book of Numbers where she questions authority and God.
We first hear of Miriam in the second chapter of Exodus when she is still a girl. Miriam, is the older sister to Moses and is hiding somewhere at a distance on the shore of the river while her brother floats in a basket waiting for Pharaoh’s daughter to find and take pity on him and keep him. The plan, was hatched by her mother as a way to save the babies life, but the delicate choreography of the plan was up to Miriam to play out. Listen now to Exodus 2:1-10, and hear it through the eyes of Miriam, a young Jewish girl.
Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. 4 His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10 When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses,[a] “because,” she said, “I drew him out[b] of the water.”
The sons of Israel settled in Egypt and were successful and multiplied to the point that they were not the minority in Egypt but were more numerous and powerful than the Egyptians. So a new king came to the throne who did not know Joseph and realized that he needed to gain control of the situation. Even when their freedom was taken away, and they had to work in forced labor, they continued to grow in number. He then told the midwives to kill the Hebrew boy babies but the women had the children without midwives and hid their male babies…. Then the king made a decree that all boy Hebrew babies would be thrown into the Nile…..
Moses was born during the reign of this king and although his mother hid him after his birth, when we was three months old, she knew she had to come up with an alternative plan. And the plan she devised was ingenious… however, it all depended on the acting ability of her daughter Miriam.
I try and put myself into the place of the mother, who is so desperate to have her son live that she risks his and her daughter’s lives. Could either of my children at a young age have done what Miriam did? She had to be out of sight while still watching over her baby brother while he floated in the river in a basket close to where Pharaoh’s daughter came to bathe. She had to be smart, quick thinking, and courageous with absolute timing about when she would appear and in what she said and how she said it for Pharaoh’s daughter not to be suspicious and figure out she was being played. ‘Oh, let me find you a wet nurse for the baby’, she said so innocently, as she ran and got her mother. She was a brilliant actor and the heroine of the story. She absolutely saved the day.
And years pass and we hear nothing more of this brilliant woman who played such a pivotal role in saving Moses life. And as we know Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s court and eventually as an adult encounters God in a burning bush. And we know the wonderful story of the passover and delivery from Egypt. Briefly…..God calls Moses to lead God’s people. And at first Moses says he is not qualified. Moses has a little brother named Aaron who might be a better candidate to be God’s spokesperson, but God gives Moses the task. It takes a while … the Bible says 80 years…but as a spokesperson for the Hebrew people, Moses is able to work out a deal where Pharaoh frees the Hebrew people from slavery and they are allowed to leave Egypt. They flee, and almost immediately Pharaoh changes his mind and goes after the Hebrew people. The tension of the story reaches a fevered pitch as Moses’ group gets to the water and are trapped as Pharaoh’s army is approaching. Then Moses (or rather God working through Moses) parts the water and the Hebrews cross safely and once they cross….. the water returns and, well, Pharaoh’s army is gone.
The Bible then says Moses leads the Israelites in a song of victory. It says, ‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.’
Immediately at the conclusion of the song in the Bible, it is written in Exodus 15: 20-21 (read scripture passage)Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. 21 And Miriam sang to them:“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”
Miriam appears again!
This time she is described as a prophet, the sister of Aaron, and she leads the women as she repeats the song. And, we don’t really know how this song went. One commentator wrote; ‘Was Moses like Gladys Knight and Miriam and the other women the Pips?’ Did they provide the back up for Moses as he sang? Probably not…. Women in ancient Israel often served as singers and drummers, so the song was most likely first sang by the women. But to be a song leader, as Miriam is described here is to give her great power and prestige. Perhaps the editor of Exodus put Moses as the author of the song because he was the leader of the Israelites. Could Miriam’s role been minimized by someone who was uncomfortable with her influence and power as a woman? She was already considered a prophet? We will never know. All we know is that she was called prophet and was a leader of song. She was a cantor to her people.
And Miriam again disappears. The Hebrews wander in the wilderness towards their promised land. And then in the Book of Numbers she pops up again in a story that is not familiar to many. It seems that Moses might have had another wife besides Zipporah and the second one is a Cushite, a foreigner, which is forbidden in Jewish law.
So….Aaron and Miriam ask a legitimate question. Should the leader be breaking the laws? They question Moses absolute authority and control and wonder if God only speaks to Moses?
(Read Numbers 12:1-9)While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman); 2 and they said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. 3 Now the man Moses was very humble,[a] more so than anyone else on the face of the earth. 4 Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them came out. 5 Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forward. 6 And he said, “Hear my words:When there are prophets among you, I the Lord make myself known to them in visions; I speak to them in dreams. 7 Not so with my servant Moses; he is entrusted with all my house.8 With him I speak face to face— clearly, not in riddles;and he beholds the form of the Lord.Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” 9 And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed.
God was really pissed. God leaves and then inflicts only Miriam with a punishment. She becomes leprous. And Aaron cries to Moses that she should not be punished for the sins that the two of them committed. I love the fact Miriam’s younger brother admits here that he is just as guilty as his sister and it is unfair that only she is punished. And Moses then pleads with God. And she is healed, but still is given a week long ‘time out’ as her punishment before the people could set out on their journey again.
This is the story of Miriam I love. This is the story to which we all can relate. We know she was a strong woman, a prophet in her day, and a leader of her people. So she does what many of the people we respect throughout history are guilty of doing… she questions authority. And, unfortunately, in doing so, she is knocked down a peg and punished. Women of her day had no rights. Women of her day were to be silent and bear children. Women of her day were not supposed to question the man is charge and certainly not God. Women of her day were not supposed to be uppity and put themselves on a plane equal to men. And she did. She went over the line of what was acceptable for women of her day.
She reminds me of the saints that went before us and questioned the status quo. Where would we be without them? Where would we be without all the men and women who risked their lives and pointed to all the emperors who had no clothes? Where would we be without the revolutionaries and prophets who have fought for social injustice and human rights? Just this week in the news, we hear of women speaking truth to power in pursuit of finding what is right. And in the way Miriam and her brothers did just that, they were all heroes. Miriam went against her culture in, as a woman, she dared to question authority. And Aaron pointed out to Moses that the punishment put on Miriam after she went against the culture was unfair. And Moses, in return spoke to God.
Let’s celebrate this very early feminist story of an intelligent, skilled, female prophet and leader who dared to question the status quo and whose brothers backed her up as a leader and a person of worth.
Amen.
