Bold Miriam 03

Concluding remarks
2. Miriam the prophetess – A bold and enthusiastic worshipper of God
We don't hear anything about Miriam then until Exodus 15 and the amazing crossing of the Red Sea. Long, long years pass. After 40 years Moses thinks his people will realise that God is going to use him to rescue them, but they did not and so another 40 years go by while God further prepares his servant away from Egypt in Midian. Then at last after 80 years Moses returns and it all begins to kick off. Miriam must have been around 90 by this time. Granted that people often lived longer and were often stronger and more healthy at such an age it is still along time to wait for a saviour. Did Miriam think salvation was never going to come? If she did we are not told that. What we are told though is how she greatly rejoiced following their passing through the Red Sea and the overthrown of their Egyptian enemies.
In Exodus 15:19-21 we read When Pharaoh's horses, chariots and horsemen went into the sea, the LORD brought the waters of the sea back over them, but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. Miriam sang to them:
Sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea.
Oh that bold woman was very bold that day – bold and enthusiastic in her worship of God. How thankful she was for such a great salvation and for such a great judgement. Again, she is an example for us. Delivered from slavery and drudgery after all these years, how thankful she was, how full of rejoicing.

What about you? Has God saved you from the slavery of sin? Is Jesus your Saviour? Then are you rejoicing? Are you glad about the victory he has won over the devil and the deliverance he has made for you? Here is reason to sing and to shout!

3. Miriam the rebel – A too bold and defiant critic
The next time we hear of Miriam they are still in the desert. It is found in Numbers 12 and sadly this time we don't see her in a very good light. We are told in Numbers 12:1 that Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. We do not know why they objected. This was Moses' second wife. Presumably his first wife Zipporah had died. Perhaps they felt he was too old to remarry. It may have been the fact that this woman was dark skinned. We simply don't know – but they weren't happy and instead of keeping it to themselves or discussing it with Moses in a submissive way they began to rebel. Has the LORD spoken only through Moses? they asked (2) Hasn't he also spoken through us? There was perhaps some truth in this but the tone was all wrong. This bold woman was being too bold by far. We read And the LORD heard this. It is added in 3 (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.) Boldness has its place nut meekness is important too.
So what happens is that God calls the three of them out to the Tent of Meeting, where the LORD came down to them in a pillar of cloud. First he stood at the entrance to the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. He then spoke to them and said (6-9) When a prophet of the LORD is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; (it was like reading the Bible) he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? They had failed to see just how very special Moses was indeed. They had known blessings and had been used by God but Moses was in a different league. And so (9-12) The anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left them. When the cloud lifted from above the Tent, there stood Miriam - leprous, like snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy; and he said to Moses, Please, my lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother's womb with its flesh half eaten away.
Why it was Miriam who was struck and not Aaron it does not say. Neither of them was happy about it. It was only when Moses cried out to the LORD on her behalf that relief was found. Even then she had to remain outside the camp for a whole seven days marking her uncleanness. 15 So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on till she was brought back. They then moved on with her – no doubt very chastened. She knew she had made a mistake. It was not one that she repeated. She had learned her lesson.
One of the dangers for the bold, especially perhaps bold women, is that they can overstep the mark. Sometimes we can become impatient and frustrated and we speak out in unhelpful ways. We must be very careful when we attack a servant of God or say anything against the Bible. We probably won't be struck with leprosy but God does judge rebels and we ought not to forget it. Boldness yes – but humility too. That's the combination.

4. Miriam the leader – A bold and saved believer
The last reference to Miriam in the books of Moses is in Numbers 20:1. It says In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried. She dies shortly before the death of her brother Aaron and eventually her brother Moses too. There is also a final reference in Micah 6:4 I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.
The Bible is quite patriarchal as you know but there is also what we might call a subversive subtext throughout and here it surfaces again with the reference to Miriam as well as to Moses and Aaron as a leader. She is not mentioned in Hebrews 11 but she was clearly a believer and died in faith – a woman used by God and one we should remember with thankfulness.

Bold Miriam 02

1. Miriam the babysitter - A bold and wise young woman
Miriam is first mentioned in Exodus 2. We're told how Moses' mother gave birth to a boy and saw he was a fine child - he was healthy. Because of the situation at the time and not wanting him to be killed she hid him for 3 months. As time went by it got more and more difficult to conceal his presence so (3) when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket (a miniature Noah's ark) for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. In 4 we're told that His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Her name is not given because the focus is on the baby – on Moses. Aaron would be three by this time (things had been easier when he was born). We don't know how old Miriam was. One assumes she was around 10 or 12.
Anyway what happens is that Pharaoh's daughter comes down to the Nile to bathe and she sees the basket among the reeds and sends her slave girl on the bank to get it. The princess opens the basket and sees the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. This is one of the Hebrew babies, she said. We don't know if she could tell by his looks, the fact he was circumcised or if she simply worked it out from the circumstances.
Anyway, at this point Miriam speaks up and on this sentence (as at other points in history too - see Esther) turns the whole of history. In a bold stroke of genius she says to Pharaoh's daughter (7) Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you? The princess immediately agrees and Miriam gets Jochebed, Moses' mother. Then comes wonderful verse 9 Pharaoh's daughter says Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you. So the woman took the baby and nursed him. It had been a dangerous moment but now in one stroke not only is Moses safe but his mother is being paid to look after him! And all thanks to Miriam. Later, and this would be important too, (10) When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, I drew him out of the water.
We've spoken to you about how God's people were slaves and how they were redeemed. It all happened under Moses and the truth is that if it were not for Miriam there may never have been a Moses. If she'd panicked and either run away or confessed who the baby's mother was, things would have been very different. No doubt Moses would have survived but he would not have been brought up by his mother in those crucial early years. He might never have even known he was a Hebrew and so would not have become the saviour of his people that he did become. Obviously God gave her the words to say but Miriam was a bold and wise girl who'd learned well from her mother. Her secret, perhaps, was that she was seeking not only to help her little brother but she was looking too for a saviour. No doubt her mother had said to her about this child -may be he will be the one to save us from slavery, to lead us out of Egypt. If she did she was right.

Wouldn't you like to have been smart like that as a girl? Perhaps you were! How can children be taught to be like that? They need to be taught not to be afraid to speak up, no doubt, but they must learn not to blab out everything. What care needs to be taken when speaking especially to strangers. We inevitably think of that later Miriam – Mary the mother of Jesus. She too was the means of bringing a Saviour into the world and keeping him safe from harm. What an impact even quite young girls can have under God.

Bold Miriam 01

Miriam or Maryam was the name of the mother of the Lord Jesus and of several other women in the New Testament. We usually refer to these women in English as Mary. We keep the name Miriam for the Old Testament woman who is best known for being Moses and Aaron's older sister, the daughter of Amram and Jochebed from the tribe of Levi.
She is not mentioned in the New Testament and there are not many references to her in the Old. There we glimpse her once as a young girl, twice in later life and then at her death in the desert. That in itself is reminds us how quickly life passes and how insignificant even the lives of significant people are.
She is the subject of this adn we are using the title “Miriam - a bold woman”. I think that's as good a title as any. I want to say four things to under that heading. Before I do so I want to just set the scene by reminding you of the times in which Miriam lived. We can think of three phases.

1. Slavery. Miriam was born in Egypt. She grew up and indeed for a very large part of her life was a slave there. When the Israelites had gone down to Egypt hundreds of years before in Joseph's time, they had been welcome guests and they really prospered. Over the years things changed and a new Pharaoh came to power. Slowly but surely Israel's fortunes sank to the level first of second class citizens, then of slaves. It even became government policy to try and destroy them. It was eventually decreed that any new born Hebrew male was to be put to death. We do not know if it was ever done but that was certainly the policy. See the end of Exodus 1.

2. Redemption. The great hope of God's people was that God would rescue them as he had promised so long ago. At first this didn't seem to be happening but eventually after a long time God raised up Miriam's own brother Moses to lead the people out of Egypt. This exodus didn't come without a titanic struggle, however, and even when they finally escaped Egypt, Pharaoh and his army came running after them. Already humiliated in the 10 plagues culminating in the death of the first born throughout Egypt, Pharaoh and his army suffered one final and ignominious defeat in the cold waters of the Red Sea, the very waters that God had just safely brought his people through.

3. Glory. On the other side of the Red Sea God brought his people safely to Sinai, where he gave the people his holy law. The time in the desert was not easy and neither Moses, Aaron nor Miriam herself lived to see the Promised Land itself. However, she and they knew that was where the people of God were bound and where one day the Messiah would be born. Miriam did not receive the things promised. Like others she only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. Like all the Old Testament saints, she was woman of faith, a bold faith that we ought to know about and that we would be wise to copy.

So four snapshots of a bold woman – Miriam.

(To be continued)