Exodus 2:4-9
The sister at the riverbank
She waits to see what will happen, then speaks to the daughter of the king with a plan already formed, and the baby is handed back to his own mother.
People of the Bible
Miriam
Watched the basket, led the song, and was put outside the camp for a week.
Miriam is the girl standing at a distance to see what would happen to her brother, and she is the one who walks up to the princess of Egypt and offers to fetch a Hebrew woman to nurse him. Eighty years later she is called a prophetess and leads the women out with tambourines on the far side of the sea. Then she and Aaron speak against Moses over his wife and over who else God speaks through, and she alone comes out of the tent white with disease. The whole nation waits seven days for her.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Miriam
- 01
- 02
Exodus 15:19-21
The timbrel on the far shore
The horse and rider are in the sea and she takes a tambourine and gives the women the answering line. It is the same line Moses opened with.
- 03
Numbers 12:1-15
Seven days outside the camp
She and Aaron ask whether God has spoken only through Moses. She is the one struck, Aaron begs for her, Moses prays five words, and the camp does not move until she returns.
- 04
Numbers 20:1
Kadesh, in the first month
One verse. She dies there and is buried there, and the next verse is about there being no water. The narrative does not pause.
Why it matters
Miriam is the first woman in Scripture called a prophetess, and the song she leads is one of the oldest pieces of poetry in the Bible. Micah names her alongside Moses and Aaron as one of the three God sent to bring the people up out of Egypt, which is a larger claim than the narrative itself makes. Her discipline is recorded as plainly as her office, and so is the fact that nobody moved until she was brought back.
10 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
