of the Red Sea, behold Moses and Miriam once more reunited in a
grand act of national triumph! A solemn procession goes forth on
the shores of the sea, and Moses leads the psalm of thanksgiving.
"And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in
her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and
with dances. And Miriam answered them, saying, Sing ye to the Lord,
for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he
thrown into the sea." The solemn union of man and woman in this
great public act of worship and thanksgiving, which inaugurated a
free nation, is indicative of the equality given to women by the
Divine Being in all that pertains to the spiritual and immortal. "On
your sons and _your daughters_," says the prophet Joel, "I will pour
out of my spirit, and _they_ shall prophesy"; and the same passage
is quoted by St. Peter as expressive of the genius of the opening
Christian dispensation. Thus we find at the opening of the Mosaic,
as well as the Christian dispensation, this announcement of the
equality of the sexes in their spiritual nature.
Many circumstances make it probable that as Moses and Miriam
unitedly led the devotions of the people on this most solemn of
national festivals, so they continued to be united in administrative
station during that important period when the national code of laws
and religious ritual were being crystallized and consolidated. We
infer from a passage in the prophet Micah,[3] that it was not in
mere brotherly fondness that Moses would have consulted this sister,
who had been to him as a mother, but that she was understood to be
one of the divinely appointed leaders of the people, and that he was
thus justified in leaning upon her for counsel.
[3] Micah, who prophesied in the reign of Hezekiah, represents the
Divine Being as thus addressing his people: "I brought thee up
out of the land of Egypt; I sent before thee _Moses and Aaron and
Miriam_" (Micah vi. 4). This is an indorsement more direct than any
other prophetess ever received.
Moses was distinguished above all men we read of in history by a
singular absence of egoism. He was like a mother in the midst of the
great people whose sins, infirmities, and sorrows he bore upon his
heart with scarcely a consciousness of self. He had no personal
interests. He was a man so lowly and gentle of demeanor that all
his associates felt free to advise him. Thus his father-in-law,
Jethro, visiting him in the wilderness, expresses himself with
perfect freedom in regard to the excessive toil he is undergoing
in the care of the people, and suggests the appointment of elders
who should share the work of management. The eighteenth chapter
of Exodus is a beautiful picture of the character and demeanor
of Moses towards his father-in-law, and of his meek readiness to
take advice. It appears that in all the long, laborious journey
through the wilderness, Moses felt the burden and the responsibility
altogether more than the honor, and there is a despairing freedom
in the complaints he sometimes pours out to his God. Thus in one
of the periods of national discontent, when the people were all
"weeping and murmuring every man in his tent door," Moses says,
"Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and why have I not found
favor in thine eyes, that thou layest the burden of all this people
upon me? Have I conceived all this people,--have I begotten them,
that thou shouldst say, Carry them in thy bosom as a nursing father
beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto
their fathers? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because
it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I
pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favor in thy sight; and
let me not see my wretchedness." The answer to this prayer is the
appointment of seventy elders, under the care of God, to be sharers
in the responsibilities of Moses. This division of responsibility
seems to have relieved Moses, and he had not a thought of divided
honor, though it at once occurred to others with regard to him.
When the gift of prophecy descended upon some of these seventy
elders, it seems to have been imagined by some that this honor would
take from the dignity of Moses; and we are told (Num. xi. 28, 29),
"Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young
men, answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them. And Moses said
unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord's
people were prophets!" If now we consider this singular meekness
and unselfishness of Moses, we may easily see how it might be a
temptation to an ambitious, self-asserting spirit to cross beyond
the proper limit of advice and counsel into that of tyrannical
dictation.
We have seen, in the few scenes where Miriam has appeared, that she
had a peculiar, prompt self-assertion and ready positiveness which
made leadership a necessity and a pleasure to her. She was a woman
to court rather than shrink from responsibility, and to feel to the
full all the personal dignity and glory which her rank and position
gave her; and, accordingly, the sacred narrative, which conceals no
fault, informs us how gradually these unwatched traits grew up into
the very worst form of selfish ambition. After all the trials and
sorrows of Moses, all the cabals and murmurings that wearied his
soul and made him feel that life was a burden to him, we come at
last to the severest trial of his life, when the sister and brother
on whom he had leaned joined against him. The whole incident,
recorded in Numbers xii., is most painful and most singular. "And
Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses on account of an Ethiopian
woman whom he had married." This is after the visit of his Midianite
father-in-law, Jethro, who brought back to Moses his wife and two
sons, from whom he had been long separated. It is supposed by some
that this "woman of Cush" is the person referred to. If Moses had to
this time been without a wife, he had been entirely devoted to his
sister. Now another female influence comes in,--the wife of Moses
may have felt disposed to assert her position among the women of
Israel, and thus a broil may have arisen. One can easily imagine
subjects of contention, and great vivacity of dissent, and the
authority of Moses would naturally be referred to as the supreme one.
Miriam and Aaron join together to repudiate that authority, and set
themselves up as equals. "And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken
_only_ by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by _us_? And the Lord heard
it. And the Lord spake suddenly to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, Come
out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three
came out. And the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud, and stood
in the door of the tabernacle, and called forth Moses and Aaron
and Miriam, and he said: Hear now my words. If there be a prophet
among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision,
and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who
is faithful in all my house. With him I will speak mouth to mouth,
even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the
Lord shall he behold. Wherefore, then, were ye not afraid to speak
against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled,
and the Lord departed from them, and the cloud departed from the
tabernacle; and behold Miriam became leprous, white as snow; and
Aaron looked upon Miriam, and behold she was leprous. And Aaron
said to Moses, Alas, my lord, lay not this sin upon us, wherein we
have done foolishly and wherein we have sinned. Let her not be as
one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out
of his mother's womb. And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal
her now, O Lord, I beseech thee." The answer given to Moses draws
a strong simile from the customs of those desert tribes where the
father holds almost the sacred place of a god in the family. If her
own father had expressed towards her the utmost extreme of mingled
indignation and loathing at her conduct, would she not be ashamed
for a while! And the command is given that she be shut out from the
camp for seven days.
It is evidence of the high position held by this woman, that the
whole camp of Israel waited during those seven days, while she was
suffering under this terrible rebuke. The severity of the rebuke and
punishment which fell upon Miriam seems at first sight excessive.
But we shall notice, in the whole line of the traditions with
respect to the prophetic office, the most complete unselfishness is
absolutely required. To use the prophetic gift in any manner for
personal ambition or aggrandizement, was sacrilege. The prophet must
be totally, absolutely without self. His divine gifts must never be
used for any personal and individual purpose, even for the relief
of utmost want. Thus the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, gifted
with miraculous power, wandered hungry in the desert, and waited to
be fed by God. Thus Jesus, the Head of all the Prophets, when after
wandering forty days he was an hungered, refused the suggestion to
feed himself by his own miraculous power, and also the suggestion to
glorify himself by a public display of that power.
Miriam, as we have seen, had naturally a great many of those
personal traits which easily degenerate into selfish ambition. She
was self-confident, energetic, and self-asserting by nature, and she
had been associating with a brother whose peculiar unselfishness
and disposition to prefer others in honor before himself had given
full scope to her love of dictation. Undoubtedly, in most things her
influence and her advice had been good, and there had been, in her
leadership among the women of Israel, much that was valuable and
admirable. But one of the most fearful possibilities in our human
experience is the silent manner in which the divine essence exhales
from our virtues and they become first faults and afterward sins.
Sacred enthusiasms, solemn and awful trusts for noble purposes,
may, before we know it, degenerate into mere sordid implements of
personal ambition. In the solemn drama that has been represented in
Scripture, the punishment that falls on the prophetess symbolizes
this corruption. God departs from the selfish and self-seeking soul,
and, with God, all spiritual life. The living, life-giving, inspired
prophetess becomes a corrupt and corrupting leper. Such was the
awful lesson spoken in this symbol of leprosy; and, while the gifted
leader of Israel waited without the camp, the nation pondered it in
silence.
One cannot but wonder at the apparent disproportion of the
punishment upon Aaron. Yet, by careful observation, we shall find
it to be a general fact in the Divine dealings, that the sins of
weakness are less severely visited than the sins of strength.
Aaron's was evidently one of those weak and yielding natures that
are taken possession of by stronger ones, as absolutely as a child
is by a grown man. His was one of those sympathetic organizations
which cannot resist the force of stronger wills. All his sins are
the sins of this kind of temperament. To suffer bitterly, and
to repent deeply, is also essential to this nature; and in the
punishment which fell on the sister who had tempted him, Aaron was
more punished than in anything that could have befallen himself.
There is utter anguish and misery in the cry which he utters when he
sees his sister thus stricken.
There seems to have been a deep purpose in thus appointing to the
priestly office a man peculiarly liable to the sins and errors of
an excess of sympathy. The apostle says, that the proper idea of a
priest was one "who could have compassion on the ignorant, and on
them that are out of the way, for that he also is compassed with
infirmity." Among men such humility is only acquired by bitter
failures. At the same time a nature so soft and yielding could not
be smitten like a stronger one without being utterly destroyed.
Aaron appears to have been so really crushed and humbled by the
blow which struck his sister that he suffered all of which he was
capable. The whole office of the priest was one of confession and
humiliation. In every symbol and every ceremony he expressed a sense
of utmost unworthiness and need of a great expiation. It seems,
therefore, in sympathy with the great and merciful design of such
an office, that for its first incumbent should be chosen a man
representing the infirmity rather than the strength of humanity.
Our own experience in human nature is, that those who err from
too sympathetic an organization, and a weak facility in receiving
impressions from others, may yet have great hold on the affections
of men, and be the most merciful counsellors of the sinful and
tempted.
The great Leader of Israel, who proclaimed his name through Moses
as forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, evidently fully
forgave and restored both Miriam and Aaron, since he remained in the
priestly office, and she is subsequently mentioned in Holy Writ as
an ordained prophetess.
After this scene in the desert we lose sight of Miriam entirely,
and are only reminded of her in one significant passage, where it
is said to Israel, "Remember what the Lord thy God did to Miriam by
the way, after ye were come forth from Egypt" (Deut. xxiv. 9). Her
death is recorded, Numbers xx. 1. Josephus gives an account of her
funeral obsequies, which were celebrated in the most solemn manner
for thirty days; the same honor was shown to a woman endowed with
the prophetic commission that was given to her brothers; and not
only so, but, as late as the time of St. Jerome, the tomb of Miriam
was shown as an object of veneration.
One thing in respect to the sacred and prophetic women of the
Jewish race is peculiar. They were uniformly, so far as appears,
married women and mothers of families, and not like the vestal
virgins of antiquity, set apart from the usual family duties of
women. Josephus mentions familiarly the husband of Miriam as
being Hur, the well-known companion and assistant of Moses on a
certain public occasion. He also refers to Bezaleel, one of the
architects who assisted in the erection of the tabernacle, as her
grandson. We shall find, by subsequent examination of the lives of
prophetic women who were called to be leaders in Israel, that they
came from the bosom of the family, and were literally, as well as
metaphorically, mothers in Israel. In the same year that Miriam
died, Aaron, her brother, was also laid to rest, and, of the three,
Moses remained alone.
It is remarkable that while Jewish tradition regarded Miriam
with such veneration, while we see her spoken of in Holy Writ as
a divinely appointed leader, yet there are none of her writings
transmitted to us, as in the case of other and less revered
prophetesses. The record of her fault and its punishment is given
with the frankness with which the Bible narrates the failings of
the very best; and, after that, nothing further is said. But it is
evident that that one fault neither shook her brother's love nor
the regard of the nation for her. Josephus expressly mentions that
the solemn funeral honors which were shown her, and which held the
nation as mourners for thirty days, were ordered and conducted by
Moses, who thus expressed his love and veneration for the sister who
watched his infancy and shared his labors. The national reverence
for Miriam is shown in the Rabbinic tradition, that, on account of
her courage and devotion in saving her brother's life at the Nile, a
spring of living water, of which the people drank, always followed
her footsteps through her wanderings in the wilderness. On her
death the spring became dry. No more touching proof of a nation's
affectionate memory can be given than a legend like this. Is it not
in a measure true of every noble, motherly woman?
Yet, like many of her sex who have watched the cradle of great
men, and been their guardians in infancy and their confidential
counsellors in maturity, Miriam is known by _Moses_ more than by
herself.
As sunshine reappears in the forms of the plants and flowers it
has stimulated into existence, so much of the power of noble women
appears, not in themselves, but in the men who are gradually molded
and modified by them. It was a worthy mission of a prophetess to
form a lawgiver. We cannot but feel that from the motherly heart
of this sister, associated with him in the prophetic office, Moses
must have gained much of that peculiar knowledge of the needs and
wants and feelings of women which in so many instances shaped his
administration.
The law which protected the children of an unbeloved wife from
a husband's partiality, the law which secured so much delicacy
and consideration to a captive woman, the law which secured
the marriage-rights of the purchased slave and forbade making
merchandise of her, the law which gave to the newly married wife
the whole of the first year of her husband's time and attention,
are specimens of what we mean when we say that the influence of a
noble-hearted woman passed into the laws of Moses. No man could be
more chivalric or more ready to protect, but it required a woman's
heart to show where protection was most needed, and we see in all
these minute guardings of family life why the Divine Being speaks
of a woman as being divinely associated with the great lawgiver: "I
sent before you Moses and Aaron and Miriam."
Thus a noble womanly influence passed through Moses into permanent
institutions. The nation identified her with the MAN who was their
glory, and Miriam became immortal in Moses.
[Illustration: DEBORAH THE PROPHETESS]
DEBORAH THE PROPHETESS.
The Book of Judges is the record of a period which may be called
the Dark Ages of the Jewish Church, even as the mediæval days were
called the Dark Ages of Christianity. In both cases, a new system of
purity and righteousness, wholly in advance of anything the world
had ever before known, had been inaugurated by the visible power
of God,--the system of Moses, and the system of Christ. But these
pure systems seem, in each case, to have been allowed to struggle
their own way through the mass of human ignorance and sin. The
ideal policy of Moses was that of an ultra-democratic community,
so arranged that perforce there must be liberty, fraternity, and
equality. There was no chance for overgrown riches or abject
poverty. Landed property was equally divided in the outset, and a
homestead allowed to each family. Real estate could not be alienated
from a family for more than a generation; after that period, it
returned again to its original possessor. The supreme law of the
land was love. Love, first, to the God and Father, the invisible
head of all; and secondly, towards the neighbor, whether a Jewish
brother or a foreigner and stranger. The poor, the weak, the
enslaved, the old, the deaf, the blind, were protected by solemn
and specific enactments. The person of woman was hedged about by
restraints and ordinances which raised her above the degradation of
sensuality to the honored position of wife and mother. Motherhood
was exalted into special honor, and named as equal with fatherhood
in the eye of God. "Ye shall fear every man _his mother_ and his
father, and keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord." (Lev. xix. 3.)
Refinement of feeling, personal cleanliness, self-restraint, order,
and purity were taught by a system of ordinances and observances,
which were intertwined through all the affairs of life, so that
the Jew who lived up to his law must of necessity rise to a noble
manhood. But this system, so ideally perfect, encountered an age
of darkness. Like all beautiful ideals, the theocratic republic
of Moses suffered under the handling of coarse human fingers.
Without printed books or printing, or any of the thousand modern
means of perpetuating ideas, the Jews were constantly tempted to
lapse into the customs of the heathen tribes around. The question
whether Jehovah or Baal were God was kept open for discussion, and
sometimes, for long periods, idolatry prevailed. Then came the
subjugation and the miseries of a foreign yoke, and the words of
Moses were fulfilled: "Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God,
with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of
all things, therefore shalt thou serve the enemy whom the Lord shall
send against thee, in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness, and
in want of all things; and he shall put a yoke of iron on thy neck,
till he have destroyed thee."
The history of the Jewish nation, in the Book of Judges, presents
a succession of these periods of oppression, and of deliverance by
a series of divinely inspired leaders, sent in answer to repentant
prayers. It is entirely in keeping with the whole character of the
Mosaic institutions, and the customs of the Jewish people, that one
of these inspired deliverers should be a woman. We are not surprised
at the familiar manner in which it is announced, as a thing quite in
the natural order, that the chief magistrate of the Jewish nation,
for the time being, was a woman divinely ordained and gifted. Thus
the story is introduced:--
"And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord when
Ehud was dead, and the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin, King
of Canaan, that reigned in Hasor, the captain of whose host was
Sisera, which dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles. And the children
of Israel cried unto the Lord; for he had nine hundred chariots of
iron, and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel.
And Deborah, the prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel
at that time. And she dwelt under the palm-tree of Deborah, between
Ramah and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim, and the children of Israel came
up to her for judgment. And she sent and called Barak, the son of
Abinoam, and said unto him: Hath not the Lord God of Israel said, Go
draw towards Mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the
children of Zebulun and the children of Naphtali? And I will draw
unto thee, at the river Kishon, Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army,
with his chariots and his multitude, and I will deliver him into thy
hands. And Barak said: If _thou_ wilt go with me, I will go; but if
thou wilt not go with me, I will not go. And she said: I will surely
go with thee; notwithstanding, the journey that thou takest shall
not be for thine honor, for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand
of a woman."
In all this we have a picture of the reverence and confidence with
which, in those days, the inspired woman was regarded. The palm-tree
which shaded her house becomes a historical monument, and is spoken
of as a well-known object. The warlike leader of the nation comes
to her submissively, listens to her message as to a divine oracle,
and obeys. He dares not go up to battle without her, but if she will
go he will follow her. The prophetess is a wife, but her husband
is known to posterity only through her. Deborah was the wife of
Lapidoth, and therefore Lapidoth is had in remembrance even down to
our nineteenth century.
This class of prophetic and inspired women appear to have been
the poets of their time. They were, doubtless, possessed of that
fine ethereal organization, fit to rise into the higher regions
of ecstasy, wherein the most exalted impressions and enthusiasms
spring, as birds under tropic sunshine. The Jewish woman was
intensely patriotic. She was a living, breathing impersonation
of the spirit of her nation; and the hymn of victory chanted by
Deborah, after the issue of the conflict, is one of the most
spirited specimens of antique poetry. In order to sympathize with
it fully, we must think of the condition of woman in those days,
when under the heel of the oppressor. The barriers and protections
which the laws of Moses threw around the Jewish women inspired in
them a sense of self-respect and personal dignity which rendered the
brutal outrages inflicted upon captives yet more intolerable. The
law of Moses commanded the Jewish warrior who took a captive woman
to respect her person and her womanhood. If he desired her, it must
be as a lawful wife; and even as a husband he must not force himself
at once upon her. He must bring her to his house, and allow her a
month to reconcile herself to her captivity, before he took her to
himself. But among the nations around, woman was the prey of whoever
could seize and appropriate her.