Womanhood During the Egyptian Bondage and in the Desert of Sinai.
JOCHEBED--HER REMARKABLE COURAGE--THONORIS--HER COMPASSION--HEROIC
LABORS SEEMINGLY UNREWARDED--ZIPPORAH, THE MIDIANITE
SHEPHERDESS--GLORIFYING DAILY LABOR--AT A WAYSIDE INN--MIRIAM--HER
SONG OF TRIUMPH AT THE RED SEA--HER AFFLICTION AT HAZEROTH--AN
EVENTFUL LIFE.
The history of the human race runs on from the tomb of Rachel for
over four hundred years without bringing to our notice any woman in
White Raiment until Jochebed, the mother of Moses, is reached. In the
meantime, the dreams of Joseph are told, his wandering in the fields
of Shechem, and the finding of his brethren in Dothan, the heartless
transaction with the Midianites, who, in turn, sold Joseph into Egypt,
his prison life followed by his elevation next to the throne and a
seven years’ famine, when Jacob and his sons, as Abraham had done
before them, went down into Egypt, the years of favor in the house of
Pharaoh, and the bondage, bitter and hard, all are told. But, in spite
of all, the suffering Israelites, because blessed of God, prospered and
“increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceedingly mighty;
and the land was filled with them.”
The reigning Pharaoh became alarmed at this state of affairs, and, to
repress the Israelites, “made their lives bitter with hard bondage,
in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.”
But, as a stream in a spring freshet bursts through every obstruction,
so the Israelites overleaped every barrier thrown in their way by the
Egyptian taskmasters. At length a decree was issued that every son born
to the Israelites should be cast into the Nile.
But there was at least one woman in the house of bondage who feared
the Lord more than she feared Pharaoh. Her name was Jochebed, which
means, whose glory is Jehovah. If ever a name had attached with it the
characteristic of the person bearing it, it was Jochebed, the wife of
Amram, and daughter of Levi. That the glory of this woman in White
Raiment was Jehovah, is evident from the fact the hard circumstances in
which she was placed by the command of Pharaoh could not make her lose
faith in God. Others might obey the unwarranted and heartless, as well
as wicked decree, she would not, for she believed it was better to obey
God rather than man, and to this belief her faith was anchored, and
held steady amid the awful wail of bereaved motherhood as it ascended
into the ear of God from the fields of Goshen.
Jochebed was already the mother of Miriam and Aaron, and, since Aaron
was three years older than Moses, the decree that all Hebrew male
children should be cast into the Nile could not have been in force at
Aaron’s birth, or at least had not reached its dangerous climax. As a
member of the house of Levi, Jochebed shows the daring and energetic
boldness for which her tribe had become distinguished, and indicated
the qualities needful for the future priesthood. That the child was
so fair, she recognized in it as a good omen. Josephus traces this
intuition of faith, which harmonized with the maternal feeling of
complacency and desire to preserve his life, to a special revelation.
The means of preservation chosen by Jochebed is especially attributed
to her genius and courage. It was all the more daring, since in the use
of it she seemed to have, from the outset, the daughter of Pharaoh in
mind.
Prompted by an heroic faith, this poor Hebrew slave woman, in the house
of a cruel and heartless bondage, dared to disobey the royal decree,
trusting in God to carry her through the perilous enterprise of saving
the life of her well-favored child. The chrism of hot tears which
fell on the babe’s forehead, set him apart to the tremendous task of
leading up to nationhood a race of degraded slaves whose hands were
horny with unpaid toil, whose faces had grown scowling and knotted
under the overseer’s lash.
[Illustration: THE ISRAELITES IN BONDAGE.]
Jochebed held the boy hard against her heart when she found she could
no longer hide him, and said, more to herself and God than to any human
helper, “My baby shall not die.” The resolution once formed in the
mother’s heart, the next task was to carry it into effect. Then came
the gathering of the papyrus leaves, the getting of the bitumen, the
building of the little ark, and the finding of the best place for it
among the flags of the Nile.
At length the little craft, with many a scalding tear mingled with the
bitumen, was found waterworthy. Then, with many a prayer and heartache,
and no small faith in the righteousness of her act, the dear child of
promise, with many a passionate kiss, such as mothers only can give,
was laid asleep in as soft a nest as the loving hands of mother could
devise. Then the little craft, baby and all, was carried to the great
river of Egypt, “and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.”
Quickly the mother walked away, though her heart was crushed and
bleeding, for how could she look upon her child if any disaster should
overtake his small boat on the bosom of the mighty Nile? But her faith
in God was sure. Her good sense had done its best. Her courage made her
equal to facing the anger of the king; and she would leave the care of
her little darling to the God of her fathers.
But the mother-love could not wholly abandon the little craft to its
fate, without at least knowing how it fared with the child. So, back
a little from the river, where the tall flags formed a gracious shade
over the little brother, and her body concealed in the rank grass, the
large, bright eyes of Miriam were fixed on the babe’s hiding-place,
and the swift feet of the sister were ready to run to tell the mother
whatever might happen.
Pretty soon the watchful eyes of Miriam saw a royal retinue issue from
the palace gate, and as it drew near the river’s brink she discerned
that it was Thonoris, the daughter of Pharaoh, and her maidens, come
down to the Nile to bathe in the open stream, as was the custom of
ancient Egyptians. As the princess and her maidens walked along the
river’s side, she saw the little ark among the flags, and sent one of
the maids to fetch it. And when she saw the child she had compassion on
it, and said, “This is one of the Hebrew’s children.” But the eyes of
Miriam, the faithful sister, closely watched the scene, and when the
little ark was safely drawn to shore by the maids of Thonoris, she ran
up to the Egyptian princess and said, “Shall I go and call to thee a
nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And
Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the
child’s mother.”
[Illustration: MOSES RESCUED FROM THE NILE.]
The compassion of the princess towards the beautiful child led her to
adopt him; and when she did so, making him, therefore, prospectively
an Egyptian, she did not need, we may well believe, to educate him
secretly. The taking of the child into the royal household, doubtless
rendered the cruel edict less severe, if not wholly inoperative.
All this reads like a fairy tale, but there is no end of the wonders
wrought by our God on behalf of those who trust His love and power.
“And the child grew.” Of course it would under the watchful care of
such a nurse. One can easily see how during those years in which
Jochebed was nursing her boy as the adopted son of the Egyptian
princess, she made the most of her opportunity. In a tongue not
understood in the palace she taught the child of Him who should redeem
the race. She held him loyal to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Her instruction had been careful, thorough, and direct from her father,
Levi, the son of Jacob; and she was true to her faith from her very
heart’s core. So that, with the very life of his mother, the growing
boy had drank in the Hebrew spirit.
At first it must have been a surprise to the young heir to the Egyptian
throne when his Hebrew nurse unfolded to him the secret of his descent.
That while legally and formally he was the son of the Princess
Thonoris, inwardly he was the son of another mother, and belonged to
another race, not of the dominant, but of the servile, race; not a
worldly, but a spiritual prince. Probably he had the usual struggle
with self. It was no easy matter to lay aside the flattering prospect
of one day sitting on the throne of Egypt, to forever renounce the
glory and glitter of an earthly court, and to identify himself with the
slave people whose lives were made bitter in all manner of service.
Surely, Jochebed must not only have been a loving mother, but a wise
spiritual teacher to thus gain the surrender of all that was dear to
her child of the earthly life, that he might gain the heavenly. He must
have been completely regenerated when he refused to be called the son
of Pharaoh’s daughter, but chose to suffer affliction with the people
of God. Only a personal knowledge of the Redeemer could have brought
him to esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures
of Egypt.
No better compliment could have been paid Jochebed than the fact that
in that corrupt, magnificent, heathen court she was able to do her work
so well. Her son’s flawless choice of the Divine will made him the
greatest man, the Son of God excepted, ever veiled in human flesh. That
was the best possible sign and seal of her capability and faithfulness.
When her child had passed beyond the years of childhood, and, as a
nurse, could no longer retain him, “she brought him unto Pharaoh’s
daughter,” and Thonoris, with almost infinite care, completed the
boy’s education by instructing him in all the wisdom of Egypt; hence
Moses was prepared both negatively and positively for his life work.
Positively by his great-hearted mother, Jochebed; negatively by the
Egyptian princess Thonoris, thereby, by her own hand, brought up the
deliverer and avenger of the oppressed Israelites.
At this point Jochebed is lost to view. She drops out of history, and
nothing more is known of her. Hers emphatically was a work of faith,
for in all probability she died while Moses was under discipline in the
land of Midian. Her people, for whom she had wrought so heroically,
were still serving “with rigor” in building for Pharaoh the “treasure
cities Pithom and Raamses.” The son from whom she had hoped so much
as the crown prince of the land was in exile in the back side of the
desert; yet her faith held steady as she said with her parting breath,
“God will deliver His people. He saved Moses from the wrath of Pharaoh
and from the reptiles of the Nile; He will yet bring him back to lead
Israel out of this cruel bondage.”
How many a mother has gone down to her grave in sorrow without
realizing the fruit of her toil, perhaps broken-hearted, as Jochebed
may have done, when she saw her son hastening into the desert to escape
the vengeance which would surely have overtaken him for smiting the
Egyptian. Doubtless she never again saw his face, and may have wondered
to what purpose was all her labor. It is difficult to conceive of a
grander purpose in motherhood than that of sending out into the world
young men spiritually, morally and physically healthy, with correct
principles and holy purposes; and it is one of the saddest spectacles
in life when these preparations are cast aside by ungrateful or wayward
acts. All human help is vain, her sorrow and her anguish are too deep
to be reached by sympathy. God alone is her refuge. She is often at
the throne of grace with strong cries and tears, and with a faith that
will not shrink. Doubtless such were the last days of the brave, the
courageous, the heroic Jochebed, as she saw the form of her beloved
Moses disappear in the desert of Midian. But God honored her faith as
no woman’s faith had ever been honored in the life and works of Moses,
the great law-giver, and leader of Israel’s hosts out of the land of
bondage.
“Faithful, O Lord, Thy mercies are,
A rock that can not move:
A thousand promises declare
Thy constancy of love.”
But though Moses had fled from the face of Pharaoh because, in his
effort to defend a Hebrew who was being smitten by an Egyptian, slew
the oppressor, he had not gone into the land of Midian so far but His
eye followed the young refugee.
Away in the south-eastern part of Arabia, toward the close of what
we may well believe to have been a long day’s travel through the
burning sand of that arid country, the young refugee sat down under
the grateful shade of a cluster of palm trees that flourished by the
side of a well. As he sat there resting, possibly quite homesick, the
daughters of Jethro, a Midianite sheik and priest, came with their
father’s flock to the well to water them. The fact that it took seven
of these daughters to lead the flock to the well, shows that the
Midianite was wealthy. These maidens lowered their buckets into the
well and then drew them up brimming full of water, and poured it out
into the stone troughs. They did this again and again, while Moses was
a silent observer. It does not appear that he in any way interrupted
the work.
But scarcely had the panting nostrils of the flocks begun to cool
a little in the brimming troughs than some rough Bedouin shepherds
came with their flocks and drove the maidens and their flock from the
well. This was too much for Moses. His face began to color up, and
his eyes flash with indignation, and all the gallantry of his nature
was aroused. He naturally had a quick temper, as he demonstrated in
the case of the Egyptian oppressing an Israelite, and as he showed
afterward when he broke all the Ten Commandments at once by shattering
the two granite slabs on which the law was written. Hence the harsh
treatment of the girls sets him on fire. The injustice of these Bedouin
shepherds was more than he could bear, and he came to the rescue of the
maidens of the Midianite sheik. Driving the shepherds away, he told
the daughters of Jethro to gather their flock once more and bring them
again to the watering troughs. Here the beautiful character of Moses
comes out, and shows that the careful training of his faithful mother
had not been in vain. Though brought up as a prince in the court of
Egypt, he takes hold of the water buckets and draws water from the
well, and waters the immense flock which had taken seven maidens to
drive to the well! What a sight it must have been to these daughters
of the priest of Midian as they stood by and saw this brave, unselfish
act. What wonder that Zipporah fell in love with such a young man?
Hard as the task must have been, it was quickly finished and the flock
early sheltered in the fold. So much so that Jethro asked of his
daughters, “How is it that ye are come so soon to-day?” They answered,
“An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also
drew water enough for us, and watered the flock.” Jethro further
inquired, “Where is he? Why is it that ye have left the man?”
We confess it was a somewhat ungrateful act on the part of these girls
not to invite the young man to their father’s home, but it only shows
that they were so modest as to be too bashful to make such an advance.
So Moses was invited to the home of the Midianite sheik, and in due
time Zipporah was given to him in marriage, and she became the mother
of his two sons, Gershom and Eliezer.
The Bible does not record much of Zipporah’s life, but, evidently
from the fact that she was a shepherdess, she was industrious,
notwithstanding the great wealth and influence of her father. What
was the use of Zipporah’s bemeaning herself with work when she might
have reclined on the hillside near her father’s tent, and plucked
buttercups, and dreamed out romances, and sighed idly to the winds, and
wept over imaginary songs to the brooks. But no. She knew that work
was honorable, and that every girl ought to have something to do, and
so she led her father’s flock to the fields, to the watering troughs,
and to the safe shelter of the fold. In how many households are there
young women without practical and useful employments? Many of them
are waiting for fortunate and prosperous matrimonial alliance, but
some lounger like themselves will come along, and after counting the
large number of father Jethro’s sheep and camels will make proposal
that will be accepted; and neither of them having done anything more
practical than to chew chocolate caramels, the two nothings will start
on the road of life together, every step more and more a failure.
Not so with the daughter of the Midianite sheik. Moses found her at
the well drawing water. And Zipporah soon learned that Moses could
also draw water. Ye daughters of idleness, imitate Zipporah. Do
something helpful. The reason that so many men now condemn themselves
to unaffianced and solitary life is because they can not support the
modern young woman--a thousand of them not worth one Zipporah. There
needs to be a radical revolution among most of the prosperous homes
of America, by which the elegant do-nothings may be transformed into
practical do-somethings. Let useless women go to work and gather the
flocks. The stranger at the well may prove to be as good a man as was
Moses to Zipporah.
Still further, watch this spectacle of genuine courage. No wonder when
Moses scattered the rude shepherds he won Zipporah’s heart. Sense of
justice fired his courage; and the world wants more of the spirit that
will dare almost anything to see others righted. There are many wells
where outrages are practiced, the wrong herd getting the first water.
Those who have the previous right come in last, if they come it at all.
Thank God we have here and there a strong man to set things right!
This child of the desert, full of industry and energy, very naturally
had a quick temper, and, for once at least, it came out in her life.
Moses was on his way to Egypt, as the deliverer of Israel. Zipporah
and sons set off to accompany him, and went part of the way. While
stopping for the night at a wayside inn the Lord suddenly withstood
Moses. It appears, for some reason, possibly because Zipporah opposed
it, their sons, Gershom and Eliezer, had not been circumcised. And,
since the neglect of this rite would cut them off from God’s covenanted
people, the Lord suddenly afflicted Moses so that his life must have
been despaired of by the wife and mother. In her distress, to save the
life of her husband, she herself performs this rite. The expression,
“took a sharp stone,” means a sharp stone-knife (more sacred than a
metallic knife, on account of the tradition). Under the trying ordeal,
and notwithstanding the life of her husband was still in the balance
between life and death, she was unable to conceal her ill-humor, and
charged him with being “a bloody husband.” Which may mean that the rite
of his people was distasteful to her, and doubly so since she had to
perform it with her own hand to save the life of Moses.
It appears, probably on account of the performance of this rite upon
their two sons, she had to return to her father’s house, as the
children would not be in a condition to continue the journey into
Egypt, and Moses had to perform the remainder of the way alone.
The only other incident recorded in Zipporah’s life is the bringing
of herself and her two sons to Moses by her father, when the host of
Israel had reached the Peninsula of Sinai, after they had departed out
of the land of Egypt.
It has been suggested that Zipporah was the Cushite (A. V. Ethiopian)
wife who furnished Miriam and Aaron with the pretext for their attack
on Moses. (Num. xii, 1). The death of Zipporah is not mentioned, but
undoubtedly it occurred before Moses took the Cushite to be his wife.
It has also been thought that Jethro and his house, before his
acquaintance with Moses, was not a worshipper of the true God. Traces
of this appear in the delay which Moses had suffered to take place in
respect to the circumcision of his sons. But the fact that Zipporah
started from her home in Midian to accompany her husband upon his
mission in Egypt, and of her joining him when he had reached the
wilderness, upon his return, shows that she was in sympathy with his
work, and, doubtless, if up to the time the Lord suddenly withstood
Moses at the wayside inn, she was not fully in accord with him in her
faith, that this incident fully established her in the true faith.
There is a legend which, if not true, is characteristic of the priest
of Midian. This Midrash tale relates that Jethro was a counselor of
Pharaoh, who tried to dissuade him from slaughtering the Israelitish
children, and consequently, on account of his clemency, was forced to
flee into Midian, but was rewarded by becoming the father-in-law of
Moses.
The wife of so excellent and remarkable a man as Moses, and one who
possessed so many womanly qualities as did this shepherdess whom Moses
found by the well in Arabia, in the faithful discharge of her duties,
deserves a place in the galaxy of Women in White Raiment.
The hospitality, freehearted and unsought which Jethro at once extended
to the unknown, homeless wanderer, on the relation of his daughters
that he had watered their flock, is a picture of Eastern manners no
less true than lovely, and gives us a fine view of the quaint habits
and honest simplicity of the Oriental people.
We now pass to the daughter of Jochebed, namely, Miriam. She first came
to our notice when the little ark of Moses was placed among the flags
of the Nile. Her mother set her to watch the little craft as it floated
on the bosom of the great river. When the princess Thonoris, Pharaoh’s
daughter, discovered the child and sent her maid to rescue him from
his perilous surroundings, Miriam, then probably a young girl, appeared
before the Egyptian princess, and asked if she should call a nurse for
the child. In reply to this question, Thonoris said to her she might
find for her a nurse. And Miriam hastened to the home of her parents,
“and called the child’s mother.”
This act shows that Miriam was not only quick-witted, but had the
courage to carry her convictions into effect. Though very human, as
fully demonstrated in after years, she was faithful to her mother when
she watched the boat woven of river plants and made water-tight with
asphaltum, carrying its one passenger. And was she not very courageous
and did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming eternity under
obligation when she defended her helpless brother from the perils of
the Nile? She it was that brought that wonderful babe and its mother
together, so that he was reared to be the deliverer of his nation. What
a garland for faithful sisterhood!
What part Miriam took in the care of her illustrious brother while in
the arms of his mother-nurse, we are not told, but we may well believe
her sisterly love was strong and unwavering during the years while the
precious charge was in the care of the mother.
But there was a long period of eighty years between the infancy of
Moses and his return from the desert of Midian, so that the clear-eyed
and sprightly girl had grown away from the buoyancy of youth during the
years of his exile, and must have been nearly, if not quite, a hundred
years old, when God’s chosen people were led out of the iron furnace
of bondage, a fact we must not lose sight of in the brief narrative
of this noble woman in White Raiment. Her age may, in part at least,
account for the high position given her. “The sister of Aaron,” is her
biblical distinction which she never lost. In Numbers xii, 1, she is
placed before Aaron, and in Micah vi, 4, reckoned as one of the three
deliverers of God’s chosen people, “I sent before thee Moses and Aaron
and Miriam.” Hence it is quite evident that she had no small part in
the redemption of the house of Israel from the land of oppression.
Whether or not the prejudices of that day gave her full honor, the Lord
admitted her to the triumvirate of deliverance, the three children of
the brave, faithful Jochebed.
She was also the first person in her father’s house, and the first
woman in the history of God’s people to whom the prophetic gifts
are directly ascribed. “Miriam the prophetess,” is her acknowledged
title in Exodus xv, 20. She stood, as the leader of Hebrew women,
appropriately by the side of the future conductor of the religious
service.
[Illustration: MIRIAM’S SONG OF TRIUMPH.]
In the song of triumph which the children of Israel sang after their
passage of the Red Sea, Miriam, with cymbal in hand, led the women in
their part of the glad song of deliverance. It does not appear how far
the Hebrew women joined in the song, that is, the part led by Moses,
but in the antiphony, Miriam repeats the opening words, in the form
of a command to the women, saying, “Sing ye to Jehovah, for he hath
triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the
sea.”
“Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!
Jehovah has triumphed, His people are free!
Sing, for the pride of the tyrant is broken;
His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave;
How vain was their boasting! the Lord hath but spoken,
And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave.
“Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!
Jehovah has triumphed, His people are free!
Praise to the Conqueror, praise to the Lord!
His word was our arrow, His breath was our sword.
Who shall return to tell Egypt the story
Of those she sent forth in the hour of her pride?
For the Lord hath looked out from His pillar of glory,
And all her brave thousands are dashed in the tide.
Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!
Jehovah has triumphed, His people are free!”
Miriam must have been exempt from the infirmities of age to a
remarkable degree, to be able at her advanced years to lead the host of
Hebrew women and maidens in the music and songs of triumph and general
rejoicings over the mighty deliverance out of the hand of Pharaoh on
the farther shores of the Red Sea. The victory, however, was such a
marked one, and the deliverance so great as to cause old age, for the
time being, to be swallowed up in the youth of praise and thanksgiving.
Taking up their line of march from the shores of the Red Sea, we do not
learn anything farther concerning Miriam until Hazeroth is reached.
Here she seems to have been the instigator of an insurrection against
Moses. In some respects it must have been grievous to him, all the more
so, from the fact that Aaron had also suffered himself to be carried
away by his sister’s fanaticism. By virtue of their office as prophet
and prophetess, in the minds of the people, they held almost equal rank
with Moses.
The occasion of this insurrection was a marriage which Miriam regarded
as objectionable, though, notwithstanding, she had the example of
Joseph, who married an Egyptian woman, before her, and which marriage
did not prove to be antitheocratic. Moses had married a Cushite. It is
true the prohibition to marry with the daughters of other than their
own people had special reasons of religious self-preservation, and for
that reason the High Priest was allowed to marry only a Hebrew virgin,
but that was a limitation belonging to his symbolic position. The
prophetic class, on the other hand, had the task of illustrating the
greatest possible letting down of legal restraint. The union of Moses
with this Cushite may have symbolized the future calling of the Gentile
nations, a sort of first fruit, as Rahab and Ruth later on proved to
be, and it offers a remarkable parallel that the next greatest man of
the law, Elijah, lived for a considerable time as the table companion
of a heathen widow of Zarephath.
It is manifest that Moses endured in silence the domestic obliquity
which his sister drew down upon him, patiently committing his
justification to God, until her would-be pious zeal assumed a more
alarming aspect. Since Aaron had made common cause with Miriam, Aaron,
who wore the breast-plate, Urim and Thummim, and Miriam, who, as a
prophetess, had already led the chorus of the women of Israel, must
have held high places in the minds of the people; hence, when they
raised the question, “Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath
he not spoken also by us?” there is no telling where this sedition of
Miriam and Aaron might have ended, had not the Lord Himself taken it
promptly in hand.
But the Lord heard that complaint, which implied that the prophetic
gift was exercised by them also, that they were prophets, vested with
authority, and if they even suffered Moses, since his objectionable
marriage, to remain in the prophetic college, they could at least
outvote him. So Moses, Aaron and Miriam were suddenly cited to the
tabernacle of the congregation. When the three presented themselves at
the place appointed, the Lord came down in a cloud at the door of the
tabernacle, and “called Aaron and Miriam” apart from Moses, and there,
at the door of the tabernacle, administered a stern rebuke to both of
them. They had lived with Moses so long, and yet knew so little of his
exalted position. As a brother he stood too near to them, and they
themselves, with their self-consciousness, stood too much in their own
light.
“And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle.” As Aaron saw the
cloud lifting up and moving off, he must have been inwardly crushed
at this punishment. The fires on his altar went out, the pillar of
smoke no longer mounted up as a token of grace, the divine presence
was withdrawn, and it was as if an interdict of Jehovah lay on the
services of the Sanctuary. But this was not all. “Miriam became
leprous, white as snow.” There seems to be a singular connection
between the punishment of Aaron as the representative of the Church,
and Miriam, who had thought herself and Aaron above Moses, snow-white
in righteousness, while she looked down on him as unclean. She would
dominate the Church, for she dominated Aaron, and now, as a leper, she
must be excluded from the Church.
When Aaron looked upon his afflicted sister, though High Priest,
the Lord having withdrawn the symbol of his favor from the altar of
sacrifice, was as helpless as Miriam, and he now implores Moses, as his
superior, to intercede. Here only the spiritual high priesthood of a
divine compassion can deliver the helpless High Priest himself and his
unfortunate associate in the prophetic office. In his appeal, Aaron
almost speaks as if Moses could heal the leprosy. Moses, however,
understood it as an indirect request to intercede for Miriam.
“And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying: Heal her now, O God, I beseech
thee.” The Lord granted the request, accompanied with a sharp reproof,
“If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be unclean
seven days?” The figurative expression compares her, who desired to be
the prophetic regent of the nation, to a dependent maiden in whose face
her father had spit on account of unseemly behavior. Such a one must
conceal herself seven days on account of her shame. The same treatment
was dictated for Miriam, and she was “shut out from the camp seven
days.” The silent grief of the nation must have been profound, for the
people remained encamped at Hazeroth during the seclusion of Miriam,
and not until she was pronounced clean, and the prescribed sacrifices
required on her reception back again, were made, did the Lord’s host
depart from their encampment. All these are proofs of the high place
she held in the affections of the people.
This sad stroke, and its most gracious removal, is the last public
event of Miriam’s life. She died toward the close of the wilderness
wanderings at Kadesh, and was buried there. According to Jewish
tradition, the burial took place with great pomp on a mountain in the
edge of the wilderness of Zin, and the mourning of the whole camp of
Israel lasted for thirty days, Jerome tells us that her tomb was shown
near Petra.
According to Josephus she was the wife of Hur and the grandmother of
Bezaleel, the inspired artisan of the Tabernacle. According to the
Targum, the miraculous supply of water at Rephidim was given in her
honor. It failed when she died at Kadesh, and was restored only at the
second stroke of Moses’ rod, and later, by the digging of the princes
with their staves of office, while the people sang a hymn of praise and
faith.
These traditions are of but little value except to show in what high
esteem she was held.
A long, beautiful, eventful, inspired life--one of patient waiting,
intense activity, deep enthusiasm and triumphant faith--transformed
the brave little slave girl into the mighty princess and leader of the
Lord’s hosts. But for the one assumption of unwarranted authority at
Hazeroth, her record would have come down to us untarnished.