Miriam's Song

19 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. 20 Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing. 21 Miriam sang to them:

“Sing to the Lord,
  for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
    he has hurled into the sea.” - Exodus 15:19-21

One of the many interesting pieces to this puzzle is that the first 18 verses are about Moses singing, and then we get these verses about Miriam singing. Miriam is Moses’s older sister - a leader and a prophet in her own right. As Wilda Gafney, the expert Old Testament Scholar, points out, ”Miriam is one of the most important women in the bible. She is mentioned in more books than any other woman. And she is the only woman to have her childhood, adulthood, old age, death and burial recorded in the scriptures.”

Gafney presses in with her “holy imagination” (midrash) and this is one of the pictures she comes up with:

What if this is what happened… Moses led them in song first on the wrong side of the Red Sea, the dangerous side with the Egyptians getting closer and closer, with the waters all piled up, the way through stretching before them. And no one went. Until Miriam picked up the song. Until Miriam took her instrument and her courage and she danced out between the waters first, leading the way herself… and the people followed. First the women, then the others. And they danced and sang their way to freedom.

One way or the other this song about deliverance from oppression that’s sung was led by the doubly oppressed - Miriam was held down not just of her cultural identity but also because of her gender.

What if Miriam’s fierce, embodied, liberating joy echoes God’s own? Perhaps it shows us a different picture of who God is - not proper & orderly, tame or quiet - loud, exuberant, flowing through every piece of her being.

What thoughts and images come to mind with you as you reflect on Miriam’s song?