MIRIAM, SISTER OF MOSES. 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 selfseeking soul, and, with God, all spiritual life. The living, lifegiving, 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 MIRIAM, SISTER OF MOSES. 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 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. 94 THE FINDING OF MOSES. LOW glides the Nile amid the margin flags, Closed in a bulrush ark, the babe is left, Left by a mother's hand. His sister waits Far off; and pale, 'tween hope and fear, beholds The royal maid, surrounded by her train, Approach the river-bank, - approach the spot Where sleeps the innocent. She sees them stoop With meeting plumes; the rushy lid is oped, And wakes the infant, smiling in his tears, As when along a little mountain lake The summer south-wind breathes with gentle sigh, A water-lily floating on the wave. 95 James Grahame. |