2002-08-25 - Passages about Inspirational Women

Part 3: Miriam

Like most of us, Miriam was sometimes good and sometimes bad. We can learn from her resourcefulness, her praise of God and the consequences she paid for complaining about her spiritual leader (who was also her brother) - whom God had appointed. Who of us are not guilty of that, too lightly finding fault with our pastors, teachers etc.?

Exodus 2:4-10 (NASB) His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?" "Yes, go," she answered. And the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "I drew him out of the water."

Exodus 15:20-21 (NASB) Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. Miriam sang to them:
"Sing to the Lord ,
for he is highly exalted.
The horse and its rider
he has hurled into the sea."

Numbers 12:1-15 (NASB) Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. "Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?" they asked. "Hasn't he also spoken through us?" And the Lord heard this. (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.) At once the Lord said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, "Come out to the Tent of Meeting, all three of you." So the three of them came out. Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance to the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When both of them stepped forward, he said, "Listen to my words:
"When a prophet of the Lord is among you,
I reveal myself to him in visions,
I speak to him in dreams.
But this is not true of my servant Moses;
he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face,
clearly and not in riddles;
he sees the form of the Lord .
Why then were you not afraid
to speak against my servant Moses?"

The anger of the Lord burned against them, and he left them. When the cloud lifted from above the Tent, there stood Miriam-leprous, like snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy; and he said to Moses, "Please, my lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother's womb with its flesh half eaten away." So Moses cried out to the Lord , "O God, please heal her!" The Lord replied to Moses, "If her father had spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Confine her outside the camp for seven days; after that she can be brought back." So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on till she was brought back.

Jan

jan@cfdevotionals.org
http://www.cfdevotionals.org