By Gary Topping–
Passover occurs this week.
The story of the Exodus is one that has captured the imagination of millions of people over many centuries. It has everything about it that one could love in a story: a cruel Pharaoh who cares nothing for the plight of poor people and who keeps changing his mind and reneging on his promises (probably based on his own “alternate facts”); a courageous leader, Moses, who refuses to take no for an answer; an equally courageous—and yet fickle–people who set off into the wilderness, realizing the risk of death but realizing also that staying put has no future; and finally a loving but punitive God who sends a cloud to guide them by day and a pillar of fire by night.
The most dramatic episode, of course, is the parting of the Red Sea as Moses, by the power of God, with hundreds of Pharaoh’s chariots bearing down on his people, creates an escape route which they cross on dry land to the far shore. Once across, the waters return and drown the entire Egyptian host. It is truly, as we have learned to say, an epic of Biblical proportions.
That is all recorded in Exodus 14. But the story does not stop there, for much of the next chapter tells of a huge party the Children of Israel throw, singing a great song of triumph that seemingly wells up spontaneously within their grateful souls. If this were an opera, it would be a huge chorus scene, with soaring strings and trombones in full voice down in the orchestra pit.
What I love most about it though, is that Miriam the Prophetess, sister to Moses and Aaron, suddenly grabs a tambourine and begins singing and dancing in ecstasy, leading the other women in a dramatic antiphon likely sung between the stanzas of the main song (I wouldn’t have known this, but I get it from a footnote in the edition of the Bible that I use):
Sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously triumphant, Horse and chariot he has cast into the sea.
Those of us who pray the Liturgy of the Hours get this a few times each month, and I always thrill when I see it coming up.
What is so thrilling about it? Two things at least. The Hebrew Bible is full of poetry, but this particular poem seems to me to have a raw energy about it, even a crudeness, that well captures the ecstasy of the greatest deliverance story in history. Also, it is one of the first places in the Bible where a strong woman, a “Prophetess” even, comes fully onto center stage. She is a harbinger of other strong women to come: Ruth, Deborah the Judge, and Judith. Without getting into the knotty issue of clerical ordination of women, it would seem here that Miriam was held in equal regard as her illustrious brothers. There is a special mention, too, at the beginning of Numbers 20, of Miriam’s death and burial at Kadesh when the migratory Israelites reached a place called the Desert of Zin. Few other women in the ancient world would have been perceived as meriting such a mention.
Reading of Miriam causes me to honor the strong women in my own life: the ones I work with, the ones I worship with, the strong woman who brought me into this world, the strong woman I married. Miriam is a powerful influence.
