Miriam as Portrayed in the Hebrew Bible

Miriam traditions

Miriam, (מִרְיָם)in what some scholars have identified as the author or leader of the “Song of the Sea,”^[1]Exodus 15.1-18, 21. Many scholars debate over the ways to interpret “The Song of the Sea.” What this a song led and directed by Moses as the text suggests? Or was Exodus 15.1-18 the response to … Continue reading is depicted in Exodus as the older sister of Moses. I see her as leading the song found in Exodus 15, the victory song of Israel, celebrating their escape through the Red Sea. This victory made it so the Pharaoh could no longer hold them captive, and in this way the song was a celebration of freedom, and a fitting ending to the slavery narrative that both began and ended with the image of women playing decisive roles in the story. We saw women play important roles in Exodus 1 with the midwives Shiphrah and Puah (Ex. 1.15) and the mother of Moses, Jochebed (Ex. 6.20), and his unnamed sister (Ex. 2.4).^[2]Miriam is identified in Numbers 26.59: And the name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt; and she bore unto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their … Continue reading We see the image of Miriam again at the conclusion of the divine battle with the sea, in the Song of Miram (Exodus 15). Miriam thus bookends^[3] Janzen sees Miriam as the alpha and omega of this legend. Quoting Trible, he writes, “the beginning and ending of the Exodus story belong to women. They are the alpha and omega, … Continue reading the story of Moses: his birth, his confrontation with the dragon, the eventual “death” of the dragon (the splitting of the sea), and concludes with her victory song. This is an important ancient backdrop to the legend of the Exodus, the “road out,” through the watery chaos of the Nile (Moses’ birth) and the Sea of Reeds (the birth of the nation of Israel). Miriam is the feminine prophetic midwife, the savior of Moses and the song leader of the victory march at the conclusion of the war with chaos. She is connected to water in several ways.^[4]‘The redemption from Egypt begins with water and ends with water’ (Lisitsa et al., 2011: 17) – this quote emphasizes the importance of the element of water in Jewish tradition. And indeed, the … Continue reading She is the first woman to be called “the prophet” in the Hebrew Bible.^[5]Exodus 15.20 – “Miriam the prophetess” – מִרְיָם הַנְּבִיאָה

Clashing with Moses

After the episode at the sea, Miriam surfaces in the wilderness narratives. Accompanied by her brother Aaron, she speaks out against Moses (Num 12:1–6; Num. 20.1-2), faulting him for marrying a Cushite woman. But the text fails to explain the issue. The woman is not named. She may be Zipporah, the known wife of Moses (Exod 2:21, 18:2), or another woman. The meaning of “Cushite” is uncertain. It may refer to the African country of Cush (see Gen 10:6; 1 Chr 1:8) or to Midian, the region east of the Gulf of Aqabah from which Zipporah came (see Exod 3:1, 18:1; Hab 3:7). Most probably, the attack implicates Miriam in a struggle over the priestly leadership of Moses.^[6]Phylis Trible, Miriam. The Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Accessed 2.28.22

Miriam with Aaron also challenges the prophetic authority of Moses. She asks, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” (Num 12:2). She understands leadership to embrace diverse voices, female and male. But the price of speaking out is severe. Though God rebukes both Miriam and Aaron, the deity punishes only her. Metaphorically, the divine nostril burns in anger to leave her stricken with scales like snow. Aaron pleads with Moses on her behalf, and Moses appeals to God. God responds by confining her outside the camp for seven days. This period of time verifies her cleanliness but does not restore her to wholeness. Whatever her particular disease, Miriam remains a condemned woman, a warning for generations to come (see Deut 24:8–9). After her punishment, she never speaks, nor is she spoken to. Indeed, she disappears altogether from the narrative until the announcement of her death and burial at Kadesh (Num 20:1).

What do we do with these difficult passages? Perhaps there is a way out. Perhaps not. It depends on how one reads the Bible. I would like to suggest that these tough passages need not be so, if one reads these things through the lens of history. I view many of these texts as polemics, or attacks by certain editorial or scribal schools that were working to denigrate certain leaders in order to solidify their claims to authority. We see this in Exodus 32, where Aaron is denigrated by the Elohist, the northern author of Exodus 32.^[7]Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, p. 173-175. We see this in the often-missed conflict over who owns the staff that is used throughout the Exodus. Is the staff Moses’ staff or Aaron’s?^[8]See: Whose Staff is it Anyway? The list goes on, but for the purposes of this post, I see the stories that put Miriam in a negative light to sit in this tradition. She isn’t the only one who gets negative treatment in these legends, as Moses himself isn’t even exempt!^[9]See: Exodus 4.25; Numbers 20.1-13. For extensive Jewish commentary [from Rashi to Maimonides] on this puzzling passage in Numbers 20, see: Moses Strikes the Rock: The Full Story, Chabad.org, accessed … Continue reading

Miriam, Holiness, Kadesh, and Wisdom

Miriam has a connection to holiness, as she is buried in קָדֵשׁ Kadesh, a place that literally means “holy.” There is quite a bit of scholarship covering the efforts of the Deuteronomistic Reformers, and their desire to be rid of the אֲשֵׁרָה “Asherah/s” (grove/s – KJV) and the הַקְּדֵשִׁים ha-qāḏēšim “prostitutes” (sodomites -KJV).^[10]See Dever, Did God have a Wife?, as well as Margaret Barker, The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity, SPCK, 1987. See also … Continue reading

Two scholars^[11]Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, When God had a Wife: The Fall and Rise of the Sacred Feminine in the Judeo-Christian Tradition, Bear & Company, 2019, p. 94. Several other scholars see a … Continue reading have suggested that tantalizing apparent references to “cult prostitutes” – male (qadesh) and female (qadeshah)- actually refer to Asherah’s priesthood and temple workers… Some scholars have even suggested that Miriam may have been involved in the ancient belief of Asherah and that she could have been a religious leader of women, qadeshah^[12]Ibid. women that believed in the sacred feminine. Picknett and Prince continue: “The catch-all term “prophetess” conceals even more clues. In the pre-monarchy story in the Bible only two women, Miriam and Deborah, are described as prophetesses- even before any men are enshrined as prophet. As one scholar, Phyllis Bird observes, prophetess is the “most important and best-documented religious office occupied by women in ancient Israel,” but that it “stands in an ambiguous relationship to the cultus.” Note that Bird uses the term “religious office”; as the prophets of David and Solomon’s day belonged to a sort of professional guild- another type of priesthood distinct from the hereditary Levites- the prophetesses probably belonged to a similar group. It is not hard to identify their “club.” After all, Deborah sits beneath a date palm to pronounce judgment- and we know who that represented. So are the biblical “prophetesses” really Asherah’s priestesses?^[13]Ibid., p. 96.

Bird suggests that the qedeshim (plural of qadeshah) played a major role in the care and provision for the worship of Asherah in the temple of Jerusalem. She writes, “I believe we must reconstruct a class of female attendants at the rural shrines representing a form of cultic service on the part of women that may once have had a recognized place in Israelite worship, but was ultimately rejected.”^[14]Phyllis Bird, “The End of the Male Cult Prostitute: A Literary-Historical and Sociological Analysis of Hebrew Qades-Qedesim.” In Congress Volume: Cambridge 1995, edited by J.A. Emerton. … Continue reading Bird also suggests that there is a connection between “the women who served at the entrance of the tent of meeting”^[15]See Exodus 38.8 and 2 Samuel 2.22. We are not told what role “the ministering women [ha-tzovʾot]” was.  Only one other verse, in the context of the Tabernacle set up at Shiloh, alludes to these … Continue reading and with Miriam leading the women in the Song of the Sea.

Asherah was known in Canaan and in Egypt, as Qadesh, which refers to her role in connection with fertility. Qadesh is derived from the word for “holy,” or “consecrated,” qāḏôš – קָדוֹשׁ. Margaret Barker has pointed out that in the places where the Hebrew Bible speaks of “prostitutes” that there is a possibility that this could be the suppression of not an immoral form of worship, but the suppression of another version of legitimate worship that the editors of the Hebrew Bible wanted to eliminate.^[16]Barker writes, “Josiah deposed the ‘idolatrous’ priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense at the high places, those who burned incense to Baal and to the host of heaven (2 … Continue reading

The terms used in the Hebrew Bible for “sacred prostitutes” qadeshah and qadesh could simply refer to the priesthood of those who acknowledged Asherah, both men and women.^[17]Picknett and Prince, p. 108. Perhaps these individuals could be referred to as “Qadeshites,” meaning “priests/priestesses of Qadesh/Asherah.”^[18]See: Van der Toorn, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, p. 111, where the Lion Lady is sometimes identified with Qadeshet and Anat. The Queen of Heaven also has some information that … Continue reading In the midst of all of these connections, let us not forget that Miriam is buried in a place the text of the Hebrew Bible informs us is Qadesh/Kadesh קָדֵשׁ (Numbers 20.1)^[19]There are some interesting ways to view the word קָדֵשׁ בַּרְנֵעַ “Kadesh-Barnea” (Numbers 32.8). Many identify this as the same place that is commonly referred to as Kadesh in the … Continue reading, perhaps a connection to the divine feminine/Asherah/Qadesh in the writings of Exodus-Numbers.

In the wisdom tradition a text known as Ben Sira, also known as Ecclesiasticus and Ben Sirach (Greek), comprises the teachings of Joshua, or Jesus, ben Sira “of Jerusalem.” Although the text of Ben Sira was never included in the Hebrew canon it was popular, as many ancient copies have been discovered, including among the texts recovered at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This text is accepted in the Catholic canon, but not in the KJV. Much of the text is conventional advice: things like ethics and basic moral counsel. Toward the end of the book, however, we read of Sophia, wisdom, and as found in parts of Proverbs, Sophia speaks for herself. Sophia’s words have been compared to those of Isis in the Egyptian religious texts.^[20]Picknett and Prince, p. 169.

Picknett and Prince see many connections between Sophia’s words and Isis, as well as “clear references to the ancient (religion of) Asherah.” Sophia says that she was “exalted” in the form of various trees- a cedar in Lebanon, a cypress on Mount Zion, a palm tree in Kadesh, and a rose bush in Jericho. Tellingly, she also declares, “I have extended my branches like a terebinth tree.” ^[21]See: Sirach 24.16-26. Note that Sophia manifested as a palm tree, a symbol of Asherah in Kadesh of all places- which was where Miriam was buried… The point is repeated throughout Ben Sira that Sophia was created before all other things, “From the beginning…” While not an agent of creation in this text (she is however an agent of creation in Proverbs 8), Sophia is pictured as a member of God’s heavenly council. In fact, she is the most prominent, being given “priority among God’s entourage.”^[22]Ibid.

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