11*
Wednesday 11 December
The song of Miriam
By Harriet Truscott
Exodus 15:20-21
Miriam bursts her way into this Advent Calendar singing and dancing. Not just singing and dancing, but leading the women of Israel in public praise of God. They are celebrating the escape from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the drowning of Pharoah’s army. Moses and the men of Israel have just sung a long hymn of praise to God; Miriam and the women offer their own two lines of thanks, accompanying them with timbrels, tambourines, and dancing.
The first thing that struck me, reading this passage, is that the women have left Egypt hurriedly, without even time to let the dough rise. But nonetheless, they packed their instruments. A timbrel, the Jewish Encyclopaedia tells us, ‘is inappropriate for mournful occasions’ (though I did go to a funeral where everyone was handed a tambourine for a final rousing chorus of ‘You shall go out with joy’). Instead, a tambourine is for festivals, rejoicing and triumphs. Throughout all the years of slavery in Egypt, the women have kept the instruments they need to celebrate – and they take them with them into a new life.
This reading is a reminder that joyfulness and celebration are part of what we need in life, and that we need them in our darkest moments, when things are changing, when our lives are threatened. It’s very hard to struggle for things to get better, if there’s no hope of joy and no moment to praise God.
Miriam is a woman we’ve already met in the book of Exodus. She is Moses’ older sister, the girl who waits beside her baby brother when he is hidden in the bulrushes to avoid the death-sentence for male children. It is Miriam who quickly suggests to Pharaoh's daughter that perhaps her, Miriam’s, own mother could act as nurse to the newly-adopted baby. Miriam is watchful, protective, quick-witted – and also full of hope and trust in God.
This Advent, we need to remember Miriam’s approach to serving God and her people: taking action when things are bleakest, and at the same time believing that a time for joyfulness, thankfulness and celebration will come.
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Exodus 15:20-21
Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.
And Miriam sang to them:
‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.’