And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to him.- Exo_2:4.
The Bible story of Miriam is given in three scenes. The first has the river Nile for a background. We see her watching the little cradle-boat among the long reeds of the Nile-a dark-eyed girl of perhaps fifteen years of age, clever, sensible, and self-possessed. All the world knows the interesting story connected with the preservation of the child Moses: the resolve on the part of this Hebrew mother to commit her little one to the ark of bulrushes and to place it there in that sheltered nook of the river where the great princess and her maidens came each day; for something told her that the helpless babe would appeal to the heart of the heathen princess.
Of the three females in the transaction-the mother, the princess, and the young sister-the last is by far the most advanced in mind. The ark left to itself would have only postponed the catastrophe. The princess left to herself would have saved the child's life at the expense of its nationality. But little Miriam by a stroke of precocious genius preserved the nationality as well as the life of the child Moses. The mother and the princess were both actuated by tenderness of feeling. Miriam had also tenderness of feeling, but it was blended with something of a stronger mould-a power of suggestion, a depth of shrewdness, a fertility and readiness of resource, which placed her even in girlhood on a height entirely her own.2 [Note: G. Matheson, Representative Women of the Bible, 135.]
