And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.- Exo_15:20.
1. For many years there is a dropping of the curtain. When it rises again it is upon a new scene. Egypt has vanished, and another world has dawned. The slaves have become free. Again they stand upon the banks of a water; but it is no longer the water of the Nile river; it is that of the Red Sea. They stand upon these banks triumphant; they have emancipated themselves from the Egyptian thraldom. The military strength of Egypt had been in pursuit of them, and the proud host had just been engulfed in the waters of the Red Sea. It was at that moment, when the first amazement and wonder had passed, that the voice of Miriam rang out in the camp, and, timbrel in hand, she sounded out the notes of a noble song of exultation and thankfulness.
Even to-day, thousands of years after, we feel the spirit of the scene, and we seem to feel the surging swell of triumph as Miriam sang out that triumphal song, “Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” This is the woman whose name lives in the Hebrew history, emerging from that stormy and troubled time as a figure of singular courage, of impassioned utterance, of intense patriotism. It was as if the genius of the Hebrew people had incarnated itself in a noble female figure and had broken into fine audibility, and through its voice and song the whole camp was thrilled and inspired and uplifted.
2. When one has read over carefully this first outburst of the nation's heart and life, this earliest National Anthem, although we are not expressly told the authorship, the conviction grows that it is from the pen of Miriam. We know that women had to appear and do duty on the east side of the sanctuary, organized just like the Levites. Proper sacerdotal functions, whether higher or lower, cannot be ascribed to them: it was characteristic of the whole of the religion of Jehovah to confine these to men. But we know from other sources that dances accompanied by singing were performed at the sanctuary by women; and if numerous women from each of the tribes always took part in these dances on festivals there must still have been some constantly at the sanctuary who should know how to lead the dances, and they may have been the same as those who daily performed the sacred music there. That women who sang and played lived there we know as a certainty, as well as that the culture of the Muses was left chiefly to the women down to the days of David. The singing and playing Miriam, therefore, clearly furnishes us with the original type of these women about the sanctuary.
3. We cannot, of course, go into any analysis of this poem; it is a war song with a religious basis and a religious spirit pervading it. It belongs to a very early period, and yet there are passages in it-passages like that second verse, “The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him; my father's God, and I will exalt him”-that link this Old Testament Mary to the New Testament Mary, and that make the “Magnificat” of the one not altogether unworthy of a place beside the “Magnificat” of the other. Not as a timid, trembling woman, but as a leader of devotion, did Miriam sing in the chorus of triumph. Both a poetess and a fervent prophetess, Miriam has since then inspired to song and enthusiasm greater hosts of women than those who rehearsed the triumph of the Red Sea. And the bands of singers who have followed her reach the highest note only when their theme is the same as hers-“Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.”
After the defeat of the Scottish army at Dunbar “The Lord General made a halt,” says Hodgson, “and sang the Hundred-and-seventeenth Psalm,” till our horse could gather for the chase. Hundred-and-seventeenth Psalm, at the foot of the Doon Hill: there we uplift it, to the tune of Bangor, or some still higher score, and roll it strong and great against the sky:
O give ye praise unto the Lord,
All nati-ons that be;
Likewise ye people all, accord
His name to magnify!
For great to-us-ward ever are
His lovingkindnesses;
His truth endures forevermore:
The Lord O do ye bless!1 [Note: Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, iii. 37.]
