Miriam’s exile strikes me as particularly harsh for two reasons. First, she is Moses’ older sister and has protected him before. Second, as you probably noticed, both Miriam and Aaron criticize their brother Moses but only Miriam is punished. In my song, I focused on the first issue above.

The young Miriam, who once risked her life to look after Moses as he floated down the Nile under Pharaoh’s rule, is now exiled for criticizing him. I thought about the stark contrast between Miriam’s experience and Moses’, how Miriam would feel as God invites her younger brother up on the mountain to receive the Torah, while telling the women to stay back. I wondered how she would experience God’s mysterious and harsh response to Moses’ prayer for healing: “if her father spit in her face, wouldn’t she have to bear her shame for seven days?”

I could only imagine that, hearing this, she might choose to leave rather than continue this sort of relationship with God. And I wondered what she might learn out in her desert exile. Moses also had to ascend Mount Sinai alone to receive the Torah; I imagine that Miriam also received some wisdom in her desert solitude. But Miriam’s wisdom, rather than a Divinely inspired book of laws, was about the cycles of nature.