The Song of Miriam

The Golden Haggadah is a Hebrew service book for the celebration of Passover Eve that originally belonged to a wealthy medieval Jewish family. Richly illuminated, the manuscript was produced in Catalonia in the early fourteenth century. Each full-page miniature comprises four panels meant to be read from right to left (beginning at the upper right)—as when reading Hebrew.  

This is the Golden Haggadah’s final fully-illuminated folio, and its first panel shows Miriam’s victory song (Exodus 15:20), followed by the preparations for the ritual Seder in the three accompanying panels: the distribution of matzoh and horoset to children at the upper left; the cleaning of a house by the women in preparation for the Passover at the lower right; and the slaughter of the Passover lamb and the purification of utensils at the lower left .

It is interesting that the decision was made to highlight Miriam’s Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:20) in this folio rather than the song recited by her brother Moses (vv.1–19). In making this choice, the focus of attention is directed to her ritual leadership of a religious and politically significant ceremony: the celebration of the deliverance of the Israelites from their enemy.

Miriam is depicted as a young maiden, clad in an elegant medieval gown. She holds a small square frame drum (adufe) decorated with an Islamic motif, alongside three other female musicians who play a lute—an instrument associated with the female form (Dowling Long 2011: 108–113)—a circular frame drum (pandero), the cymbal, and clappers.  

Interestingly, in many cultures, the adufe or frame drum is a woman’s drum, associated with female sexuality. Often it is the only drum that women are permitted to use (Montagu 2007: 29)—a tradition that continues in parts of Portugal and Spain today (Cohen 2008). Doubleday (2008: 13) notes that the drum is ‘a symbol par excellence of the womb’, with the drum skin signifying ‘the unbroken hymen’, and the women’s drum playing ‘likened to sexual intercourse’ (ibid: 28).  

It is no wonder that the artists of the Golden Haggadah included it in their depiction of Miriam playing her ‘timbrel’, alongside other scenes of Jewish domestic life, where a women’s role, as a mother and a homemaker, are considered pivotal in nurturing and sustaining the religious life of the community.   

References

Cohen, Judith R. 2008. ‘“This Drum I Play”: Women and Square Frame Drums in Portugal and Spain’, Ethnomusicology Forum, 17.1: 95–124

Doubleday, Veronica. 2008. ‘An Overview of Musical Instruments and Gender’, Ethnomusicology Forum, 17.1: 3–39

Dowling Long, Siobhán. 2011. ‘Musical Instruments in Biblical Art: Evaristo Baschensis’s Still Life with Musical Instruments’, in Bible, Art, Gallery, ed. by Martin O’Kane (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix), pp. 97–121

Montagu, Jeremy. 2007. Origins and Development of Musical Instruments (Lanham: Scarecrow Press)

Saulter, Cia. 2010. The Miriam Tradition: Teaching Embodied Torah (Urbana: University of Illinois)

After the crossing of the Red Sea, marking their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, Miriam the Prophet (něbī’āh), leads the Israelite women in worship, singing to the accompaniment of her ‘timbrel’ (Exodus 15:20).

The Song of Miriam by Neapolitan baroque artist Luca Giordano (1634–1705), and based on Exodus 15:20, depicts her clad in a heavenly blue cloak, with eyes raised in ecstatic praise of the Lord, as she directs the women’s choir with her drumstick (cf. Philo, Moses, 1.180 and Ephrem, Commentary on Exodus, 15.3).

Drorah Setel (1998: 36) notes that:

Miriam’s designation as a prophet and her unquestioned leadership of the victory celebration in Exodus indicate that ancient Israelites were also familiar with forms of female authority that did not exist into later periods.

And, much earlier, Augustine suggested a parity in the separate leadership roles of Moses and Miriam in the liturgical life of their community: ‘This is what Moses sang and the sons of Israel with him, what Miriam the prophetess sang and the daughters of Israel with her’ (Sermon, 363.4).

Early Christian writers likened Miriam to the female biblical prophets: Deborah, Huldah, Judith, Mary, Elizabeth, Anna, and the daughters of Philip (Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, 8.1.2). In addition, she was regarded by the Church Fathers as a type of Church—for example in Ambrose's description of her ‘as a virgin [who] with unstained spirit joins together the religious gatherings of the people to sing divine songs’ (Concerning Virgins, 1.3.12). They also understood Miriam as a type of Mary the Mother of Christ. Notable among these was Peter Chrysologus who drew a parallel between the two women’s names, Miriam (Hebrew: Miryam) being the same as Mary (Greek: Mariam) (Sermon, 146). Giordano, who painted many representations of the Virgin Mary, might well have intended to represent Miriam as a type of Mary, given the similarity of Miriam’s attire in this rendition to the Virgin’s attire in his many other paintings.  

This typological approach is further seen in the Church Fathers’ allegorical interpretation of Miriam’s frame drum—with stretched skin across its wooden frame—as a type of the Cross (Augustine, Sermon, 363.4), and its lack of moisture as a reference to Mary’s virginity:

For as the tambourine produces a loud sound, having no moisture in it and being quite dry, so also virginity is clear and noised abroad and has nothing in itself of the life-preserving moisture of this life. (Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity ,19)

References

Lienhard, J. T. (ed.). 2001. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament, 3 (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press), pp. 82–83

Rotelle, J. E. (ed.). 1995. Works of St Augustine: A Translation for the Twenty-First Century (Hyde Park: New York City Press)

Schaff, P. et al. (eds). 1994. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2.10 (Peabody: Hendrickson)

Setel, Drorah O’Donnell. 1998. ‘Exodus’, in The Women's Bible Commentary, ed. by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville: Westminster/John Know Press), pp. 30–39

In this portrait Wilhelm Hensel depicts his composer wife Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–47) as the Miriam of Exodus 15—the sister of Moses and Aaron. Alongside Miriam/Fanny, Hensel included his wife’s younger sister Rebecka (a singer), and their sister-in-law, Albertine, who is carrying the double pipes.

As the sister of the celebrated composer Felix Mendelssohn (and granddaughter of the eminent Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn), Fanny was an ideal model for the biblical musician who led the Israelite women in their Song of Praise by the Red Sea.

In Hensel’s painting, we see Miriam beating her frame drum as an accompaniment to her song, ahead of the other women musicians who ‘went out after her with tambourines and dancing’ (Exodus 15:20). Hensel embellished the biblical narrator’s account of the women’s music-making by showing them playing a variety of ancient and medieval instruments.

Although Fanny Mendelssohn was a prolific composer, she remained in the shadow of her more famous brother with some of her compositions misattributed to him. Queen Victoria, who loved to sing, praised Felix Mendelssohn for his composition of her favourite song Italien (op. 8, no. 3) which she sang for Mendelssohn when he visited Buckingham Palace in 1842. Only then did she find out that this song had been composed by his sister Fanny. Similarly, down through the centuries, Miriam the Prophet (něbī’āh) has resided in the shadow of her brother Moses.

Despite living in the shadows of their brothers, Fanny Mendelssohn and the Prophet Miriam take centre stage in Hensel’s Miriam’s Song of Praise (1836) at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace, London. Appropriately, it was presented by Hensel as a gift to Queen Victoria in 1843.

References

Brooke, George J. 1994. ‘Power to the powerless: A Long-Lost Song of Miriam’, Biblical Archaeology Review, 20.3: 62–65

Kugel, James L. 1997. The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press)

Paton, John Glenn (ed.). 1992. 24 Songs: Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (Van Nuys: Alfred Publishing)

Russell, Brian D. 2007. ‘An Exegetical Analysis of Exodus 15:1–21’, in The Song of the Sea: The Date of Composition and Influence of Exodus 15:1–21 (New York: Peter Lang), pp. 19–44

Setel, Drorah O’Donnell. 1998. ‘Exodus’, in The Women's Bible Commentary, ed. by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press), pp. 30–39