Zachor Miryam

Lesson

In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron, Moses' own sister and brother, speak against him because of the Cushite woman he married, "the Ethiopian woman" in the King James Bible. Cush was the land south of Egypt, home to dark-skinned African peoples. In this story she never speaks and is never named, so the song opens by giving her a voice from Song of Songs: "Dark am I, yet lovely. Do not stare at me because I am dark." Moses, called the humblest man on earth, does not defend himself either. Neither of them has to, because "the Lord heard it." God suddenly calls all three out to the tent of meeting, then comes down in a pillar of cloud. To other prophets, he says, he speaks in visions and dreams, but with Moses he speaks mouth to mouth, plainly, not in riddles. Then he asks the question at the heart of this song: "Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?" In defending his servant, God defends the marriage, and in defending the marriage, he defends her. The ones who stayed silent were the ones God spoke for.

When the cloud lifts, Miriam is leprous, white as snow. The woman who spoke against a dark-skinned wife is struck in her own skin, an irony scripture never explains because it does not need to. Yet mercy runs underneath it all: Moses prays for the sister who attacked his family, "O God, please heal her," and all of Israel waits seven days until she is restored. Nearly forty years later, Moses reminded the next generation, "Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam." That command gives the song its name: Zachor Miryam, Hebrew for "Remember Miriam." The song is built on the sacred instruments of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, one of the oldest Christian churches in the world: the kebero drum, the sistrum, and the begena, the lyre their tradition calls the harp of David, alongside the krar, Ethiopia's folk lyre. It is a way of honoring the people of Cush, who have worshiped God for centuries.