Seven Days

Miriam shivered in the chill of the desert evening. The wind was getting up too, and the sand blew across the plain towards her. She scratched again, tried to stop, and scratched again, cursing her skin, the sand, and the everlasting desert.

What a place. When her long-lost brother Moses had reappeared out of the desert, saying he had been sent to set the Israelites free, she had rejoiced. Their lives as slaves in Egypt had been hard. But they had only got harder after Moses arrived. Pharaoh had not been happy. Fleas, hail, frogs, locusts, blood, boils- plague had followed plague for the Egyptians, and they had not appreciated the fact that the Israelites had seemed to be immune. Finally, the last straw- every firstborn son in every Egyptian family, killed in one night. It had been horrible- and yet Miriam could not help but remember that years before, Pharaoh had ordered the death of every Israelite boy that was born. She might feel some sympathy for the ordinary Egyptians- but little for Pharaoh himself.

And so Moses had led the Israelites into freedom, even parting the waters of the Red Sea to let them through. That night she had sung and danced, praising the God who had given her little brother the power to do such things. The Israelites had moved on into the desert that seemed to go on for ever.

Miriam scratched again. The desert must have done something to her. She had been so glad to see her brother at first, proud to see him lead them into freedom. And then, little by little, she had begun to grow jealous. Moses was her little brother- why should he be special, and not her? Even now he was a hesitant speaker and seemed to spend half his time in despair at the Israelites. Miriam took a rather more pragmatic attitude and felt she could have done just as good a job at leading this rabble- better, perhaps. She had felt the God of the Israelites inspiring her words too- Moses didn’t have a monopoly on it.

And then there was his wife. Moses had married in the long years he had been away from home, and she was a foreigner- not one of them. Surely that wasn’t right for the leader of the Israelites to marry a Cushite?

All she had done was say to Aaron that it wasn’t right. And Moses’ God had heard, and called her out, and now here she was. Stuck outside the camp with a skin disease for a week, if she was lucky. She ground her teeth, remembering God’s words to her. It wasn’t fair. Aaron hadn’t been punished, even though she knew he agreed with her. He had at least begged for her to be healed. Even Moses had prayed for her to be healed when he saw what had happened to her. She scratched again, and shivered. She felt like screaming.

Her own brother had sent her out here! Without her, Moses would not even have lived! When their mother, at her wits end with hiding the boy after Pharaoh had decreed that all Israelite baby boys must be killed, had placed three-month-old Moses in a basket among the reeds of the Nile, Miriam had been the one who had watched the basket to see what happened. It had been part luck and part good judgement on the part of Miriam and her mother- Pharaoh's daughter had come to bathe and found the boy, and Miriam had told her that she knew an Israelite woman who could nurse the child for her. Pharaoh's daughter had agreed, and Moses’ own mother had nursed him those first few years, until he went to live at the palace. Without Miriam, that wouldn’t have happened. All that for the ungrateful little-

She looked up at the sound of a step. A shape was approaching her in the twilight. Miriam looked up. Was it her brother, come to forgive her and bring her back in? She didn’t want his pity.

It was Zipporah, Moses’ wife. Miriam glared at her, wondering if the woman knew she was the cause of everything that had gone wrong for her.

“I’ve brought you some food,” Zipporah said. “And a couple of the men are setting up a shelter for you.” She set down a covered basket beside Miriam and gestured in the direction she had come from. Two men were indeed carrying skins and wooden poles out of the camp.

Miriam said nothing.

“I hope you are well again soon,” Zipporah said, and, after waiting a second for a response that didn’t come, set off back to camp.

Miriam waited until Zipporah and the men had all gone back into the camp before opening the basket. Cakes of manna, freshly baked, and a jug of water.

She ate the cakes, then went to investigate the shelter. Zipporah had left a blanket there, and Miriam wrapped herself up thankfully, fighting the urge to scratch. Did Moses know what Zipporah had done? Had he sent her?

She looked down at her white, flaking skin. One week until she could go back into the camp. Seven days.


Three days later, she was still angry, but she was also too tired to care as much. The constant itch which stopped her from sleeping had worn her down. She lay in the shelter, enduring the midday heat, her skin on fire.

Maybe they should never have left Egypt to wander in this barren land. They had been slaves, true, but until Moses came along that had been bearable. There had been meat, and vegetables, and fruit, and bread. Out here, all they had to eat was manna, endless manna. God provided the manna each day, a sort of seed that could be grounds into flour to make bread or a kind of porridge. It tasted all right, but after weeks of nothing else the people had got restless and demanded meat. And meat there had been- flocks of quail. Not that it had done them much good. It had been diseased, and many had died.

She had been stupid to talk against her brother, Moses, like that. More importantly, she had been stupid to talk against God. Whatever she might be angry about, she knew all too well that they were totally dependent on him now. There was nowhere near enough food for the Israelites out here- if God abandoned them they would starve. If they did not first die of thirst- when they had run out of water, God had told Moses to split a rock with his staff- and water had flowed from it even in the middle of the desert.

Parting the sea, drawing water from a rock- Miriam had to admit that she would not have had the faith in God to do the things Moses had done. She would have been too scared of losing face when nothing happened. Moses managed to combine faith and humility.  Perhaps there was a reason Moses was the one who had been chosen to lead them after all.

Her skin was raw and bleeding and still itched. When Zipporah brought her food she had noticed and brought her clean linen for bandages, and water to soak them in to give her some relief. But she still slept only fitfully, tormented by the itch and pain and fear of what might be lurking out there in the desert. On the edge of the camp, she was aware of how vulnerable she was. But it hardly seemed to matter compared to the burning in her skin.

As the evening fell she crawled to the edge of her shelter. The sun was setting, turning the sands into a flaming sea.

She saw Zipporah approaching from the camp, bringing food, as she had every evening. On other days Miriam had not spoken to the woman, but this time, her curiosity overcame her jealousy.

“Does Moses know you have been helping me?”

“Of course,” Zipporah said. "He is your brother- he wants you to be well. We all do." She turned to leave.

"Thank you," Miriam said. She realised she no longer hated the foreign woman. She was grateful for her help, and too tired to hate.

She ate a little of the food, but she wasn't hungry. Her skin tormented her and she felt sick. As darkness fell, she lay in the shelter, turning first one way then the other seeking respite from her skin and her thoughts. "Why did you do this to me?" she cried out to God. "It would have been better for me to die!"

She wept, the salt tears stinging where they fell on open wounds. Eventually she slept.

The next day, almost unnoticed, was a little easier. The morning after that, when she woke she could tell that her skin was healing. It still itched, but the worst sores were beginning to heal and she did not feel so hopeless.

On the seventh evening, as darkness fell she saw not only Zipporah but Moses walking towards her from the edge of the camp. She stood up. and walked slowly to meet them.



Based on: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2012&version=NIV