Women -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Women in the Bible
It has also been thought that Jethro and his house, before his
acquaintance with Moses, was not a worshipper of the true God. Traces
of this appear in the delay which Moses had suffered to take place in
respect to the circumcision of his sons. But the fact that Zipporah
started from her home in Midian to accompany her husband upon his
mission in Egypt, and of her joining him when he had reached the
wilderness, upon his return, shows that she was in sympathy with his
work, and, doubtless, if up to the time the Lord suddenly withstood
Moses at the wayside inn, she was not fully in accord with him in her
faith, that this incident fully established her in the true faith.
There is a legend which, if not true, is characteristic of the priest
of Midian. This Midrash tale relates that Jethro was a counselor of
Pharaoh, who tried to dissuade him from slaughtering the Israelitish
children, and consequently, on account of his clemency, was forced to
flee into Midian, but was rewarded by becoming the father-in-law of
Moses.
The wife of so excellent and remarkable a man as Moses, and one who
possessed so many womanly qualities as did this shepherdess whom Moses
found by the well in Arabia, in the faithful discharge of her duties,
deserves a place in the galaxy of Women in White Raiment.
The hospitality, freehearted and unsought which Jethro at once extended
to the unknown, homeless wanderer, on the relation of his daughters
that he had watered their flock, is a picture of Eastern manners no
less true than lovely, and gives us a fine view of the quaint habits
and honest simplicity of the Oriental people.
We now pass to the daughter of Jochebed, namely, Miriam. She first came
to our notice when the little ark of Moses was placed among the flags
of the Nile. Her mother set her to watch the little craft as it floated
on the bosom of the great river. When the princess Thonoris, Pharaoh’s
daughter, discovered the child and sent her maid to rescue him from
his perilous surroundings, Miriam, then probably a young girl, appeared
before the Egyptian princess, and asked if she should call a nurse for
the child. In reply to this question, Thonoris said to her she might
find for her a nurse. And Miriam hastened to the home of her parents,
“and called the child’s mother.”
This act shows that Miriam was not only quick-witted, but had the
courage to carry her convictions into effect. Though very human, as
fully demonstrated in after years, she was faithful to her mother when
she watched the boat woven of river plants and made water-tight with
asphaltum, carrying its one passenger. And was she not very courageous
and did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming eternity under
obligation when she defended her helpless brother from the perils of
the Nile? She it was that brought that wonderful babe and its mother
together, so that he was reared to be the deliverer of his nation. What
a garland for faithful sisterhood!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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