MOSES - AARON - MIRIAM

 In today's Office of Readings, we hear the voice of the prophet Micah (Chaptrt 6 )

...For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,

from the place of slavery I released you;

And I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam...

Think back and remember: according to Numbers 26: 57–59, Miriam and Aaron are true siblings of Moses, i.e. he shares their blood. By tradition, Miriam was much older than Moses (in fact, some traditions identify her with the midwife who delivered him); Aaron was perhaps 3 years his senior.

MOSES was called by the Burning Bush in the desert, in a land far from his peple where he had fled after murdering an Egyptian.   He had been raised as an Egyptian:  he was not even circumcized into God's Covenant when he met God face to face.  Yet he was chosen. In another way, we would think him unfit:  while God gave him the authority to speak "In His Name*", poor Moses had a speech impediment!  (According to a traditional Jewish midrash, Moses' impeded speech dated from infancy when the angel Gabriel had guided him to place a hot coal in his mouth.)

This is yet another example of the maxim, "God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called".  So, the LORD gave him both his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam to serve as Moses' prophets.

* see my post earlier this week In His Name