The Name That Carries a River
Part 2 of 8
She Was Not Named Mary
The mother of Yeshua was not named Mary. She was named Miriam.
In the Greek text of the New Testament she becomes Maria or Mariam. In Latin she becomes Maria. In English she becomes Mary, a name so thoroughly domesticated by two thousand years of devotional use that its Hebrew weight has become almost entirely invisible.
To recover what was lost, we must go back to the first Miriam in the Hebrew scriptures. Because names in Hebrew are not assigned arbitrarily. They locate a person within a story already in motion.
The First Miriam
Prophet at the Sea
The name Miriam appears for the first time in the book of Exodus. She is the sister of Moses and Aaron. She is the daughter who watched over the basket in the Nile. She arranged for the infant Moses, the future deliverer, to be nursed by his own mother, in the house of the very Pharaoh who had ordered his death.
She is present at the beginning of the deliverance story, quietly ensuring its possibility, before anyone knows what it will become.
Then comes the crossing of the sea. The waters part. Israel passes through on dry ground. The army of Pharaoh is swallowed by the returning waves. And on the other side, free for the first time, the people respond.
It is Miriam who leads that response. The text of Exodus 15 names her specifically: Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron. She took a tambourine in her hand. All the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them.
The first woman given the title of prophet in all of scripture. The first corporate song of the redeemed. Her name was Miriam.
What the Name Carries
This is the freight the name Miriam carries into the New Testament. Not merely a sound. Not merely a common name of the era, though it was common precisely because parents in that generation were naming their daughters after this woman. The name carried the prophetic voice at the edge of the sea, the tambourine, the song of the delivered people, the woman who had protected the deliverer when he was an infant and led worship when he had accomplished his work.
Every girl named Miriam in first-century Judea was named after her. And when the angel told Miriam of Nazareth that she would carry the one through whom the ultimate deliverance would come, she was already named for the woman who had protected the first deliverer and sung the first song of the redeemed.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams