Miriam’s Song and the Bitter Waters of Marah

Note: This is the final article in a 3-part series about the moments immediately preceding and following Shirat HaYam. I recommend you read those articles first since the ideas build on themselves. You can find the first article here.

To fully understand the lessons of Miriam’s Song and how they apply to Klal Yisroel as a whole, we need to consider the song’s connection to another incident in the Torah– the bitter waters of Marah:

Then Moses caused Israel to set out from the Sea of Reeds. They went on into the wilderness of Shur; they traveled three days in the wilderness and found no water.

They came to Marah, but they could not drink the waters of Marah because they were bitter; therefore, it was named Marah.

And the people complained against Moshe, saying, “What shall we drink?”

So he cried out to Hashem and Hashem taught him concerning a piece of wood; he threw it into the water and the water became sweet. There [God] made for them a statute and an ordinance; there they were put to the test.

And [Hashem] said, If you hearken to the voice of the Hashem, your God, and you do what is proper in His eyes, and you listen closely to His commandments and observe all His statutes, all the sicknesses that I have visited upon Egypt I will not visit upon you, for I, the Lord, heal you.¹

In a Torah scroll, each parsha is separated by either an open line, a “petuach,” or a closed line, “setumah.” A petuach starts on a new line and indicates the beginning of a new subject or section, whereas a setumah begins on the same line after a gap of nine spaces and indicates a subject’s continuation.

One would expect Miriam’s Song to be separated by a setumah from Shirat HaYam, the Song of the Sea. Instead, it is separated by a petuach. This is further supports the idea that Miriam’s Song is on a different spiritual level to the song sung by Moshe Rabbeinu and the men. It was so different, in fact, that they were treated by the Torah as completely separate subjects.

Interestingly, Miriam’s Song is separated from the incident of the bitter waters of Marah by a setumah.

What could the connection be between Miriam’s Song and the incident at Marah?

Miriam’s Song: When Bitter Turns Sweet

In the aftermath of Krias Yam Suf, many jewels, pearls, gold and silver as well as other treasures that had belonged to the Egyptians were washed ashore. Every day the Jewish People would go to the sea to collect these riches. When Moshe gave over the Divine command to leave the Sea of Reeds, many within Klal Yisroel weren’t so happy about it.²  

The Baal Shem Tov teaches that our perception of the world is merely a reflection of what is happening inside our very selves. Klal Yisroel was bitter after being forced to move away from the sea, so the water tasted bitter to them. Thus, “they could not drink the waters of Marah because they [the Jewish people] were bitter.”

Yet, how were these waters ultimately sweetened? According to Chazal, God told Moshe to throw into the water a piece of… bitter wood!

What’s going on here?

Bitterness is a mindset; it lives in our thoughts. Like yeush, bitterness is both corrosive and debilitating. The resentment, disappointment, and anger that go along with it can take over our lives, corrupting our perception of ourselves, our environment and those around us. In the end, it saps our strength, vitality, and joy.

Bitterness is also closely associated with Miriam HaNavia and Klal Yisroel’s servitude in Egypt.

The name Miriam (מרים) literally means, “bitter sea.” It was a testament to the harsh oppression of the Egyptian exile that had reached its height at the time of her birth.

וַיְמָרְרוּ אֶת–חַיֵּיהֶם בַּעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה

And they [the Egyptians] embittered their lives with hard work³

From the very beginning, Miriam shared in the bitterness and pain of the Jewish people. At any point, she could have let herself be engulfed in all the suffering and misery; she could have claimed that she was a victim of circumstances.

Instead, she chose to keep herself focused on:

מי רם

[He] Who is On High

It would be 80 long, hard years before Hashem’s promise of redemption was fulfilled. Throughout that time Miriam worked tirelessly to encourage the Jewish women and infuse them with the emunah and the knowledge they needed to rise above all the darkness and depression, pain and the doubt, that surrounded them on a daily basis.

Most importantly Miriam taught the women that in all of their sorrow Hashem was right there with them, sharing in their distress. As the Midrash recounts in Egypt there were numerous displays of Hashem’s compassion and Guiding Hand. He was visible to anyone who sought to find Him.⁴

After Krias Yam Suf, the women didn’t just follow Miriam with drums and dances. These women brought with them all that they had experienced in Egypt- all the pain and tears, all the setbacks and daily struggles along the way. They understood that the struggles themselves were there to bring them closer to their spiritual potential. As such, these experiences were precious to them. It was in the darkest moments, that they found Hashem… and themselves.

At Marah, Hashem was hinting to Klal Yisroel that the bitterness is really just hidden sweetness. But the bitterness in our lives turns to sweet only if it is properly harnessed. To do so, we must channel the extraordinary force created by the voids, the losses, the confusion, and the displacement into the yearning to return, to reconnect, to be reunited with The Ribbono Shel Olam and our personal Chelek Elokah Mima’al.

Such yearning itself is a part of the sweetening process.

We have the power to transcend our negative circumstances through our frame of mind, through calling out to Hashem, and then being humble enough to hear and learn from the answer.

Even if a storm is swirling around us, we can receive the Heavenly Assistance we need to both hold our ground and see more clearly. When we have the courage to embrace our challenges, parts of ourselves then rise to the surface that we didn’t know existed, and the curtain of this world is lifted to reveal the Merciful One behind scenes pulling all the stings.

Hashem chose the dying Egyptians and their horses to be a revelation of the Divine reward that awaits the Jewish women in Egypt; the very source of their sorrow in this world had been transformed into a harbringer of Divine Light to come. It was a gift to those women, and to all future women after them… and to all who choose to see and believe in the hidden light in the darkness.

Sources:
Shemos 15:22-26
Midrash Tanchuma
Shemos 1:14
Sotah 11b