Chapter 5: The Prophetesses They Silenced

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Lost Women.

The dust had barely settled when she took up the tambourine.

On the far side of the sea, with the Egyptian army drowned behind them and freedom still a horizon away, Miriam raised her voice in song. The women followed, their hands clapping, feet dancing, the rhythm of deliverance echoing across the sand.

"Sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously:
Horse and rider He has hurled into the sea."

This was not a secondary echo. It was the first recorded act of female prophetic leadership in the Hebrew Bible. Miriam was not only the sister of Moses and Aaron. She was called neviah—prophetess. She was named, she was heard, she was honored.

And then she faded.¹

In the centuries that followed, Miriam's voice became more shadow than sound. Later redactors gave her only fragments. Rabbinic midrash praised her as a righteous woman—but often as a support character, not a theologian or leader in her own right. Her name remained in sacred memory. But her voice—like those of other biblical prophetesses—was slowly tuned out.

Miriam's story reflects a broader pattern within the formation and transmission of Jewish sacred texts: early female authority acknowledged, then minimized. Named prophetesses appear in the Tanakh—Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, and others—but are rarely given extended speeches or central roles in theological discourse. Where they speak, it is often briefly. Where they lead, it is often left uncommented. And when the canon solidified under priestly and scribal control in the post-exilic period, the presence of such women became ever more peripheral.

Miriam first appears in Exodus 2, though unnamed, watching over her infant brother in the Nile reeds. She speaks boldly to Pharaoh's daughter, arranging for Moses' own mother to nurse him. Later, in Exodus 15:20–21, she is identified as a prophetess and leads the women of Israel in a song of triumph following the crossing of the Red Sea. But the verses are compact. Moses' version of the song spans over a dozen lines; Miriam's consists of just two. Scholars have long debated whether Miriam's song was originally longer—and whether Moses' version built upon or supplanted it.²

In Numbers 12, Miriam again appears—this time challenging Moses' exclusive claim to divine revelation. Alongside Aaron, she asks: "Has the LORD spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?" (Num. 12:2). God responds not with an egalitarian affirmation, but with punishment: Miriam is struck with skin disease and cast outside the camp for seven days. Aaron pleads on her behalf; Moses intercedes; she is eventually healed. But Aaron is not punished. The message is ambiguous, and its interpretation shaped later theological assumptions about women's spiritual authority.³

The roles of biblical women become clearer when we understand the distinctions between different types of religious authority in ancient Israel. Prophetic roles—receiving and transmitting divine revelation—were sometimes accessible to women, as evidenced by figures like Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah. Priestly roles—conducting Temple sacrifice and maintaining ritual purity—were restricted to male Levites. Wisdom roles—teaching, interpreting, and preserving tradition—occupied a middle ground, with some evidence of female participation that was later constrained. Understanding these distinctions helps explain why certain women could speak with divine authority while remaining excluded from other forms of religious leadership.⁴

By the time the canon of Hebrew scripture took shape—understood by most scholars to have solidified in stages between the 5th and 2nd centuries BCE—priestly redactors had centralized authority around male prophetic and priestly figures. The temple cult, the Levitical caste, and post-exilic scribal classes offered little institutional space for women as legal or theological actors.⁵

And yet, in the margins and footnotes of scripture, their presence persists.

Deborah, in Judges 4–5, is explicitly called both prophetess and judge. She leads Israel into battle, delivers oracles, and composes a national victory song. But even in this celebrated narrative, later Jewish commentary often downplays her judicial role or frames it as exceptional due to male absence.⁶

Huldah, in 2 Kings 22, is consulted by King Josiah's delegation when the Book of the Law is discovered in the Temple—a moment that helped spark one of the most sweeping religious reforms in Jewish history. Her oracle is accepted without question. Yet later tradition largely sidelines her in favor of male prophets like Jeremiah, whose ministry coincided with hers.⁷

The post-biblical era saw further contraction. Rabbinic Judaism, with its intense focus on Torah study, developed within a social structure in which women were generally not permitted to study sacred texts formally. While women's roles in maintaining domestic religious practice—lighting Sabbath candles, preparing kosher food, maintaining family purity—were valued, they were seldom recognized as interpreters or transmitters of sacred text.

Yet women found ways to maintain and express religious authority across different historical periods, adapting their forms of expression to changing circumstances. And yet, oral traditions, folk customs, and women's liturgical practices sustained alternative modes of transmission. Yiddish prayer books written for women, called tkhines, emerged in the early modern period. These were often authored anonymously but show a deep engagement with scripture—retold, personalized, and spiritually profound.⁸ In the medieval period, figures like Bruriah demonstrated women's capacity for Talmudic scholarship, though such examples remained exceptional. In modern times, women like Glikl of Hameln used memoir and business correspondence to preserve and transmit Jewish religious life, creating new forms of religious expression that documented the lived experience of faith.⁹

Today, feminist Jewish scholars such as Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Judith Plaskow, and Rachel Adler have worked to recover the theological implications of women's voices in scripture. They argue that prophetesses like Miriam and Huldah were not aberrations, but part of a larger, if often hidden, pattern of female religious authority. Their erasure was not accidental. It was editorial.¹⁰ Contemporary scholarship in Rabbinic literature continues to uncover evidence of women's contributions to Jewish religious thought, demonstrating that the marginalization of women's voices was a historical process rather than a theological necessity.

The biblical canon remains fixed. But its interpretation is not.

Miriam still sings, if we listen.

"Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a timbrel in her hand,
and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing.
Miriam sang to them:
'Sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider He has hurled into the sea.'"
—Exodus 15:20–21

The silence around Miriam and her sisters was not the absence of sound. It was the consequence of choices—what to include, what to minimize, whose speech to amplify. The prophetesses of Israel left traces in the sacred text, but their echoes had to compete with centuries of redaction and restriction. Still, they remain. Not as legends alone, but as the foremothers of a prophetic tradition that was never meant to be male-only. To remember them is to widen the lens of revelation.

Also Remembered

Deborah (Judges 4–5): Prophetess and judge who led Israel to military victory against the Canaanites. One of the few women in the Bible given extensive speech, her story demonstrates that women could hold both prophetic and judicial authority in early Israel.

Huldah (2 Kings 22): Prophetess consulted by Josiah's court when the Book of the Law was discovered in the Temple. Her oracle affirmed the authenticity of the text and sparked major religious reforms, yet she is rarely mentioned alongside her contemporary Jeremiah.

The Wise Woman of Abel (2 Samuel 20): Negotiated peace between David's army and her besieged city through theological argument and political wisdom. Though unnamed, she represents the tradition of women as community leaders and peace-makers.

Bruriah (2nd century CE): Talmudic-era sage known for her sharp legal mind and commentary on Jewish law. Often cited by later rabbis for her scholarship, though some later traditions minimized her contributions or questioned her character.

Glikl of Hameln (17th century CE): Memoirist and businesswoman whose writings provide rare female perspective on Jewish religious life in early modern Europe. Her memoirs demonstrate how women preserved and transmitted religious culture through personal narrative.

The Woman of Tekoa (2 Samuel 14): Delivered a parable to King David that changed his mind about recalling his exiled son Absalom. Her theological sophistication and rhetorical skill demonstrate women's capacity for religious and political persuasion.

Notes

This opening scene represents a plausible reconstruction based on the biblical account in Exodus 15:20–21 and scholarly understanding of ancient Israelite victory celebrations. While specific details of setting and emotion are constructed for narrative purposes, the basic elements—Miriam's prophetic role, the women's dance, and the song itself—are textually grounded. See Carol Meyers, Exodus (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 118–125.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (Schocken, 2002), 30–35.
Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Fortress Press, 1984), 33–38.
Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford University Press, 2012), 156–189.
Jacob Neusner, The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism (Brill, 1973), 102–106.
Susan Niditch, Judges: A Commentary (Westminster John Knox, 2008), 64–68.
Meyers, Rediscovering Eve, 245–249.
Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (Beacon Press, 1998), 11–23.
Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible, 89–105; on Glikl specifically, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Harvard University Press, 1995), 5–62.
Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 25–56; Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Jewish Publication Society, 1998), 45–78.

Further Reading

Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (Schocken, 2002). Comprehensive analysis of female biblical figures with attention to their theological significance and historical marginalization.

Carol Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford University Press, 2012). Archaeological and anthropological approach to understanding women's roles in ancient Israel.

Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (HarperSanFrancisco, 1990). Foundational work of Jewish feminist theology examining women's exclusion and inclusion in Jewish tradition.

Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (Beacon Press, 1998). Study of tkhines and other forms of women's religious expression in Jewish tradition.

Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Jewish Publication Society, 1998). Contemporary Jewish feminist analysis of how gender has shaped Jewish religious thought.

Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (University of California Press, 1997). Analysis of how Rabbinic Judaism constructed gender roles and their impact on religious authority.