On January 27, 2026, I published a Blog called “Our Daily Bread.” The point of it was that the Israelites who were rescued from Egypt had to learn how to trust God.  They were His people, but after more than 400 years of slavery, they didn’t know how to provide for themselves, how to govern themselves as a nation, and they had all but forgotten the One who was supposed to be “Their God.”  The generation who came into Egypt, were the twelve sons of Jacob and their children. In that moment, “Their God” was rescuing them from a great famine in Canaan, a land that He had promised their grandfather, Abraham, to give to them.  The Pharoah invited their entire tribe to come and dwell in Egypt and he gave them Goshen, the best pasture land in Egypt. They were treated very well as long as Joseph lived, but as their tribe grew in numbers, and the memory of Joseph’s great service to the nation faded, a new king over Egypt feared the Israelites would rise up against him and he forced them into hard labor.  Not only that, but the Pharoah thought to stop the growth of their population by commanding their midwives to kill all newborn boys.  Generations of Israelites lived under hard task masters, oppressed, and feeling forgotten by Their God. 

Finally, a glimmer of hope arose when a young Israelite prophetess, Miriam, heard that a deliverer would be born. (Miriam is clearly identified as a prophetess in Exodus 15:20, the assumption that she knew her brother Moses was the deliverer and convinced her parents to hide him comes from the Midrash).  That hope would have been confirmed when she followed Moses’ little basket, floating down the Nile and the daughter of Pharoah rescued him and adopted him as her son.  She allowed him to be nursed by his own mother, and know his own people until he was weaned, likely at the age of six.  Miriam and the people may have watched for glimmers of hope that the Pharoah would change his policies and lighten their loads. But hope was dashed when Moses, at age 40, fled Egypt after his first rescue attempt, murdering one of Pharoah’s taskmasters, not to return for another 40 years.  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12)

Miriam’s name comes from the root Mary, meaning bitter.  Both the sister of Moses and the mother of Jesus had to endure bitter things in their lives.  Mary suffered greatly, but she saw her son rise from the dead in three days, she surely encountered Him at least a time or two during the 40 days He remained on Earth.  Miriam saw her brother return and lead God’s people out of Egypt and through the Red Sea.  Moreover, she saw their oppressors drowned in the sea before their eyes.  But what about the rest of the people?  They had their freedom and were no longer in fear of being pursued.  But had they lost their bitterness toward Moses and toward God?  At the very first stop after the victory at the Red Sea, the people complained that the water was bitter.  Was the bitterness in the water or was it the bitterness in the people that made the water taste bad?  They went on to grumble and complain about food, water, hardship, and about Moses’ leadership.  They threatened to go back to Egypt and to stone Moses.  They turned their gold earrings and bracelets into a golden calf to worship instead of God.  And finally, when they arrived at the promised land, they refused to go in!

Most people experience difficult things in life that cause them to wonder if God is really good, or even cause them to accuse God for their suffering.  When God promised to give the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants, He gave an explanation for the delay. In Genesis 15:16, God said, “The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.”  His mercy is so great that He gives even the worst of the bad guys the opportunity to repent before He brings justice.  The Amorites in Canaan and the Egyptians were pagan nations whose people lived side by side with God’s people.  They were not ignorant of God or His power and goodness.  When Moses confronted Pharoah to let God’s people go, they had ten opportunities to relent and repent. And when God’s wrath fell at the Red Sea, He destroyed only the Pharoah and his army, not all the Egyptians.  Yes, we may suffer at the hands of other people and we might not even see God’s justice in our lifetime.  But we also know that when we sin, God shows us mercy and gives us time to repent.

We can learn much from the lessons of the wilderness.  Forty days’ journey to the promised land became forty years.  All that time, God continued to feed them manna; to guide them with fire by night and shade by day; to provide them with water in the desert, feet that did not swell and clothing that did not wear out.  The generation that held on to their bitterness, who did not forgive their enemies and failed to trust and show gratitude to God, died in the wilderness.  Nevertheless, God was faithful to give the land promised to Abraham to their children.  They inherited cities they did not build, wells they did not dig, vineyards and orchards they did not plant, houses filled with belongings they did not acquire by their labor or money. And God fought their battles.  They only had to purify the land of the idols of the Amorites and trust in their own God.

Let us follow suit and rout out any bitter roots in our own hearts, every idol we hold higher than Elohim. Let us trust Him and be thankful.  Consider the parable of the talents given to the three servants (Matthew 25:14-30). Two were good and faithful servants who used their talents to advance their master’s kingdom.  One was bitter.  He thought of his master as a hard man. He buried his talent and gave his master no return on his investment.  In order to become a good and faithful servant to our LORD and master, we have to allow Him to get the slave out of us first.  He is the Faithful and True, and “Great is His Faithfulness!”