Sister of Moses and Aaron, and the first person in the Bible called a PROPHETESS (Exodus 15:20). As a girl she watches the basket in the reeds and arranges for her own mother to nurse the baby who will become her brother's rival for leadership (Exodus 2:4-8) — though she is not named there; the connection is made only in hindsight. After the sea crossing she leads the women in the song's refrain with a timbrel, and her two-line reply (15:21) is nearly identical to the opening of Moses's eighteen-verse song, which has led some scholars to argue her couplet is the older, original core of the whole piece. ⚠️ Her later story turns hard: in Numbers 12 she and Aaron challenge Moses's unique authority ('has Jehovah spoken only through Moses?'), and she alone is struck with a skin disease for it, shut outside the camp seven days while Aaron goes untouched — a punishment the text never fully explains. She dies at Kadesh (Numbers 20:1) and is named centuries later by Micah among the three Jehovah sent ahead of Israel: 'Moses, Aaron, and Miriam' (Micah 6:4).