In the Book of Exodus, Zipporah was one of the seven daughters of Jethro, a
Kenite shepherd who was a priest of
Midian.[3] In
Exodus 2:18, Jethro is also referred to as Reuel, and in the Book of Judges (
Judges 4:11) as
Hobab.[4] Hobab is also the name of Jethro's son in
Numbers 10:29.
Moses marries Zipporah
While the
Israelites/
Hebrews were captives in Egypt, Moses killed an Egyptian who was striking a Hebrew, for which offense
Pharaoh sought to kill Moses. Moses therefore fled from Egypt and arrived in Midian. One day while he sat by a well, Reuel's daughters came to water their father's flocks. Other shepherds arrived and drove the girls away, so that they could water their own flocks first. Moses defended the girls and watered their flocks. Upon their return home, their father asked them, "How is it that you have come home so early today?" The girls answered, "An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds; he even drew water for us and watered the flock." "Where is he then?", Reuel asked them. "Why did you leave the man? Invite him for supper to break bread." Reuel then gave Moses Zipporah as his wife (
Exodus 2:11–21).
After God commanded Moses to return to Egypt to free the Israelites, Moses took his wife and sons and started his journey. On the road, they stayed at an inn, where God came to kill Moses. Zipporah quickly circumcised her son with a sharp stone and touched Moses' feet with the foreskin, saying "Surely you are a husband of blood to me!" God then left Moses alone (
Exodus 4:24–26). The details of the passage are unclear and subject to debate.
The Exodus
After Moses succeeded in leading the Israelites out of Egypt, and won a battle against
Amalek, Reuel came to the Hebrew camp in the wilderness of Sinai, bringing with him Zipporah and their two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. The Bible does not say when Zipporah and her sons rejoined Reuel/Jethro, only that after he heard of what God did for the Israelites, he brought Moses' family to him. The most common translation is that Moses sent her away, but another grammatically permissible translation is that she sent things or persons, perhaps the announcement of the victory over Amalek.[5] The word that makes this difficult is shelucheiha, the sendings [away] of her (
Ex. 18:2).[citation needed]
Numbers 12
Moses' wife is referred to as a "
Cushite woman" in
Numbers 12. Interpretations differ on whether this
Cushite woman [
he] was one and the same as Zipporah, or another woman, and whether he was married to them simultaneously (which would make him a
polygamist) or successively.[6][7] In the story,
Aaron and
Miriam criticize Moses' marriage to a Cushite woman. This
criticism displeases God, who punishes Miriam with tzaraath (often glossed as leprosy). Cushites were of the ancestry of either
Kush (
Nubia) in northeast
Africa, or
Arabians. The sons of
Ham, mentioned within the
Book of Genesis, have been identified with nations in Africa (Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya), the Levant (Canaan), and Arabia. The Midianites themselves were later depicted at times in non-Biblical sources as dark-skinned and called Kushim, a Hebrew word used for dark-skinned Africans.[8][9] One interpretation is that the wife is Zipporah, and that she was referred to as a Cushite though she was a Midianite, because of her beauty.[10]
The
Samaritan Pentateuch text refers to
Moses' wife Zipporah as "Kaashet" (which translates to "the beautiful woman"), rather than "Cushit" ("black woman" or "Cushite woman").[11][better source needed]
"Cushite woman" becomes Αἰθιόπισσα in the Greek
Septuagint (3rd century BCE)[12] and Aethiopissa in the Latin
Vulgate Bible version (4th century).
Alonso de Sandoval, 17th century
Jesuit, reasoned that Zipporah and the Cushite woman was the same person, and that she was black. He puts her in a group of what he calls "notable and sainted Ethiopians".[13]: 248, 253–254
In the Druze religion
In the
Druze religion, Zipporah's father Jethro is revered as the spiritual founder, chief prophet, and ancestor of all Druze.[14][15][16][17][18] Moses was allowed to wed Zipporah after helping save Jethro's daughters and their flock from competing herdsmen.[19] It has been expressed by prominent Druze such as
Amal Nasser el-Din[20] and Salman Tarif, who was a prominent Druze shaykh, that this makes the Druze related to the Jews through marriage.[21] This view has been used to represent an element of the special
relationship between Israeli Jews and Druze.[22]
Art and culture
Like many other prominent biblical characters, Zipporah is depicted in several works of art.
^Tsedaka, Benyamim, and Sharon Sullivan, eds. The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2013.
ISBN978-0802865199.
^Nettler (1998). Muslim-Jewish Encounters. Routledge. p. 139.
ISBN1-1344-0854-4.
^Nisan, Mordechai (1 January 2002). Minorities in the Middle East: A History of Struggle and Self-Expression, 2d ed. McFarland. p. 282.
ISBN9780786451333.
^Rogan, Eugene L.; Shlaim, Avi (2001). The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (illustrated, reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 72.
ISBN9780521794763.
^Weingrod, Alex (1 January 1985). Studies in Israeli Ethnicity: After the Ingathering. Taylor & Francis. p. 273.
ISBN9782881240072.
Pardes, Ilana (1992). "Zipporah and the Struggle for Deliverance" in Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
ISBN9780674175426