Zipporah (Moses's Ethiopian Wife) Saves His Life: On the Road to Glory, God Intercedes

By Dr. Lawrence E. Henry

In this book, we will discover how Zipporah (Moses’s wife) saved Moses’s life from a certain death and ensured he carried out the commission given him by God. Next to Mary (Jesus’s mother), Zipporah was arguably one of the most important women in the Bible as will be revealed in chapter 2.

“Bizarre” is typical of how biblical scholars describe the tale of Zipporah and her husband, Moses, especially the section in which God planned to kill Moses and Zipporah uses a blood ritual to successfully defend her husband and son. For mystery, mayhem, and sheer baffling weirdness, nothing else in the Bible quite compares with the story of Zipporah and the “bridegroom of blood.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685170295

Book preview

Chapter 1

Moses Meets and Marries an Ethiopian Woman

Moses married a Cushite/Ethiopian woman, in the land of Midian, after he escaped from Egypt. The following verses describe how he met and married Zipporah.

When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh, and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.

Now a priest of Midian (Jethro) had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock.

Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.

When the girls returned to (Jethro) Reuel their father, he asked them, Why have you returned so early today?

They answered, An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.

And where is he? Reuel asked his daughters. Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.

Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. (Exodus 2:15–21)

The meeting between Moses and Zipporah and their subsequent marriage was not by chance. God chose Zipporah for some heavenly purpose, which will be revealed in the following chapters. In the book of Numbers, Aaron and Miriam rejected Moses’s wife. This rejection of Moses’s wife angered God and resulted in God punishing Miriam. God’s reaction to Aaron and Miriam indicated that there was something special about Moses’s wife.

Chapter 2

Aaron and Miriam Criticize Moses’s Ethiopian Wife

The entire encounter, intervention, and reaction by God are included here because it shows how important Moses’s wife was to God. These verses started out by God admonishing Aaron and Miriam because of their comments concerning Moses’s wife.

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also? And the Lord heard it.

Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.

And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron and Miriam, Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting. And the three of them came out.

And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward.

And he said, Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed.

When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, like snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous.

And Aaron said to Moses, Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother’s womb. And Moses cried to the Lord, O God, please heal her—please.

But the Lord said to Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut outside the camp seven days, and after that she may be brought in again. So Miriam was shut outside the camp seven days, and the people did not set out on the march till Miriam was brought in again. (Numbers 12:1–15)

Unlike the wives of King Saul, Abraham, King David, King Solomon, and others, the Bible makes no reference of Moses having any other wives or concubines than the one in Exodus and Numbers; they were one and the same Ethiopian woman. The Samaritan sages came to the understanding that Moses married only one wife, and once he became absolutely devoted to his prophetic mission, he never got married again. God’s response to Aaron and Miriam in the above verses is quite clear; He was angered by their response to the race of Zipporah. The book of Numbers is the only place in the Bible that refers to Zipporah’s race. God’s selection of Zipporah was to satisfy a higher order known only to God and should not have been questioned by Aaron and Miriam.

On many occasions in the Bible, God is instrumental in choosing wives for people chosen to carry out His will for the kingdom of heaven, such as in Genesis 28:1–7:

So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: Do not marry a Canaanite woman. Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham. Then Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau.

Although not stated, it’s believed that Zipporah was chosen by God for Moses.

The word Cushi or Kushi is generally used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to a dark-skinned person of African descent, equivalent to Greek Aithíops. The word is a derivation of Cush, referring to the ancient kingdom of Kush which was centered on the upper Nile and Nubia (modern-day Sudan). Mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, Cushites are considered descendants of Noah’s grandson Cush, the son of Ham. In biblical and historical usage, the term Cushites (Hamites) refers to individuals of East African origin (born of Africa and Sudan).

In early Modern Hebrew usage, the term Cushi was used as an unmarked referent to a dark-skinned or red-haired person without derogatory implications.

Chapter 3

Zipporah Saves Moses’s Life

Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me, she said. (Exodus 4:25)

The specific incident between God, Moses, and Zipporah that prompted Zipporah to circumcise her sons and save Moses’s life is told in the book of Exodus:

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him.

But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me, she said.

So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.

And the Lord said to Aaron; Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. And he went, and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him. (Exodus 4:24–27)

After the circumcision, Moses was now ready to start the task that he was chosen. In the above verses, it was finally revealed how God had chosen Moses’s wife (Zipporah) and how she was used for the kingdom of heaven. God was about to put Moses to death. He allegedly had failed to keep God’s covenant by failing to circumcise his sons. Zipporah, who with quick thinking, saved her husband’s life by giving their son a brit milah! It’s difficult to determine whether the circumcision of Moses’s son was a test of Moses’s faith or Zipporah’s, but in either event, it did the trick of satisfying the requirements of the covenant and circumcision. The details of Exodus 4:24–27 are unclear and subject to debate.

God’s threat to kill Moses in Exodus 4:24 maybe explained in Hebrews 12:7–13:

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of