Zipporah: Married to the Miracle Man (Part One)

Zipporah, like most of us, lived her life in relative anonymity.  Though she was married to Moses, the greatest man of God and arguably the greatest societal leader of his day, she is one of the Bible’s less distinguished women.  There is really only one incident recorded in which Zipporah reveals something of her character.  It is with this occasion in Exodus 4:18-26 that we will give attention in this lesson.

Moses had met Zipporah, one of seven daughters of the priest of Midian, in the wilderness of Midian. Like Rachel and Rebekah, her first connection with Israel was at a well.  It seems that she and her sisters had gone to draw water for the flocks. Exodus 2:16,17 reveal that they were in the middle of the watering task when a group of shepherds interrupted their work, pushing them aside.  These shepherds likely used their brawn to intimidate the sisters into relinquishing the water supply.  What the shepherds didn’t know was that they were actually up against an experienced intercessor.  Moses had fought for the underdog before (Exodus 2:11-15) and he did not have a sympathetic eye for the bully.  So Moses stood up for the maidens, was invited to dinner at the house of the priest and subsequently was given Zipporah as a wedding gift (a gift so there would be a wedding!).

Zipporah had been the daughter of a shepherd.  Now she was the wife of a shepherd.  Sometimes marriage leads us down a comfortable and familiar path.  This was likely the case as Zipporah settled into married life on the family farm in Midian.  But a burning bush was about to change all of that!

One day Moses came in from work and told Zipporah that they would be moving. They were not just moving to another spot on the farm, but Moses went on to say they were moving to Egypt.  They were not going back to the palace where Moses’ foster family lived, either.  They were going to voluntarily join a nation of slaves who were under a mighty oppression.  In fact, Moses revealed to Zipporah that he, personally, was taking on the job of deliverer for this nation.

Now Zipporah had likely grown up in an idolatrous family.  We must give her credit for following this man of Jehovah God to do the great mission for which he had been called at the burning bush.  She must have developed quite a faith in Jehovah, for the incredible story Moses told her of the burning bush put her on a donkey with her two boys headed for the greatest empire on earth.  From a front row seat she was about to witness a miraculous deliverance.  If she needed more faith, she was about to receive a divine supplement!

A Big Challenge

Exodus 4:24  is an amazing and perplexing passage.  Moses was God’s chosen deliverer. He was later to be described as the meekest man in the earth (Nos. 12:3), and one who was faithful in the house of God.  Yet in this passage, God was seeking to kill him.  I believe God was showing His extreme displeasure that Moses had ignored God’s command to circumcise his son, likely the youngest son, Eliezer.

Circumcision was the fleshly mark of the Hebrew males.  Although it was not an exclusively Hebrew rite (the Egyptians practiced it in ancient times)*,   it contained special significance for Israel because, for this nation, it was a spiritual seal of the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 17:14-21).  It was performed on the eighth day after birth (Lev.12:3).  If strangers were admitted to the Jewish commonwealth, they too were required to be circumcised.  God was serious…dead serious in this case, about the significance of circumcision.  How could  Moses ever be the undisputed leader and deliverer of the circumcised nation when his family had not completely complied with this fleshly marking of the covenant?

So the little family stops at an inn on the way to Egypt, surely expecting a good night’s sleep before the continuation of a long and tedious passageway to the execution of a monumental feat of deliverance.  Surely they were all aware that God’s presence, yea His divine assurance and intervention, was absolutely essential if Moses was to stand before this monarch with any confidence.  Yet God was about to make it clear that complete compliance was necessary to maintain the covenant relationship that was Moses’ source of confidence.

The inn was not peaceful.  Moses was being stalked by a would-be killer.  But, in this case, the stalker was omnipotent and omniscient.  He had no trouble finding Moses nor revealing His contempt for Moses’ failure to circumcise his son. 

Moses was clearly the object of the wrath of God.  It seems that Zipporah knew that her husband was in deep trouble.  It appears that she knew the reason for God’s displeasure.  So she seemingly took matters into her own hands, did the required surgery and threw the foreskin at Moses’ feet as if to symbolically place the blame for the family’s distress at the feet of her husband, Moses.

Many scholars believe Zipporah’s behavior in the inn was shamefully rebellious and needlessly violent.  While this view is widely accepted, the evidence seems overwhelming that her behavior was a reasoned response to Moses’ failure to obey God’s express command of circumcision.  After all, she was aware that the practice was required, for she had given birth to two sons, one of which had been circumcised.  Her husband was a circumcised Hebrew.  Her father later expressed a clear belief in Jehovah (Exodus 18:1-12).  It seems unlikely that Zipporah’s actions were motivated by uncontrolled anger.  It makes more sense to notice that she had a motive both to circumcise her son and to be frustrated with the spiritual ineptitude of her family leader, one who, ironically, had just been tapped to lead a huge nation from bondage.  It seems obvious that she saw an apparent need for consistency in Moses’ personal life before he attempted this huge and very public deliverance.  One could even go so far as to surmise that Zipporah deflected the anger of the Almighty toward Moses.