Zipporah

Exodus 2:21-22; 4:20, 24-26; 18:2-6

  • Exodus 2:21-22 Moses agreed to stay with the man [Jethro], and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage. She bore a son, and he named him Gershom, for he said, “I have been an alien residing in a foreign land.”

  • Exodus 4:20 So Moses took his wife and his sons, put them on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt, and Moses carried the staff of God in his hand.

 “Moses and his Ethiopian Wife Zipporah” by Jacob Jordaens, circa 1650. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. 

Zipporah is the daughter of Jethro/Reuel and wife of Moses. She meets her future husband in Exodus 2:21-22. After fleeing to Midian from Egypt, Moses meets his future wife at a well. Zipporah and her sisters were there watering their flock, but shepherds drove them away, until Moses came to their defense. After hearing what Moses did for his daughters, Jethro, the priest of Midian, invites Moses to stay in his home and gives Zipporah to Moses as his wife. They have two children together, Gershom and Eliezer.

After encountering God in a burning bush, Moses is called to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of slavery. During the journey, however, something very strange happens: God attacks (Exod 4:24). Just who God attacks, though, is unclear. It could be Moses or Moses’ sons (the text uses male pronouns, not proper names). What is clear is that Zipporah knows what to do. She performs an obscure ritual involving circumcision, and God relents.

Zipporah’s quick thinking makes her one of several women who save Moses from death. Notably, though, she is not an Israelite. Like the Egyptian princess who finds Moses as a baby, Zipporah is a foreign woman who, through the twists and turns of the Exodus story, plays a role in the liberation of God’s people. 

  • Zipporah’s name means “bird.” Her name and her protective action in saving her husband make her comparable to the Egyptian goddess Isis. Isis is known for her “fierce loyalty to her husband Osiris” and is “often portrayed as a bird of prey” (“Zipporah: Bible” by Tikva Frymer-Kensky). 

  • Apparently, Zipporah and her sons aren’t in Egypt for the exodus event. In Exodus 18, they are escorted back to Moses by Zipporah’s father, Jethro. 

  • In Numbers 12:1, Aaron and Miriam complain about Moses’s Cushite wife. It’s not clear whether the Cushite wife is Zipporah or if Moses has taken a second wife.