Zipporah
Zipporah or
Tzipora (
צִפּוֹרָה "Bird",
Standard Hebrew Ẓippora,
Tiberian Hebrew Ṣippôrāh), mentioned in the
Book of Exodus, is
Moses' wife, and the daughter of
Jethro, a
priest of
Midian.
In the Book of Exodus, in the process of Moses' exile from
Egypt, he begins working for Jethro as a
shepherd. Consequently he meets Zipporah (meaning female or little bird), and marries her, and they have two sons,
Gershom, and
Eliezer.
Zipporah also features in a much more curious, and much-debated, passage. The passage concerning
Moses and Zipporah reach an inn, contains four of the most difficult sentences in Biblical text. One possible interpretation is that something (perhaps God, perhaps an agent of God) tries to kill Moses, until Zipporah carries out a
circumcision. (Other interpretations suggest that it is their son, Gershom, who is attacked.). Yet another is that Moses tried to kill his own son and only after Zippora cut the child´s foreskin, drawing blood and pain, did his anger subside.
A third reference to a wife of Moses occurs in the tale of
snow-white Miriam, at Numbers 12:1, where she is described as a
Cushite (often understood to mean
Ethiopian but could also simply imply "foreign"), but is not named. Since Zipporah is a Midianite, some early sources, such as
Josephus in his
Jewish Antiquities 2.10-11, and the
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, as well as modern biblical criticism, have stated that they were different individuals, particularly since
bigamy was legal, and practiced elsewhere by
Jacob, a major patriarch. Nevertheless, a traditional Jewish and Christian view has been that they are both the same woman, the Cushite reference being only a metaphorical one concerning the perceived beauty of the Cushites.
