Moses is one of the best-known people in the Bible. Zipporah, his wife, is less well known. She was the daughter of Jethro, a Midianite priest. When Moses had to flee after committing the murder of an Egyptian, he came to the wilderness of Midian. God arranged for him to meet Jethro’s daughters at a well, and Jethro took him into his house. Moses agreed to stay with the man and to tend his sheep. It turned out as it had to. The biblical text says: “Moses was willing to live with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses” (Exodus 2:21). This is the first time Zipporah is mentioned in the Bible. The biblical text only adds: “Then she gave birth to a son, and he named him Gershom, for he said, ‘I have been a stranger in a foreign land’” (Exodus 2:22). Up to that point, everything looked like a relatively normal marital relationship. Two people marry and have children. Whether it was a love match, however, we do not know.
The marital relationship between Moses and Zipporah does not seem entirely ordinary or free of tension. It is particularly striking that the Bible says very little about Moses’ family life. About the 40 years in Jethro’s house, we learn only that Moses and Zipporah married and had two sons. After that, Zipporah is mentioned only twice more, in Exodus 4:24–26 and Exodus 18:2. For the rest of the journey through the wilderness, Zipporah is no longer mentioned. The two passages cited suggest that Moses and Zipporah did not always pull in the same direction. The reason may be that they thought differently about raising their children. In Exodus 4 we learn that at least one of their sons, contrary to God’s instructions, had not been circumcised, and from Exodus 18 we can infer that Zipporah was not with her sons when the people of Israel left Egypt. She apparently returned in the meantime with her children to her father, Jethro, and only later met up with her husband again, when the people of Israel had long since crossed the Red Sea and been freed from Egypt.
The scene in Exodus 4 is described as follows: “Now it came about at the overnight encampment on the way, that the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and threw it at Moses’ feet, and she said, ‘You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me.’ So He let him alone. At that time she said, ‘You are a bridegroom of blood’—because of the circumcision” (Exodus 4:24–26).
That at least one of Moses’ sons was not circumcised was not in accordance with the will of God. Moses knew that very well, and Zipporah must have known it as well. Otherwise, in the emergency she would not have immediately taken the right—and necessary—measure. God was about to fulfill his covenant promise to Abraham and redeem Israel from Egypt. The sign of this covenant was circumcision (Genesis 17:1–14). Whoever was not circumcised was to die. That was God’s clear instruction.
Why of all people a son of Moses—the divinely appointed deliverer of the people of Israel—was not circumcised, we do not know. In any case, the thought suggests itself that the mother Zipporah had prevented it up to then. She was not from the people of Israel, and this act may have seemed foreign and cruel to her. She wanted—perhaps with good intentions—to spare her son the pain associated with it. Possibly she belonged to the species of mothers who want to remove every stone from their children’s path that they might stumble over.
We do not know what discussions Moses and Zipporah had about this matter. Perhaps they could not agree. Perhaps they simply kept quiet about the topic. In any case, Moses, as the father, bore the main responsibility. That is why the LORD attacked him and sought to kill him. If Zipporah had indeed prevented the circumcision, then Moses could not hide behind that. As the “head,” he bore responsibility for what happened in his house. God therefore calls not Zipporah to account, but Moses. Nevertheless, it is unacceptable when a wife and mother digs in her heels on certain points and tries to prevent divine principles in the family. Under certain circumstances, she thereby puts her husband and her children in great danger.
Mothers must learn that God’s commandments stand above everything else. Even if fulfilling the will of God is sometimes not easy for our children, it can only have fatal consequences if mothers, in such situations, place themselves protectively in front of their children and thus prevent God’s commandments from being obeyed. Even more fatal is when father and mother do not pull in the same direction in such situations, and the children perhaps even notice.
There may very well be situations in family life in which father and mother have different thoughts regarding their children. What is to be done then? There are various approaches to solutions. Constant arguing about it is a dead end. Keeping quiet about it is too. Rather, father and mother should—preferably without the children noticing—seek open exchange about it and talk to God about it in prayer. Under certain circumstances, it can help to seek external advice. If both seek dialogue with the right inner attitude, in most cases a good solution will be found, above all one that corresponds to God’s thoughts. When the Bible does not give clear guidance, the wife and mother, when in doubt, is well advised to follow her husband, who ultimately bears responsibility before God.
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