Zipporah

Zipporah is the daughter of the priest of Midian, the wife of Moses, and the mother of Gershom and Eliezer. Her brief but consequential appearance on the journey back to Egypt gives her an unusual moment of direct agency: when the LORD confronts Moses at a lodging place, Zipporah circumcises their son, and the threat ends. She later returns with her sons to meet Moses in the wilderness.

Marriage and Family in Midian

After Moses fled Pharaoh and settled in Midian, he helped the priest’s seven daughters water their flock. Their father welcomed Moses, and Moses remained with him; the priest gave Zipporah to Moses as his wife. She bore a son, Gershom, whose name Moses connected with his status as a stranger in a foreign land.

When Moses was sent back to Egypt, he took his wife and sons with him and carried the rod of God. The narrative places Zipporah and the children within the return journey, alongside Moses’s renewed commission to confront Pharaoh and demand the release of Israel.

The Encounter on the Journey

At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and sought to kill him. Zipporah acted immediately: she took a flint, circumcised their son, and touched Moses with what she had removed. She called him a bridegroom of blood, referring to the circumcision; afterward, the LORD let Moses alone. The brief episode makes Zipporah’s action the turning point in a crisis whose cause the narrative leaves unstated.

Return to Moses

After the Israelites had left Egypt, Jethro brought Zipporah and their two sons to Moses in the wilderness at the mountain of God. The account identifies the second son as Eliezer, naming him in connection with God’s help and Moses’s deliverance from Pharaoh. Moses went out to meet Jethro, bowed, kissed him, and heard the news of his household’s arrival.

Narrative Significance

Zipporah’s story is told through a few sharply consequential domestic and travel scenes. Her marriage and motherhood connect Moses’s life in Midian to his return to Egypt; her intervention at the lodging place resolves an immediate threat; and her later reunion with Moses restores his wife and sons to the narrative of the wilderness journey. In the circumcision episode, she—not Moses—is the one who performs the act that ends the danger.