Zipporah
(traditional/legendary, wife of Moses)
BIRTH
UNKNOWN
PLACE
Unknown
DEATH
UNKNOWN
PLACE
Unknown
FAMILY
HUSBAND
Moses
(b. c. 1400 BC; d. 1273 BC, traditional)
HOMES
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
RELIGION NOT DOCUMENTED
DENOMINATION NOT DOCUMENTED
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
Zipporah is described in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Moses and the daughter of Jethro, a priest of Midian. Her dates are unknown, and no historical record outside the Bible mentions her. Jethro welcomed Moses into his household and gave him Zipporah as his wife. Zipporah circumcised her son with a flint and called Moses a bridegroom of blood, and he was spared. In the Book of Numbers, Miriam and Aaron criticize Moses for marrying a Cushite woman.
EARLY LIFE
According to the Book of Exodus, Zipporah was one of the seven daughters of Jethro, also called Reuel, a priest of Midian, a region usually placed in northwestern Arabia. Her dates are unknown, and no historical record outside the Bible mentions her. Exodus says that Moses, after fleeing Egypt, came to a well in Midian and defended Jethro's daughters from shepherds who were driving them away. Jethro welcomed Moses into his household and gave him Zipporah as his wife. They had two sons, Gershom and Eliezer.
According to Exodus, when Moses returned to Egypt with his family, God sought to kill Moses (or, in some readings, his son) at a lodging place on the way. Zipporah circumcised her son with a flint and called Moses a bridegroom of blood, and he was spared.
Later, Exodus relates, Jethro brought Zipporah and her sons to Moses in the wilderness near Mount Sinai, after the Israelites had left Egypt.
In the Book of Numbers, Miriam and Aaron criticize Moses for marrying a Cushite woman. Some interpreters identify this woman with Zipporah, while others think she was a second wife.
CAREER
DEATH
Zipporah is described in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Moses and the daughter of Jethro, a priest of Midian. Jethro welcomed Moses into his household and gave him Zipporah as his wife. Zipporah circumcised her son with a flint and called Moses a bridegroom of blood, and he was spared. Later, Exodus relates, Jethro brought Zipporah and her sons to Moses in the wilderness near Mount Sinai, after the Israelites had left Egypt. In the Book of Numbers, Miriam and Aaron criticize Moses for marrying a Cushite woman. The date and circumstances of Zipporah's death are not securely documented in the biographical material available here. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
103083