Zipporah at the inn
Zipporah at the Inn is the name given to an episode alluded to in three verses in the 4th chapter of the Book of Exodus. The much-debated passage is one of the more perplexing conundrums of the Torah due to ambiguous references through pronouns and phrases with unclear designations. Various translations of the Bible have sought to make the section clearer through a restructuring of the sentences with a more indirect, yet more straightforward, interpretation.
Passage
The story of Zipporah at the Inn occurs through Exodus 4:24–26, when
Leningrad Codex text:
- 24. ויהי בדרך במלון ויפגשהו יהוה ויבקש המיתו׃
- 25. ותקח צפרה צר ותכרת את־ערלת בנה ותגע לרגליו ותאמר כי חתן־דמים אתה לי׃
- 26. וירף ממנו אז אמרה חתן דמים למולת׃ פ
King James Version translation:
- 24. And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him.
- 25. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, "Surely a bloody husband art thou to me."
- 26. So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.
New Revised Standard Version translation:
- 24. On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him.
- 25. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched his feet with it, and said, "Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!"
- 26. So he let him alone. It was then she said, "A bridegroom of blood by circumcision."
The standard interpretation of the passage is that God wanted to kill Moses for neglecting the
Various interpretations
The "cryptic"[1] passage has inspired spirited debate in no small measure. It raises numerous questions:
"What keeps Moses from reacting? Why is circumcision necessary? Why does Zipporah perform the circumcision? Whose feet are touched with the foreskin? What is the meaning of Zipporah's incantation? Who is the "bridegroom of blood?" Why does Yahweh withdraw?" [1]
One problem is the text's usage of pronouns, without ever identifying which of the three individuals (God, Moses, or Zipporah's son) is being referred to. In particular, it is unclear whom God sought to kill (Moses or Zipporah's son), whose feet (God's, Moses's, or her son's) Zipporah touches with the foreskin, whom (God, Moses, or her son) Zipporah is addressing as her "bloody bridegroom," and the meaning of the phrase "bloody bridegroom" itself.[2][3]
Rabbinic
The ambiguous or fragmentary nature of the verses leaves much room for extrapolation, and rabbinical scholarship has provided a number of explanations. The earliest Jewish interpretations almost unanimously infer that Moses failed to circumcise his son, thereby angering God and provoking the attack, but Zipporah's quick action in circumcising her son appeases God and ends the confrontation.[3] The Talmud understands this episode to underscore the primacy of the biblical command for fathers to promptly circumcise their sons (either on the eighth day or at the first opportunity thereafter), such that even someone of Moses's accrued merit and stature was not exempt from punishment by death for delaying his son's circumcision even briefly.[4]
While the passage is frequently interpreted as referring to
The
The question of how Moses, of all people, could have neglected to have his son circumcised and thus incurred the wrath of Hashem (God) was debated in classical Jewish scholarship.
Rabbinical commentators have asked how Zipporah knew that the act of circumcising her son would save her husband. Rashi, citing Talmudic and Midrashic sources, explains that the angel of God (which the Talmud, Nedarim 32a identifies as either Af or Hemah, the personifications of anger and fury), in the shape of a serpent, had swallowed Moses up to, but not including, his genitals, and that Zipporah therefore understood that this had happened on account of the delay in circumcising her son.[9][10] Haberman (2003), connecting this episode to the story of Eve and the serpent, argues that Zipporah immediately understood that the threat was related to circumcision by a "psychoanalytic link" between Moses's penis and his son's, the ambiguous use of pronouns taken as indicating the fundamental identity of the deity, her husband and her son in the woman's subconscious.[10]
Samaritan
 | This section needs additional citations for verification. (July 2020) |
The
Modern scholarship
Many biblical scholars consider the passage fragmentary.
James Kugel (1998) suggests that the point of the episode is the explanation of the expression "bridegroom of blood" (חתן דמים), apparently current in biblical times. The story would seem to illustrate that the phrase does not imply that a bridegroom should or may be circumcised at the time of his marriage, but that Moses by being bloodied by the foreskin of his son became a "bridegroom of blood" to Zipporah. The story has also been interpreted as emphasizing the point that the circumcision must be performed exactly at the prescribed time, as a delay was not granted even to Moses.[11]
German orientalist Walter Beltz thought that the original myth behind this story was about the right of
Meanwhile,
Identity of the attacker
The Masoretic text of Exodus suggests that Yahweh himself performed the attack on Moses (or on his son). However, the Septuagint makes the attacker an "angel of the Lord" ("angelos kyriou"), although this change may have been done to "mitigate the harshness of the account."[13]
The version in the Book of Jubilees (2nd century BC) attributes the attack to Prince Mastema, a title that was another name for Satan:
- ... and what Prince Mastema desired to do with you when you returned to Egypt, on the way when you met him at the shelter. Did he not desire to kill you with all of his might and save the Egyptians from your hand because he saw that you were sent to execute judgment and vengeance upon the Egyptians? And I delivered you from his hand and you did the signs and wonders which you were sent to perform in Egypt. – Jubilees 48:2–4
The Septuagint version does not say "the Lord" (κύριος) but "the Angel of the Lord" (ἄγγελος κυρίου). "Angel" (ἄγγελος) is the translation throughout the Septuagint of the Hebrew "mal'ak", the term for the manifestation of Yahweh[citation needed] to humanity. (It is the mal'ak that is first described as appearing in the form of a burning bush,[14] but the lord himself that is the subject during the rest of the conversation with the burning bush).[15]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-674-17545-X.
- ^ ISBN 978-0802865199. pp. 132–133.
- ^ JSTOR 1518498. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
- ^ "Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 31b". Sefaria.org. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
- ^ Rashi on Exodus 4:24 Archived January 8, 2015, at the Wayback Machine.
- ISBN 978-0-19-508679-9, 376f.
- ^ Kugel (1998), p. 519.
- ^ Rashi on Exodus 4:24 Archived January 8, 2015, at the Wayback Machine citing Talmud Bavli, Nedarim 31b.
- ^ Rashi. "Rashi on Exodus 2:4". Sefaria.org.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-58465-307-3, p. 23. "Like Eve, Zipporah tangles her references to her son, her lover and God. ... Male figures coalesce in Eve['s] and Zipporah's consciousness."
- ^ Kugel (1998), pp. 517f.
- ^ Beltz (1990), p. 65.
- ISBN 9780802826176.
- ^ Exodus 3:2.
- ^ Exodus 3:4.
Sources
- Walter Beltz, Gott und die Götter. Biblische Mythologie, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin, 1990, ISBN 3-351-00976-3.
- James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: a guide to the Bible as it was at the start of the common era, Harvard University Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-674-79151-0.
- Shera Aranoff Tuchman, Sandra E. Rapoport, Moses' women, KTAV Publishing House, Incorporated, 2008, ISBN 978-1-60280-017-5, pp. 127–139.