MEDLEY: Moses 1 ~ Ethiopian connection

I'm fascinated by Moses. I don't mean the Great Prophet aspect: the Leader of the Hebrews who came down from Sinai with ten commandments written in stone. OK, granted, that is all pretty mind-blowing ~ but it tends to just be part of what many of us learned in our childhood, so we take it for granted without thinking about it (beyond rejecting or accepting).

No, one of the things about Moses that grabs my attention is this:

half a dozen of the stories attributed to him in Genesis and Exodus introduce the theme of vegetarian versus meat-eater. Seriously. You can get out your Bible and check for yourself. I might even blog on it one of these days if you ask me to. (Yes alright, you're quite right: I might even blog about it even if you don't ask me to.)

And then there's also this amazing man, Jethro, that Moses, recently exiled prince of Egypt, happens to meet, purely by chance (right!), and agrees without any hesitation to become his shepherd. From millionaire to unpaid shepherd? What was it about Jethro that made that transition so easy and acceptable?

And then, perhaps you know that Moses married a black woman? In those days, very unusual! And he had two sons ~ kids who were half black, half semitic.

Here's how the story begins:

When a friend – a knowledgeable friend, well read in the Qur'an and other spiritual traditions – mentioned that the prophet Moussa, or Moses, was married to a black woman, an Ethiopian, I was surprised and non-committal. I said to myself, Maybe that is the Quranic tradition… In fact, maybe that is his personal belief because he is African… But my friend added: It's in the Bible. If you look, you'll find it.

So I looked in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible that are associated with Moses – and here is what I gradually discovered.

Meeting JethroIn the book of Exodus, it tells the familiar story about Moses being hidden as a baby to save his life from the Pharaoh – and then being found and brought up by the Pharaoh’s family. As a young man he has to leave Egypt because he attacks an Egyptian slave-driver for mistreating a Hebrew slave – the man dies and Moses, a royal prince, overnight becomes an outcast, wandering through Midian.

For my friend’s sake, I hoped that Midian would turn out to be modern-day Ethiopia, but no – it is far to the north, at the top of the Red Sea, in the general area of Sinai.

Weary from his journey, Moses sits down by a well to rest – and a significant meeting takes place. Some young women come to the well, fill the troughs to water their flock and are then chased away by some shepherds who take over the watering troughs for their own flocks. No doubt a daily occurrence for the girls: when they return home that day, their father immediately asks, How is it you are so early today?

The daughters explain that an Egyptian came to their rescue, stood up to the shepherds, drew water for their pots and filled the troughs to water their flock. “And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? Why is it that you have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” (Exodus 2:20)

And so Moses meets Jethro, the man called priest and prince of Midian, and is invited by him to settle in his household, to serve as his shepherd, and to marry his daughter Zipporah. In due course, she and Moses have two sons, Gershom and Eliezer.

So far, it sounds like Jethro and Zipporah are ‘Hebrews’ like Moses, perhaps originally from Egypt, now settled in Midian. The Bible doesn't tell us Jethro’s background, only his qualities, indicated through his various names. For the Bible gives Jethro several names, all of them meaningful: among others, he is referred to as Reuel (‘Friend of God’); he is called a ‘priest’; a ‘prince’; and he is commonly referred to as Jether or Jethro, which means ‘without equal, pre-eminent’.

Scholars question whether Jethro is a Hebrew word, and whether these names are titles bestowed on him out of respect or actual family names. If they are titles, they indicate that Jethro’s contemporaries looked on him as a very saintly man, a person with significant spiritual knowledge – a knower of God.

Mysterious Zipporah
The first hint of something unusual about Zipporah occurs when the Bible describes Moses’ journey back to Egypt after several years with Jethro. Moses, Zipporah and their two sons are spending the night at an inn. By this time, Moses has had his extraordinary conversation with God (the burning bush experience, Exodus 3) and been told to go to the rescue of the children of Israel. He has duly told his father-in-law Jethro, received his blessing and is now on his way to Egypt with his family (Exodus 4).

During the night at the inn, Moses has another extraordinary experience with God when, says the narrator, God tries to kill him. Why would God want to kill his chosen messenger? Or does Moses appear outwardly to be dying, whereas in fact he is in a state of deep meditation? We know from the comparative study of mystic texts and the experience of contemporary meditators that deep meditation renders the body apparently lifeless for the duration of the meditation period. This phenomenon is referred to by the mystics as ‘dying before death’, ‘dying while living’ and ‘dying daily’, among other expressions.

Poor Zipporah was probably terrified. She reacts by grabbing a sharp stone and circumcises her son on the spot, apparently believing this will appease an angry God and bring Moses back to life. Son screaming, blood spurting out, Zipporah indignantly throws the foreskin at her husband’s feet and says: "Surely a bloody husband you are to me because of the circumcision!” (Exodus 4:25, 26) Her action has the desired effect – Moses comes back to life (Exodus 4:26), perhaps disturbed out of his meditation by all the commotion and the need to calm and comfort his wife and son.

What is odd here is that Zipporah clearly does not approve of circumcision. Any Hebrew would take circumcision of their first-born son for granted as part of their sacred tradition. Yet although Zipporah knows about circumcision, she has refused to allow her son to be circumcised. Only in the extreme desperation of the moment – her husband apparently dying – does she surrender to this ‘bloody’ custom.

Why would Zipporah, the daughter of a Hebrew priest, resist the customary circumcising of her son? It makes no sense. A cursory search through the Biblical literature shows that scholars for centuries have found this incident, including the near-death of Moses, to be a complete mystery... (Continued in Part 2)

Original version published in the magazine L'INCONNU, The Unknown
Summer 2009