Zipporah's God is an attempt to recreate and retell the family story of Moses from the perspective of his Kenite-Midianite wife Zipporah. It is a fascinating idea that she initiated Moses, who had been raised as an Egyptian, into her family's faith in YHWH, the God of Abraham, Keturah and Jethro, the priest of Midian. What unfolds is the heart-breaking story about the struggle of Moses between his public role and private life as a father and a husband - and the story of a woman and her sons driven to the margins of an increasingly exclusive society.
Jesus and Moses
Israel expected a 'prophet like Moses,' and this is exactly how the Gospel of Matthew portrays Jesus. His teaching is an authoritative reinterpretation of the Law. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus radicalizes the Law, so that we can no longer feel 'better' than anyone else. We are all inadequate sinners ánd we are all beloved children of God, called to come home and be grow up perfectly, as our heavenly Father is perfect.
Twice, Jesus quotes the prophets to say that God desires mercy, not sacrifice. For Jesus, this is not the abolishment of the covenant, but a renewal. Where first the Ten Commandments were written on stone tablets, the new covenant is written in our hearts.
Jesus said he had not come to abolish the Law of Moses, but to fulfill it. The Apostle Paul sees this happening when Jesus puts love for God and all of us as the greatest commandment and the fulfillment of the Law. It leads him to the conviction that in Christ, there is equal love and dignity for women and men, masters and servants, jews and gentiles.
If you want to follow Jesus, you have to go back to love that inspired the Law of Moses. Re-reading the story of Moses through the eyes does exactly that: what if the God of Israel is the Father of all people?
YHWH before Israel
This reconstruction is based on the so-called Kenite-Midianite hypothesis: the idea that the worship of the God of Israel, YHWH, can be traced back to the Midianites, a confederation of tribes from the Bronze Age, and in particular to the Kenites, a tribe of copper smelters and metalworkers in the Sinai and Negev. The hypothesis is based on Egyptian hieroglyphs, pottery shards from the Negev, and poetic texts in the Hebrew Bible.
I have built the story around some of the less familiar and stranger stories in the Thora and the other books of the Hebrew Bible, so that we can get a feel of the primeval otherness of this divine presence that these copper smelters worshipped under the sounds of the vowels that make up the name YHWH.
Did the Exodus really happen?
Many if not most Jews and Christians believe that Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt into the promised land, and gave them the Thora to live by. Perhaps to their surprise, many biblical scholars don't believe that two million Israelites fled Egypt and lived in the Sinai for forty years. They don't see the archaeological evidence for that and think it impossible in terms of the availability of food and water in the desert. Some even say that Moses is a mythical figure only.
This narrative takes a middle position: the Exodus may well have been a singular historical event, but one that was smaller and does not have to leave that many archaeological when you read the story carefully and see that the numbers are meant symbolically:
- Moses was only the great-grandson of Levi, the son of Jacob; there is no way that the twelve sons of Jacob could have fathered a nation of two million people in just three or four generations. An exodus of a few thousand people is more likely.
- Moses life is presented as three full lives: 40 years as prince of Egypt, 40 years as a shepherd in Midian, and 40 years as the leader of Israel. However, when you read the text carefully, you see that his children that were born before the exodus are still young men when Joshua leads Israel into the promised land.
Also, I believe there is a very strong argument for the historicity of Moses in the ending of the story of his children, as their choices did not fit with later Judaean claims of exclusivity (YHWH was only the God of the Israelites and could only be worshipped in Jerusalem). But that is in the epilogue; I will not spoil the ending for you here.
Want to read more?
You can use this story to read and reflect on the books of Moses in their entirety. There are suggestions for reading groups with a reading schedule for the Bible books from Genesis to Joshua, and an overview of the research explaining some of the choices made in Zipporah's God.
Who is who in the story?
Leading the Exodus was a family affair, as you can see in Moses' family tree below.
The Israelites consisted of twelve tribes, including Judah and Levi. The names of all Levites are framed, the names of all Judeans are italicized and connected with dotted lines. The people who played a role in the story are the following:
- Levi is the father of Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. Kohath is the father of Amram, Jishar, Chebron, and Uzziel. Amram is married to his aunt Jochebed, the half-sister of his father Kohath; she was Levi's late child, born in Egypt. Their children are Miriam, Aaron, and Moses:
- Miriam marries the Judean Hur (this is how early Jewish readers interpret the story; it is not made explicit in the Torah itself). Her grandson Bezalel is responsible for building the tabernacle.
- Aaron is married to Hur's second cousin Elisheba; they have four sons, of whom Nadab and Abihu die childless in the desert. The high priesthood passes to Eleazar and later to his son Phinehas.
- Moses marries Zipporah, the daughter of Reuel/Jethro the Kenite, the priest of Midian. They have two sons, Gershom and Eliezer; our story ends with Jonathan, the son of Gershom.
- Moses' cousin Korah (a son of Amram's brother Jishar) leads the camp and temple guards. After the failed invasion of the Promised Land, he challenges the authority of Moses and Aaron and dies in the process. Aaron's grandson Phinehas then takes charge of this security service.
- The families of Kehat are led by Moses' cousin Elzaphan, the son of Uzziel.
- Moses' servant and successor is Joshua, son of Nun (not included in this family tree). He is from the tribe of Ephraim (one of the two sons of Joseph, son of Jacob).
Contents
Below are the pages, or chapters, of the story. Click on the chapter title to read further.
7. Marching on the promised land
Suggestions for Reading Groups