ZIPPORAH SAVES MOSES’S LIFE WITH AN EMERGENCY CIRCUMCISION

 

Genesis > Exodus 4:24-26 > Leviticus

WARNING: Attempted murder, human disfigurement, flying foreskins

CONTEXT: ~ 1250 BCE  This time frame precedes the main Exodus story. It is set in Midian (Arabia) prior to Moses’s return to Egypt after forty years of self exile.

With no break or warning, Exodus 4 drops us into one of the strangest, most disturbing and bewildering incidents in the Bible.  Following the burning bush discussion with a composite YHWH/angel, Moses is grudgingly making his way to Egypt in order to free people he left behind forty years ago. It is worth noting that as Pharaoh’s daughter’s adoptee, Moses did not grow up among the Israelites.

At an inn, he and his family are waylaid by none other than the Lord, who intends to murder him. This is sudden and unexplained. Last the reader knew, Moses had been given his marching orders by the Lord and was traveling to Egypt to meet his brother.

“At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said.  So the Lord let him alone.” – Ex. 4:24-26 [KJV]

With YHWH and Moses apparently in the midst of a physical struggle, Moses’s Arabian wife Zipporah demonstrates some quick thinking. She immediately picks up a flint stone and performs a jiffy circumcision by cutting her son Gershom’s foreskin off with a flint knife. She casts the flesh bit at Moses’s feet. Noting this development, the Lord lets him go. Zipporah describes Moses as “a bloody husband” or “bridegroom of blood,” and doesn’t seem pleased in any way with the whole incident.

Following this confrontation, there don’t appear to be any hard feelings and there is no further discussion (that we are aware of) of the field circumcision incident. 

There are lots of theories as to why this story exists in the first place, but no scholar or theologian has come up with anything convincing. However, if we bear in mind that we are dealing with a god who thinks mutilating male genitalia is a key component of a divine loyalty program, the probable motivational core of the tale seems fairly clear: God is pissed that Moses hasn’t circumcised his son or sons. If this is the case, we are inclined to query why he hasn’t mentioned it in previous conversations with Moses?

“Oh by the way, before you start the whole Exodus thing with Pharaoh and kill all the Egyptian children, you’re going to need to get the kids circumcised. It’s really about the optics.”

Since circumcision is the physical manifestation signifying the agreement between YHWH and the people he has chosen,¹ what exactly is Moses’s relationship with the Lord of the universe at this point? If Moses is a practicing Yahwist, why isn’t Gershom already circumcised? Did Moses overlook this key requirement for Hebrew men? How would he have known of God’s penile policies?

Larger Questions

After forty years as a shepherd in Arabia, married to the daughter of a pagan Midianite priest, why is Moses a candidate to save the chosen in the first place? He was raised in Pharaoh’s royal court as an Egyptian noble (the second Israelite to have this privilege) by the Egyptian king’s daughter. There is no evidence in scripture that he was exposed to the god of his enslaved people at any point. And to be honest here, let’s not forget that YHWH had by his own account forgotten his chosen people for at least four hundred years.²

“And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” – Exodus 2:24 [ESV]

In other words: why now and why Moses?

Remember that the purpose of the burning bush conversation is for the god of the Old Testament to re-introduce himself to Moses by his new name, YHWH. This is really the first of several re-brandings for the deity who will end up as the Christian God.

The topic of Gershom’s foreskin opens the door to other interesting questions. At the top of this list is: what happened to Gershom’s little brother? 

In the story, Moses’s sons are described as being placed on a donkey with their mom. But Moses and Zipporah have been married forty years. These are grown men close to middle edge, not little tykes. While Gershom is standing there with a bleeding penis, most likely howling in pain, where is his little brother? We as readers don’t know, because second son Eliezer isn’t mentioned by name until Ex.18 (just as we didn’t know Moses had a brother until this chapter).

In the narrative, it is clear that both sons were on the donkey with mom.³ The status of Eliezer’s schwanz is unknown, as is his reaction to his brother’s involuntary surgical procedure.

 

In case God ambushes your husband, always make sure to have your flint knife ready for a quick circumcision.

 

NOTES:

1. About eight hundred years previously, according to the internal Bible timeline.
2. A Biblical timeline running from Abraham to the beginning of the New Testament is about 2,000 years. During that period, God/El/YHWH is missing in action for eight hundred of them.
3. Either a very large donkey or very small humans.
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