2. (LogOut/ Her father, who is believed to be one of the founders of the Druze religion seems to have affected his daughter in that custom. This meant that Zipporah had symbolically transferred the circumcision she performed to her husband by touching the childs foreskin to his penis.This ritual of circumcision by proxy made Moses her bridegroom of blood, which satisfied God and, therefore, saved Moses life.7, Euphemisms are used all throughout the Old Testament. Zipporah only appears three times in Scripture: the first time at the well (Exodus 2), the second time while on the journey to Egypt (Exodus 4), and finally in the wilderness when Moses met her father Jethro who was accompanied by Zipporah and her sons (Exodus 18). You can see our basic rules for comments by clicking The Fine Print on the top menu bar. Her first reaction was to circumcise her son without being told to do so. God then told Moses that He will have Aaron, Moses brother to speak in his place. Zipporah, fearing that her husband would be slain, performed the rite herself, and the angel then permitted Moses to pursue his journey. Exodus 4:25 (WYC) Zipporah took anon a most sharp stone, and circumcised the rod of her son; and she touched Moses? Article God had the foreknowledge of Pharaohs refusal to let Israel go, so God was already prepared to seek the death of the firstborn son. In Numbers 12:1, she also is called a Cushite ("black" or ancient "Ethiopian") woman. The original Hebrew only has pronouns such as he and him in those places. Why on the 8th day? (, Hermann, Ray, A Letter from an Atheist about the 12 Commandments! (. Moses said, "I have been a stranger in a strange land." We must remember who we arebride of Christ, circumcised in our hearts, dead to sin, our flesh perpetually cast at the feet of Jesus in confession and repentance. Two verses before the excerpt provide Gods words for Pharaoh which warns of the plague that will kill each first-born son of families that do not adhere to the instructions of the protagonist. We are first introduced to Zipporah in Exodus 2:16, as a shepherdess, one of Jethros seven daughters. Moses was on his way to Egypt with his wife, Zipporah, and his sons, Gershom and Eliezer, when the following incident occurred: "It came about on the road at the lodging place that Jehovah got to meet him and kept looking for a way to put him to death. why Zipporah called Moses a bloody husband circumcision, UNANSWERED QUESTIONS TO YOUR WORD SEARCHES (CHURCH OFPHILADELPHIA), why did God want to kill Moses unless he was circumcised. 2. Moses was seated at the well nearby, no doubt dressed, painted, and speaking like an Egyptian dignitary. This act eventually became part of the agreement between God and Israel. (Exodus 4:21-26). Her story reminds us that flesh and blood have always been faithful reminders of Gods covenant promises. Perhaps He may have thought the act was not that important and therefore did not do it. Moses told God that he wasnt eloquent with his speech, which aggravated God. WE ENCOURAGE SHARING. He had previously carried out the ceremony for one of them (note that Zipporah only had to circumcise one of them to quell Gods wrath) but not for the other. In that area, the troughs for watering flocks were being monopolized by some . Then she said, "You are a bloody husband," because of the circumcision (Exodus 4:25 - 26). Another example is when Abraham said to his servant, Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live. This leads to another point that perhaps the word foot is euphemistic for Moses genitals. See e-Sword notes below. In fact, shes only mentioned three times in scripture. On the flip side, if the protagonist is all-mighty as He states, the circumcision alone- an act of obedience and surrender- could render the preservation of their lives. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. We who are in Christ cannot deny the sacrifice, the pain, the very life that runs through our souls in the blood of Christ, our resurrected Lord. His first wife was his Kushite half-sister. Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) explains to Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) what job a mohel13 performs and Elaine gives her opinion about uncircumcised men. What problem would this solve? What is clear from the Bible is that Zipporah understood the threat to her husband. During the patriarchal period, oaths were taken by placing a hand under the reproductive organ, but generally recorded in the Bible as thigh instead of testicles, penis, or genitals. Now we can return to the obvious question at hand. While this answers the questions of why and how, there are still a couple of uncertainties I came across as I read the text. 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. It was on his way back to Egypt that the event described in the text took place. To dishonor that sign and seal of the covenant was criminal in any Hebrew, peculiarly so in one destined to be the leader and deliverer of the Hebrews; and he seems to have felt his sickness as a merited chastisement for his sinful omission. One scholar, named John Durham, hypothesizes that Zipporahs only option to save her family was to circumcise her son and touch Moses with the foreskin to transfer the effects of the rite to Moses. (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9e6a/a27d838cdf4a201b5a12bcbbc940dcd0b6e7.pdf) This hypothesis sounds reasonable considering that Moses was most likely not circumcised. Zipporah casts the foreskin at Moses feet and calls him a bloody husband simply because she is disgusted by the bloody procedure of circumcision. Book of Revelation in the Textus Receptus. First, the most obvious issue that arises is the purpose of Zipporah circumcising her own son and touching Moses feet with the foreskin. This passage is rather uneventful and straightforward if we read it properly. Finally Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and caused it to touch his feet and said: 'It is because you are a . In what ways do you see the church dying, as Moses was dying on that road to Egypt? Edit them in the Widget section of the, http://www.usnews.com/news/religion/articles/2008/01/25/zipporah-may-be-obscure-but-the-wife-of-moses-mattered, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/zipporah-midrash-and-aggadah, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9e6a/a27d838cdf4a201b5a12bcbbc940dcd0b6e7.pdf, http://www.egrc.net/articles/Rock/Exodus/BrideGroomOfBlood.html, http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/larue.html, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+17. Circumcision was important to God, at least until Christ was crucified. God can take our humble attempts and use them for His honor and glory. Answer: Technically, no. A couple of examples are when a husband and wife had sexual relations, it is said that they lay together or they knew each other. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. The story of Moses being born to a Hebrew, hidden from the Pharaohs men until he was three months old, placed in a homemade basket on the Nile River, and found and raised by Pharaohs daughter is one of the most famous tales from the Old Testament. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". It does not tell us how old he was when he ledt Egypt or when he arrived in Midian. Also note that it says circumcisions plural. And, here comes Moses to the rescue. Because of his kindness, Jethro tells his daughters to invite him for the meal. Zipporah reaches across centuries to point to the Lord s Table, the flesh and blood of the new covenant. He has self-published three books, Common Thoughts on The Word in 2016 and Eye of a Needle in 2017 and Common Thoughts on The Word II in 2019. In Exodus 2 Moses marries Zipporah, a Gentile, who gives birth to Gershom. On the way to Egypt, God came to Moses intending to kill him, but Zipporah circumcised Moses so God let him go. In verse 23 God had pronounced a judgment upon Pharaohs son, but it may have been obvious to Moses that Gods judgment affects not only the king of Egypt but all the Egyptians. sect. All - I would like clarity as to why God wanted to kill Moses in Exodus 4:24: KJV: 24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him. Source Ahavta. 21 The LORD said to Moses, When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. Zipporah is Moses's patrilineal cousin and his second wife. So Moses had to keep the boy still. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. 1. Egypt had caused Moses to forget his rootshis identityas a descendant of Abraham. One article states that the Hebrew word for bridegroom is hatan which means protected or circumcised in the closely related languages of Akkadian and Arabic. . (Genesis 24:2-3). It would also appear that she had successfully persuaded Moses to go along with her in refusing to circumcise the child. OBS respects your privacy and is compliant with the European Union GDPR regulation. Did Moses write the first five books of the Old Testament? Having a break between verse 23 and 24 is not necessarily wrong because there seems to be a chronological break between the two verses (e.g. This Old Testament procedure showed that the flesh must be physically sacrificed, whereas in this current age, the sacrifice of the flesh is spiritual. God told Moses that those who sought his life in Egypt, meaning especially Pharoah, had died. People are asking the wrong questions because they are reading the passage incorrectly in faulty translations. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Interestingly, the modern English terms testify and testimony originated from this use. Does the Masoretic Text Underlying the KJV omit Joshua 21:36-37? Catullus. Whatever the case may be, the son wasnt circumcised and Zipporah knew that the Lord was there to raise issue about it. (Macho 1970: 24-25). Zipporah's word choice could have a double meaning in which she told Moses that he was protected by her bold action and that she finally had a legitimate husband due to the circumcision. Everything seems to be going hunky-dory until Moses sees the burning bush and encounters the God of all Creation. and said, surely a bloody husband art thou to me; those who think it was at the feet of the child the foreskin was cast, take these words to be spoken of that, and observe that it is usual for women, at the circumcision of a child, to call it a bridegroom or husband, because it is then espoused unto, and reckoned among the people of God; but this is not well supported; it is a custom of too late a date to give any countenance to such a sense of the words, which seem plain enough to be spoken to and of Moses; but not in an angry upbraiding way, as if he was a bloody cruel man to oblige her to do such an action, but rather in a congratulatory way, as being thankful and rejoicing, that by this means, through the blood of the circumcision, she had saved her husband's life; and as it were in that way had bought him, and afresh espoused him to herself as her husband; or otherwise it would have been all over with him, but now to her great joy he was delivered from the threatened destruction, and restored to her; and so the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase the next verse,"then Zipporah gave praise, and said, how amiable is the blood of circumcision, which hath delivered my husband from the hand of the destroying angel.''. Orange Is The New Black Season 8 Renewed Or Cancelled? Moses and Zipporah went on to have two little boys together. You can use them to display text, links, images, HTML, or a combination of these. Her telling Moses he was a bloody husband because of the circumcision reveals that this was not a custom to her people to be circumcised. Thus verse 24 belongs together in the same episode as that of verse 23. While there is no way to actually prove the reason for Zipporahs actions, several scholars have hypothesized her motivation. Is Psalm 12:7 a promise that God would preserve his words? Answer (1 of 3): The verses in question are Exodus 4:24-26, the context is Moses, his wife Zipporah and their son Gershom reaching an inn on their way from Midian to Egypt to announce the plagues to the Pharaoh. Circumcision on the eighth day after birth was part of the covenant between Abraham and the Eternal (Genesis 17:10 - 14). On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. Him in verse 24 refers to Pharaohs firstborn son. These questions address deep cultural, theological and soteriological issues. When the passage is read correctly in the King James Bible, the passage becomes easy to understand. Shiphrah and Puah. We do not send any commercial advertising, and you can easily unsubscribe at any time. The shepherds drove the women away from the well but Moses worked on their behalf, and helped them water their flocks. Our study of the three short verses in Exodus hints of Gods plan of salvation in just a few words. It was then she said, A bridegroom of blood by circumcision, (Exodus 4:24-26, NRSV).1. This article is part of the She Is Called Women of the Bible Study Series Prayer Great I Am, light the path before us we pray. ', 24 At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. 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