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Zipporah


Zi-por´uh

The wife of Moses and the mother of Gershom and Eliezer. She was one of the seven daughters of Reuel, priest of Midian (also known as Jethro). Zipporah appears in three narratives. In the first (Exod 2:16-22), Reuel offers to give Zipporah to Moses as his wife after Moses saves her and her sisters from some male shepherds. In the second (Exod 4:24-26) Zipporah saves Moses from God by circumcising her son and touching Moses’s feet with the foreskin. And, finally, the Bible reports that Zipporah and her sons stayed with Jethro in Midian when Moses went back to Egypt to lead the exodus; Jethro brought them to Moses when he came to meet Israel in the desert (Exod 18:2-5).

  • Powell, Mark Allan, ed. HarperCollins Bible Dictionary. Abridged Edition. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.