Zipporah at the Inn
God apparently tries, and fails, to kill Moses.
Zipporah at the Inn is the name given to an episode alluded to in three verses of Exodus. It is one of the more unusual, curious, and much debated, passages of the Pentateuch. The verses in question are Exodus 4:24–26, the context is Moses and his wife Zipporah reaching an inn on their way from Midian to Egypt to announce the plagues to the Pharaoh.
On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched his feet with it, and said, “Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then she said, “A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.”
The standard interpretation of the passage is that Yahweh wants to kill Moses for neglecting the rite of circumcision of his son. Zipporah averts disaster by reacting quickly and hastily performing the rite, thus saving her husband from Yahweh’s anger.
