It is available as both book and ebook. Moses Didn’t Marry the Ethiopian Woman During the Exodus.
This city has for ruler and for judge The people of which last were called Aethiopes Hesperii. Jim trained at the South African Bible Institute. Moses’ adoptive grandfather was Pharaoh Osirtasin I (Sesostris, Herodotus, 2:110), of the 12th dynasty, the first Egyptian king to rule Ethiopia, as a result of Moses victory.
30. So Moses was in reality married to two women, the Ethiopian Princess “Tharbis” and the Midianite Princess “Zipporah”. The third view, that Josephus borrowed a mythological or legendary tale and applied it to Moses, has some basis. It therefore seems we must look for another wife! A princess of his enemy’s people named Tharbis, upon discerning his superior abilities from afar, falls in deeply in love with the young warrior and gives herself in marriage to him, on the condition that he would spare her city. The implication was that she suspected Moses separated from his wife because he believed a prophet is too holy for married life – as the Midrash puts it, “The elders, fortunate are they but woe to their wives!” She objected to this, but God explained that Moses was an exceptional prophet who had to maintain especially high standards. It was not ex post facto, however, regarding Moses’ Ethiopian wife if she was his second wife. Thank you for an extremely interesting read. I realize that black Africans tend to admire alpha males and strongman dictators, even enemies, but for a princess to fall deeply in love with a man conquering her nation on the basis of his competency as a conqueror strains credulity. Researching the targums (translations/interpretations/paraphrases) and related pharisaic commentaries for Numbers 12:1, a number of them (e.g., Targum Onkelos) simply substitute “beautiful” for “Cushite”. However when he led Israel out of Egypt, in the Exodus, it seems he also claimed his wife of the Egyptians, and took her with him. Scripture often records Moses acting in a priestly role, and Psalm 99:6 plainly calls him one. They follow this up, with a challenge to his leadership.
The reasoning to support this idea is that Tzippora was a very dark-skinned person who was racially categorized as a … While I am of the opinion that Jethro lived near modern day Al-Bad’ and that Mount Sinai is Jabal Maqla, which are only about 20 miles apart, the Scriptural record nevertheless seems to indicate that Jethro did not arrive until late in Israel’s nearly one year stay at Sinai. Now consider the perspective of Moses: This was an incident that involved all of the people he loved most in the world: his wife and his siblings. “Niggertown” was also a metaphor for anything low class, low morals, bad character, bad taste, or terribly maintained. So he laid siege to the city and gained a wife; he who could neither marry a Hebrew at that stage, nor an Egyptian.” The story is definitely the same, although the name of the Cushite (Ethiopian) queen is different, it is clearly the same history being recorded. Bible commentaries mentioning Arabian Cush as the proper, probable, or possible identification for a particular Biblical reference to Cush include those by Albert Barnes, Joseph Benson, John Calvin, Adam Clarke, Charles Ellicott, John Gill, Matthew Henry, Robert Jamieson-Andrew Fausset-David Brown, Carl Keil-Franz Delitzsch, Alexander Maclaren, Matthew Poole, and John Wesley, as well as the Geneva Study Bible, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, and The Pulpit Commentary.
This totally contradicts the idea that Moses wife could have been an Ethiopian.
In Hebrew, Numbers 12:1 actually uses the term “Cushite”, as do the majority of modern English translations (Kush and Chus are other variants). It is known that at least some apologists ascribed the accomplishments of the Egyptian Sesostris to Moses to make him an equally legendary figure.
This book is mentioned in the scriptures but many people think it doesn’t exist.
[20] This view has been used to represent an element of the special relationship between Israeli Jews and Druze. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan also maintains “Cushite” but references a story oft-repeated in the aggadic midrash (lore/narratives). 51 And when Reuel saw the stick in the hand of Moses, he wondered at it, and he gave him his daughter Zipporah for a wife.
He also serves as a volunteer writer for Torah.org. Exodus 4:24-26 is one of the oddest passages of Scripture. When reading the scriptures you’ll find that Moses was married to Zipporah at the time when he was accused of being married to an Ethiopian.
It fills some gaps in the Bible narrative. Zipporah or Tzipora (/ ˈ z ɪ p ər ə, z ɪ ˈ p ɔːr ə /; Hebrew: צִפֹּרָה , Tsippōrāh, "bird") is mentioned in the Book of Exodus as the wife of Moses, and the daughter of Reuel/Jethro, the priest and prince of Midian.
Moses accepts the offer, and story closes with the consummation of their marriage and the return to his home. Tacitus (c. AD 56 – 117), in his Histories, even mentions a theory of the origins of the Jewish people that conflates them with the Ethiopians. I’d like to recite Tehillim. Moses then left the Ethiopians after forty years of ruler-ship (Jasher 76:5-12). If Miriam and Aaron’s insult happened two months into their stay at Hazeroth, that leaves less than eight months for all the events between Numbers 12:14 and 14:34. See e.g. It seems the Cushites migrated and took their place name with them, much like the Galatians. Notice, also, a pattern in Moses’ writing: The doctrine of inspiration does not turn the human authors of the Bible into some sort of living dictaphone for the Holy Spirit. The problem with that is, Moses does not stop with Miriam’s and Aaron’s insult, but plainly confirms that he did, in fact, marry an Ethiopian. The first reference was from Ezekiel the Tragedian, a Hebrew from third century BC Alexandria, who in his play retelling the Exodus wrote: Then, concerning the daughters of Raguel, [Moses] adds this: “But here, behold!
So the answer to the question, whether or not Moses married an Ethiopian has been answered, and the answer is, Yes! It’s easy: just make it up out of thin air. Israel made camp at the wilderness of Sinai 45 days (or two months, depending on the translation) after the beginning of the Exodus (Exodus 19:1) and stayed there for almost a year (Numbers 10:11). Check the “Cush” entry in any book of sacred geography written prior to the time when the subject of Africans in the Bible became highly politicized, and you will often find a discussion of Arabian Cush. We know that he married a girl named ‘Zipporah’ the daughter of Reuel/Jethro. The magicians double-cross the king, and won’t let him back in the city.
Consider the difficulties even with modern terms. what is biblical or not) were not Hebrews, they slaughtered the Hebrews. Even if this command was not a factor, Moses was viewed as an outsider by his own people (Exodus 2:14, Acts 7:35), and could likely anticipate his siblings’ reaction as well, so why would he intentionally make the situation far worse by marrying a woman so obviously foreign? Numbers 12:1. One day while he sat by a well, Reuel's daughters came to water their father's flocks. So Moses won the war using a clever stratagem to take the city by surprise, for he took a short cut across the narrow land between the horse shoe bend of the Nile river, clearing the snake infested ground with hungry Ibis birds, the natural enemy of snakes. Either way, according to almost all interpretations, the issue was not that Moses took such a wife, but that he had separated from her. When I was growing up in rural East Texas, the black part of any town was always referred to as “Niggertown”. Questions are good!