Moses and the Ethiopian woman
by Philip du Nard
We read in Numbers 12:1, “AND Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.”
For many, this verse is what the chapter is all about. Moses married a black woman, they say. His sister and brother didn’t like it and so they bad mouthed him. Later in the chapter, God punished them. God was exposing and judging their bigotry. Let this be a lesson to modern day bigots. So they say.
As tempting as it is to read it this way, let’s back up a bit. We’ll return to the first verse but we first have to establish what the chapter is about. The second verse is actually the key. “And they said, hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it.”
There is no new thing under the sun. This has the makings of a religious, political power grab. First, they question the character of the person in office and then promote themselves, much like modern politicians. This is not to suggest that people serving in positions of responsibility in government should not be held accountable. But we are all familiar with the routine. In modern politics, we quickly learn the smear is just a means to a political end, whether it is true or not. Oftentimes, it is a distorted half-truth lacking proper context. Once it has served its purpose, it is often cast aside.
In verses 4-8, God establishes the reason for His anger towards Miriam and Aaron. God does not speak to the nature of the charge directly. He vouches for the general character of Moses: “...who is faithful in all my house” v7. He then proceeds to establish that Moses is indeed the man He has chosen to speak through, face to face. On this basis, God asks, “wherefore were ye then not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?" v8. This was the issue, not the nature of the charge against Moses.
Do we really think God would have handled it differently if instead of questioning his marriage, Miriam and Aaron had accused Moses of being a moneygrubber and a thief? Is it only when they attach some racial significance to the situation that God decides He has to act? The intent of the heart would have been the same and that is what God was judging.
If you don’t believe this, read what happened four chapters later. An assembly of men under Korah attempted to grab power on a much larger scale. This had nothing to do with race. God opened the ground and put them in it.
So let’s be honest with ourselves. God was judging rebels, not bigots.
But, you say, Moses was approved by God and he actually did the thing he was accused of. True enough. And so, the conventional reasoning says we are justified in following his example. But why would this be considered a negative? Would it really be attributed to people’s prejudice and nothing more? Is it not reasonable to suppose that Miriam and Aaron could have reasoned this way?: “Moses, you hypocrite. From the days of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we have been forbidden to marry with the heathen peoples. In the very law you have given us, this is forbidden. You have violated that very law.”
Though they had ulterior and selfish motives, from a scriptural standpoint, they may have been technically correct. After all, centuries later, godly men like Ezra and Nehemiah took a strong stand against marrying “strange women” to the point of breaking up families irrespective of whatever nominal faith in Jehovah they may have paid lip service to. If what Moses did is considered a positive example, why not this? This was in accordance with God’s law revealed through Moses himself, not their carnal prejudices. This may be why God did not dispute the seriousness of the charge but went to extraordinary means to defend Moses’s character and authority. God had spent the previous forty years preparing and sanctifying Moses for the enormous service he was to render in leading the Israel people. But that does not automatically mean he had no skeletons in his closet, much like the great King David who was a man after God’s own heart. Bringing up past sins that have been forgiven is a favorite tactic of the devil.
What do we know of this marriage? Not much. From the Scriptures, we do not know the time, place, or circumstances of it. All we can do is speculate and try to put two and two together from the information at hand. We know that when Moses fled Egypt to the land of Midian, he married Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro. Some believe that she was the woman referred to. But Jethro is called a priest of Midian which is not anywhere near Ethiopia, or Cush, which is the Hebrew word translated as Ethiopia. This is also true of the eastern Cush in Babylonia which some believe was where the woman came from rather than Ethiopia, and therefore, not black at all. The Midianites were closely related to the Israelites ethnically and racially. In any case, Moses fled to the land of Midian, not Cush. And it is apparent from the books of Moses that both Jethro, his daughter, and the other Midianites whom the Israelites encountered during their journey to the promised land were geographically close to the route of the Exodus, not in either of the lands called Cush. Though it can’t be ruled out, at this point it seems to be straining a bit to insist that Zipporah was a Midianite from Cush, or a Cushite living in Midian. However, others have interpreted the Babylonian Cush to have encompassed the land of Midian. Whether or not that be so, the Midianites are not referred to as Cushites.
The rather impersonal manner in which the Ethiopian woman is referred to in contrast to Zipporah who had a name and a couple of speaking parts in the narrative may be a faint clue that the Cushite woman was not Moses’s current wife but from the distant past. If this be so, one might ask, Why bring this up now? In our time, we have observed that some things from the distant past don’t seem to matter much until two weeks before an election or Supreme Court nomination hearing..
Zipporah was still alive at the time of the Exodus Ex.4:25. With all that Moses, an eighty year old man had on his plate at that time, it seems unlikely that he would have had much inclination to take a second wife during that time.
People often resort to the book of Jasher for a resolution of this issue. While the Bible makes mention of a book of Jasher Joshua 10:13, it’s impossible to say if what is being marketed as the book of Jasher is the genuine article. The chronology of the life of Moses set forth therein does not fit exactly with the Bible. What is alleged therein is that this was a political marriage that was never consummated as Moses would have considered that a sin. This book does not carry the authoritative weight of Scripture but it may have some relation to truth. But we don’t need to rely on this source to accept as a plausible theory that this was a political marriage, whether consummated or not, which was a common practice in the ancient world. Why else would a young, Egyptian prince in training take a wife from a distant land? One could ponder that if Egypt symbolizes the world, that Moses as a believer did not fully break with the world until fleeing Egypt.
Nonetheless, we need to weigh this against the testimony of Hebrews 11:24-25 where we read of Moses: “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season:...”
This is how the writer of Hebrews summarizes the moral character of Moses. Here is a man who could have had everything the world had to offer but instead of indulging the flesh, aligned himself with righteousness at great disadvantage to himself. Like Joseph before him, this is not the picture of a man prone to moral failure. From reaching adulthood onward and probably before, his one object was to serve God and advance the cause of the Israel people. We must interpret his actions in this light.
But we learn something in Acts chapter 7 from the soon to be martyred Stephen about Moses that is not brought out fully in Exodus. In verses 22-23, Stephen declares, “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds. And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel.”
Whatever may have been the intent of his heart upon coming to years, it was not until Moses was forty years old that he “blew his cover.” so to speak, and had to flee Egypt. If we accept the age of twenty as being the Biblical definition of coming to years (see Exodus 30:14), there were twenty years of adulthood in Egypt during which many things could have happened in the life of Moses and apparently did, according to Stephen. During this time, he was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds.”
The man whom God had chosen at the age of eighty (Exodus 7:7) who said in Exodus 3:11, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharoah, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? and said in Exodus 4:10, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am of slow speech, and of a slow tongue”, had had some forty to sixty years before in Egypt a very distinguished career and had exhibited great promise and leadership ability and had accomplished great things and was apparently a powerful speaker as he was mighty in words as well as deeds. Quite a contrast. You would think that is the kind of man God would use. Instead, God chose the eighty year old keeper of sheep who felt he had lost his edge.
In earlier times, God had put the patriarch Joseph in a position of great authority in the government of Egypt to the great benefit of the Israel people. It may be that Moses, in his younger years, imagined he would do the same. But as is well known, his carnal plan backfired and he had to leave Egypt.
The renowned first century Jewish historian Josephus covered the life of Moses in Egypt in his book, The Antiquities of the Jews Book II, chapters IX and X, in which he provided details not found in the Scriptures. It may be that the martyr Stephen relied on the same extrabiblical sources that Josephus did as the basis for his remarks. According to Josephus, the Egyptians felt compelled to utilize Moses’s talents as a military leader against the Ethiopians. When the capital of the Ethiopians was besieged by the Egyptians under the leadership of Moses, the daughter of the Ethiopian king made a deal to deliver the city into their hands if Moses would agree to marry her and so he did.
If these are the facts, marrying a pagan princess out of military expediency in the service of another heathen power in the hopes that this will somehow, ultimately advance the cause of your own people might be a dubious example to follow and a rather tortuous path to take. It is like Abraham, whose heart was in the right place, who thought he had to take Hagar to wife to help God keep His promise because Sarah was barren. How many of the people who trumpet the Ethiopian wife of Moses advocate following the example of father Abraham in taking Hagar to wife with all the subsequent trouble that brought?
The bottom line is, we do not have enough scriptural information about this marriage to unreservedly accept it as a positive example of what was and is permissible for the Israel people and we should be wary of doing so, the generally high moral character of Moses notwithstanding. This is especially true in light of Biblical statutes to the contrary.
by Philip du Nard
We read in Numbers 12:1, “AND Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.”
For many, this verse is what the chapter is all about. Moses married a black woman, they say. His sister and brother didn’t like it and so they bad mouthed him. Later in the chapter, God punished them. God was exposing and judging their bigotry. Let this be a lesson to modern day bigots. So they say.
As tempting as it is to read it this way, let’s back up a bit. We’ll return to the first verse but we first have to establish what the chapter is about. The second verse is actually the key. “And they said, hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it.”
There is no new thing under the sun. This has the makings of a religious, political power grab. First, they question the character of the person in office and then promote themselves, much like modern politicians. This is not to suggest that people serving in positions of responsibility in government should not be held accountable. But we are all familiar with the routine. In modern politics, we quickly learn the smear is just a means to a political end, whether it is true or not. Oftentimes, it is a distorted half-truth lacking proper context. Once it has served its purpose, it is often cast aside.
In verses 4-8, God establishes the reason for His anger towards Miriam and Aaron. God does not speak to the nature of the charge directly. He vouches for the general character of Moses: “...who is faithful in all my house” v7. He then proceeds to establish that Moses is indeed the man He has chosen to speak through, face to face. On this basis, God asks, “wherefore were ye then not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?" v8. This was the issue, not the nature of the charge against Moses.
Do we really think God would have handled it differently if instead of questioning his marriage, Miriam and Aaron had accused Moses of being a moneygrubber and a thief? Is it only when they attach some racial significance to the situation that God decides He has to act? The intent of the heart would have been the same and that is what God was judging.
If you don’t believe this, read what happened four chapters later. An assembly of men under Korah attempted to grab power on a much larger scale. This had nothing to do with race. God opened the ground and put them in it.
So let’s be honest with ourselves. God was judging rebels, not bigots.
But, you say, Moses was approved by God and he actually did the thing he was accused of. True enough. And so, the conventional reasoning says we are justified in following his example. But why would this be considered a negative? Would it really be attributed to people’s prejudice and nothing more? Is it not reasonable to suppose that Miriam and Aaron could have reasoned this way?: “Moses, you hypocrite. From the days of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we have been forbidden to marry with the heathen peoples. In the very law you have given us, this is forbidden. You have violated that very law.”
Though they had ulterior and selfish motives, from a scriptural standpoint, they may have been technically correct. After all, centuries later, godly men like Ezra and Nehemiah took a strong stand against marrying “strange women” to the point of breaking up families irrespective of whatever nominal faith in Jehovah they may have paid lip service to. If what Moses did is considered a positive example, why not this? This was in accordance with God’s law revealed through Moses himself, not their carnal prejudices. This may be why God did not dispute the seriousness of the charge but went to extraordinary means to defend Moses’s character and authority. God had spent the previous forty years preparing and sanctifying Moses for the enormous service he was to render in leading the Israel people. But that does not automatically mean he had no skeletons in his closet, much like the great King David who was a man after God’s own heart. Bringing up past sins that have been forgiven is a favorite tactic of the devil.
What do we know of this marriage? Not much. From the Scriptures, we do not know the time, place, or circumstances of it. All we can do is speculate and try to put two and two together from the information at hand. We know that when Moses fled Egypt to the land of Midian, he married Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro. Some believe that she was the woman referred to. But Jethro is called a priest of Midian which is not anywhere near Ethiopia, or Cush, which is the Hebrew word translated as Ethiopia. This is also true of the eastern Cush in Babylonia which some believe was where the woman came from rather than Ethiopia, and therefore, not black at all. The Midianites were closely related to the Israelites ethnically and racially. In any case, Moses fled to the land of Midian, not Cush. And it is apparent from the books of Moses that both Jethro, his daughter, and the other Midianites whom the Israelites encountered during their journey to the promised land were geographically close to the route of the Exodus, not in either of the lands called Cush. Though it can’t be ruled out, at this point it seems to be straining a bit to insist that Zipporah was a Midianite from Cush, or a Cushite living in Midian. However, others have interpreted the Babylonian Cush to have encompassed the land of Midian. Whether or not that be so, the Midianites are not referred to as Cushites.
The rather impersonal manner in which the Ethiopian woman is referred to in contrast to Zipporah who had a name and a couple of speaking parts in the narrative may be a faint clue that the Cushite woman was not Moses’s current wife but from the distant past. If this be so, one might ask, Why bring this up now? In our time, we have observed that some things from the distant past don’t seem to matter much until two weeks before an election or Supreme Court nomination hearing..
Zipporah was still alive at the time of the Exodus Ex.4:25. With all that Moses, an eighty year old man had on his plate at that time, it seems unlikely that he would have had much inclination to take a second wife during that time.
People often resort to the book of Jasher for a resolution of this issue. While the Bible makes mention of a book of Jasher Joshua 10:13, it’s impossible to say if what is being marketed as the book of Jasher is the genuine article. The chronology of the life of Moses set forth therein does not fit exactly with the Bible. What is alleged therein is that this was a political marriage that was never consummated as Moses would have considered that a sin. This book does not carry the authoritative weight of Scripture but it may have some relation to truth. But we don’t need to rely on this source to accept as a plausible theory that this was a political marriage, whether consummated or not, which was a common practice in the ancient world. Why else would a young, Egyptian prince in training take a wife from a distant land? One could ponder that if Egypt symbolizes the world, that Moses as a believer did not fully break with the world until fleeing Egypt.
Nonetheless, we need to weigh this against the testimony of Hebrews 11:24-25 where we read of Moses: “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharoah’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season:...”
This is how the writer of Hebrews summarizes the moral character of Moses. Here is a man who could have had everything the world had to offer but instead of indulging the flesh, aligned himself with righteousness at great disadvantage to himself. Like Joseph before him, this is not the picture of a man prone to moral failure. From reaching adulthood onward and probably before, his one object was to serve God and advance the cause of the Israel people. We must interpret his actions in this light.
But we learn something in Acts chapter 7 from the soon to be martyred Stephen about Moses that is not brought out fully in Exodus. In verses 22-23, Stephen declares, “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds. And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel.”
Whatever may have been the intent of his heart upon coming to years, it was not until Moses was forty years old that he “blew his cover.” so to speak, and had to flee Egypt. If we accept the age of twenty as being the Biblical definition of coming to years (see Exodus 30:14), there were twenty years of adulthood in Egypt during which many things could have happened in the life of Moses and apparently did, according to Stephen. During this time, he was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds.”
The man whom God had chosen at the age of eighty (Exodus 7:7) who said in Exodus 3:11, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharoah, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? and said in Exodus 4:10, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am of slow speech, and of a slow tongue”, had had some forty to sixty years before in Egypt a very distinguished career and had exhibited great promise and leadership ability and had accomplished great things and was apparently a powerful speaker as he was mighty in words as well as deeds. Quite a contrast. You would think that is the kind of man God would use. Instead, God chose the eighty year old keeper of sheep who felt he had lost his edge.
In earlier times, God had put the patriarch Joseph in a position of great authority in the government of Egypt to the great benefit of the Israel people. It may be that Moses, in his younger years, imagined he would do the same. But as is well known, his carnal plan backfired and he had to leave Egypt.
The renowned first century Jewish historian Josephus covered the life of Moses in Egypt in his book, The Antiquities of the Jews Book II, chapters IX and X, in which he provided details not found in the Scriptures. It may be that the martyr Stephen relied on the same extrabiblical sources that Josephus did as the basis for his remarks. According to Josephus, the Egyptians felt compelled to utilize Moses’s talents as a military leader against the Ethiopians. When the capital of the Ethiopians was besieged by the Egyptians under the leadership of Moses, the daughter of the Ethiopian king made a deal to deliver the city into their hands if Moses would agree to marry her and so he did.
If these are the facts, marrying a pagan princess out of military expediency in the service of another heathen power in the hopes that this will somehow, ultimately advance the cause of your own people might be a dubious example to follow and a rather tortuous path to take. It is like Abraham, whose heart was in the right place, who thought he had to take Hagar to wife to help God keep His promise because Sarah was barren. How many of the people who trumpet the Ethiopian wife of Moses advocate following the example of father Abraham in taking Hagar to wife with all the subsequent trouble that brought?
The bottom line is, we do not have enough scriptural information about this marriage to unreservedly accept it as a positive example of what was and is permissible for the Israel people and we should be wary of doing so, the generally high moral character of Moses notwithstanding. This is especially true in light of Biblical statutes to the contrary.