Zipporah at the inn

Zipporah at the inn is the name given to an episode alluded to in three verses of the Book of Exodus. This much-debated passage is one of the more perplexing conundrums 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:

Leningrad Codex text:

Translation:

New Revised Standard Version translation:

The standard interpretation of the passage is that God wanted 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 God's anger.

The details of the passage are unclear and subject to debate. One problem is that the text uses pronouns multiple times, without ever identifying which of the three individuals (God, Moses, or Zipporah's son) is being referred to by each instance. In particular, it is unclear whose feet (God's, Moses' or her son's) Zipporah touches with the foreskin, and the meaning of "bloody bridegroom".

The ambiguous or fragmentary nature of the verses leave much room for extrapolation, and rabbinical scholarship has provided a number of explanations. Specifically, the Targum Neophyti, a midrashic translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic, expands Zipporah's enigmatic "you are truly a bridegroom of blood" to "How beloved is the blood that has delivered this bridegroom from the hand of the Angel of Death."

While the passage is frequently interpreted as referring to Gershom, Moses' firstborn, being circumcised, the Midrash actually states that the passage was, at that time, considered instead to refer to Eliezer, Moses' other son.

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