Poem: Strange God

This is a weird one. You should feel uncomfortable. There’s an explanatory text at the end.

Strange God

A strange god he seemed to her,
definitely not from around here.
Perhaps a local god, small,
lightless but obviously divine.
Down from the hills he must have come,
through the night, through the corrals
the drivers used when they stopped at the inn.
A god of stables or donkeys, the way 
he walked through the beasts to get to her husband.

Striking how he’d walked up on them
through the shadows and backhanded
her husband so ferociously
he was knocked to the ground.

Striking how ferociously 
the god grinned, looking for a fight
as her husband scrambled to his feet.

Another laughing backhand to the face,
another sprawl, and then a promise.
“I am going to kill you, Moses.”
And she believed, and stood up.

In later days she’d wonder how
she’d been so unafraid, how right 
it seemed to her that a god should try
to kill the man of her devotion.
Her Egyptian husband who recently
had found himself, a homeless man,
her Egyptian husband who sacrificed
his sheep to a forgotten shepherd lord,
a priestless god of midwives and slaves.

The god knew Moses’ real name.
This was the angry slave god.
This was the grinning shepherd god
hungry and coming to claim his own,
Thermutis’ unready Egyptian son.
Distantly, she understood
why the Egyptians feared and hated 
the shepherd kings, their gods of storm.

This god had chosen her husband, her man,
and her man was none of what the god needed.
This god had chosen the father of her sons,
and this was the god who killed firstborns,
who grudged like a mountain clan chief.
Moses had never been a slave.
Moses was learning to be a shepherd.
What on earth was he to this god
but a bit of blood, congealed, unlived.
What bound her man to the god but words.
A lineage unconsecrated.
A few fiery words.

Again her husband rose to fight,
again the god laughed and struck him down.
Only babble poured from the mouth
of Moses, only blood and slobber.
She was unafraid. She ran inside
and fetched Gershom from his basket.

Again the god was striking, was laughing.
Kneeling at shadowed feet divine
she set the basket before now her god.
Gershom slept as she hoisted the child
godward so he’d turn and look.
Her man stayed down. Unwrapping her son
she drew the flap of skin away.

She struck the flint.

Her son screamed. Her husband babbled.
She gazed up, heard none of it.
The god no longer laughed. He turned.
Looking to sobbing Moses she touched 
the bloody skin to his feet to soothe.
“A husband of blood thou art to me.”
She realized as she said the words
that she’d taken an oath.

From Exodus 4:

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.

What does this short and mysterious story, which takes place between Moses’ commissioning and his return to Egypt, mean?

My general interpretation of it is that Moses, who probably did not speak Hebrew well (remember, “I am not eloquent”, “I am slow of speech and tongue”) and was recognized as an Egyptian my Jethro’s daughters, is finally being made a Hebrew. He hadn’t even circumcised his sons! Although God has been treating with him, and has great plans for him, he must go through a ritual death and resurrection, through a covenant renewal. Only then will he be ready to be the Hebrew savior of the Hebrews.

I believe that Zipporah was showing knowledge and faithfulness toward her husband’s God, this Yahweh. Perhaps she had already begun to worship him. The suggestion is sometimes made that Zipporah is showing anger toward Moses in this ritual, or that she is rejecting him.

I think any assumption that she is declaring some sort of enmity or animosity toward Moses is simply squeamish. The blood isn’t gross…it’s life. The Midianites themselves were a semitic shepherd people, the sort of people who had actually conquered and ruled Egypt for while (the so-called Hyksos, the Shepherd Kings). Shepherds were animal breeders, and they were raiders. They were bloody, and they sacrificed. I think it’s silly to read our discomfort with penises and blood back into this Midianite shepherd woman, even if she was from a noble family.

Some suggest that Zipporah went away from Moses after this event. Which…well…she did. But not because she wanted no more to do with him. Exodus 18 makes it clear that Moses sends her away. And this makes all the sense in the world. He’s about to go down into Egypt to make war on the mightiest nation on earth. He keeps Zipporah and his children safe, and in Exodus 18 they are reunited. Interestingly, Zipporah’s father Jethro sacrifices to God after reuniting them. Whether he is a worshipper of Yahweh at this point or simply sacrificing to the God of Moses (and of the ancestor he shares with the Hebrews, Abraham) cannot be known, but his faithfulness and help for Moses makes me think so.

So I read Zipporah as a woman who knows how covenants of blood work and is taking the steps to restore/establish covenant that Moses had failed to take. The story is too bizarre otherwise. Why else would she suddenly start chopping foreskins? God gives Moses a mission, but then “tries” to kill him. There is no “try” with God. This was the result God wanted: symbolic death and restoration. If Zipporah is expressing exasperation with Moses (which I don’t see in the text, and must be read in), perhaps it would be because of his failure to adequately prepare his family for service to Yahweh.

As an aside, on shepherds…if there is any symbolism in Moses using a rod or staff, for example in his duels with the magicians, it is not symbolism of class or economics. It’s not “Egyptians are rich and powerful and we are humble shepherds.” The symbolism would be rather a declaration of enduring enmity. Nomadic shepherd nations were always at war with sedentary agricultural nations, everywhere in the world (think of the Navajo and Pueblo nations versus the Apache or Utes; the Navajo are particularly interesting, because they are Athabaskan brothers to the Apache, but converted to a sedentary agricultural way of life, but that’s to the side). If there is shepherd imagery involved with Moses’ rod, his shepherd’s crook, it’s in the context of an Egypt that remembers the Hyksos and been harassed by the nations of Sinai and the nomads of Ethiopia and the Sahel. It would be a slave nation remembering its shepherd roots, its warlike roots: “you were right to fear us, we have awoken”.

Finally, no one will ever convince me that the Zippo lighter fluid company isn’t named as a joke on Zipporah’s name. Some translations still write her name as Zippo’rah, and she takes a flint, which is what is struck in a lighter. Come on, hilarious Bible joke. I don’t care how much the founders of the company said it was because of how fun speedy words like “zipper” and “zippy” are to say.

Anyway, the line “she struck the flint” is supposed to bring up fire images. Maybe you thought of Zippos.

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