We’ve reached the end of the twelve women who make up the stories and lessons in When Life Doesn’t Match Your Dreams. Next week – RELEASE DAY!!
Zipporah ends the book as a woman who learned the hard way that when we fight against God, we don’t win.
HAVE YOU BEEN THERE? I HAVE.
Zipporah is not alone in this desire to strive against what she instinctively knew God wanted. Many people in Scripture struggled with God. Jacob famously wrestled with God, Job argued his innocence to God, Moses pleaded with God, Jonah whined and complained to God, Thomas doubted God, David flat out disobeyed God, Solomon thought himself wiser than God, and on and on.
In a sense, Zipporah’s story is a bit strange to our modern ears. She marries Moses, a foreigner, gifted to Moses by her father. She bears him two sons.
Little is told of Zipporah’s marriage to Moses until we come to one little section in Exodus where she circumcises her son in order to save her husband’s life. The scene in Exodus 4 seems out of the blue and doesn’t fit the rest of the narrative. Except…God never puts things in Scripture without a reason.
We weren’t there and we don’t have all of the details, but one thing is true. Moses did not circumcise both of his sons. Were Zipporah’s objections the reason? We can’t know for sure, but if you read the section, you could conclude that she knew what circumcision was and that God took it seriously. He was not about to have His spokesman and deliverer of Israel living in disobedience to His covenant commands. One of Moses’ sons was not living in that covenant relationship of obedience, so Zipporah remedied the situation. And I have to wonder if she did so because she knew she was responsible for arguing against the practice after Moses performed it on her firstborn.
Speculation? Yes. But I haven’t read any explanation that would lead me to think it isn’t possible. After all, this marriage of Moses and Zipporah was not a typical Hebrew marriage. And Moses was not a typical Hebrew of his day. He was Hebrew by birth and Egyptian by adoption. A Levite and a prince. And he married a foreigner who may or may not have worshiped his God.
Zipporah was thrust into a marriage she didn’t choose, and then put on a donkey to ride to a land she did not know, to live among a people who may or may not have accepted her. There was a point at which Moses sent her and his sons back to her father, though we cannot be certain when that took place. Later they were reunited, and not much more is said of her.
The biggest part she played in Scripture is when she circumcised her son and said some things to her husband that may not have been a compliment. Did she act in fear? Anger? Frustration? And was her argument with Moses or with God? That she feared God in that moment is a pretty good assumption as His angel was threatening to kill her husband for this disobedience.
We live in an age where we cannot imagine what such fear of God is like. In the Old Testament, many people heard from God, saw God’s angel or a manifestation of His glory in a cloud or fire, or had some other encounter with God that caused them to fall on their faces in fear. I daresay, we no longer hold such reverence or even think He holds such power.
Zipporah may have fought against God’s will, but we tend to simply ignore it. We don’t take Him seriously today and I wonder if it isn’t because we have become too familiar with grace. We don’t see immediate consequences as they did back then for our sinful actions, so we think there will never be any.
We walk a dangerous line to think that God does not see just because He is silent.
Or maybe we do take God seriously, but not quite as much as someone we know or love does. Could it be that Zipporah felt like she was in competition with God, whom Moses was willing, albeit reluctantly, to obey and she wasn’t? It could be pretty easy to feel jealousy toward a mate who seemed to love a God you could not see more than he or she loved you, couldn’t it?
Whatever her reasons or attitudes, Zipporah stands in Scripture as a complicated and interesting woman. Who just happened to be married to the most prominent man in Israel’s history. (One could argue that Abraham and David ranked equal to Moses, but the law is referred to as the Law of Moses, and that defines the Jewish faith to this day.)
Moses was a man whom God spoke to face to face. How did a woman compete with that? Nothing she did for him would have made his face shine with God’s brilliant glory. Was she privileged or to be pitied?
How about you? Have you ever felt as though you were competing with God? Or fighting against Him?
We all face varying emotions when it comes to this God of Scripture who is beyond understanding. And yet, through Jesus, we have the opportunity to know His heart. And as His heart beat for Israel and He considered Moses His friend, don’t you know His heart beats for ours just the same? Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do what I command…This is my command: Love each other.” (John 15:14, 17 NIV)
In the end, I hope Zipporah came to love the God of her husband as Moses did. I hope that she stopped fighting against Him and learned to embrace His love for her.
We are all faced with that same choice. May today be the day we make the choice to trust God and to love Him with all our hearts.
~Selah
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