Zipporah, Wife of Moses

by Marek Halter

  “WASET is five days’ walk from here,” Aaron announced one morning, as they were preparing to set off again. “From this point, we must go on foot, without our flocks, without camels or mules, and without shepherds or handmaids.”

  “Why is that, brother?” Moses said in surprise.

  “If you approach the city of Pharaoh with this whole team, Moses, his soldiers will be upon us before nightfall. We are slaves. Slaves own nothing and don’t have the right to own anything.”

  Moses looked at those who had made the long journey with him and were looking at him now, disbelief on their faces.

  Aaron anticipated his protest. “They can go back downriver and wait in the place where we met. They’ll run no risk.”

  “Wait for what?” one of the shepherds asked, with anger in his voice.

  “Wait for Moses and me to talk to Pharaoh and lead our people out of Egypt.”

  “That could be a long time!” Murti squealed. “Now’s the time my mistress and Moses’ sons need their handmaids.”

  “Among the Hebrews,” Miriam said, in a harsh voice, “wives and sons don’t have handmaids. The wives take care of their children by themselves, without help.”

  Murti was about to answer, but Zipporah silenced her with a gesture. Moses threw her an embarrassed look, but also said nothing.

  Zipporah smiled at Miriam and Aaron. “Moses isn’t a slave,” she said, calmly, “nor is his wife. He hasn’t come to see Pharaoh so that he can lead the life of a slave, but in order to bring that life to an end.”

  A curious silence ensued. Aaron and Miriam stared at Zipporah with as much astonishment as if they were seeing her for the first time.

  Moses bent down and took Gershom in his arms. This simple gesture encouraged Zipporah to finally say what she had been keeping silent about for days. “The Everlasting wants Moses to appear before Pharaoh. Do you think a pair of camels, a few mules, and a flock of sheep will go against his wishes? Isn’t it better for Moses to arrive among your people as he is—a free man who does not fear Pharaoh’s power, nor his hatred, nor his whims? Do the Hebrew people think that the man who will free them is timid and submissive?”

  Miriam and Aaron quivered with indignation.

  “Daughter of Jethro!” Aaron cried, raising his eyebrows. “We know our people, and we know what they expect. It is presumptuous for a daughter of Midian to speak of the will of Yahweh.”

  “Aaron, Miriam,” Moses intervened, with a smile on his lips but not in his eyes. “I understand your anxiety. It is perfectly sensible, and I am grateful to you for it. Don’t forget, though, that I myself know Thutmose quite well. I know his roads and I know his power.”

  “Of course! Of course!” Aaron agreed, already less sure of his ground.

  Moses placed his son in Zipporah’s arms and again smiled coldly at his sister and brother. “I don’t doubt your great wisdom, Aaron, my brother. But the reason I’m here among you is that I listened to Zipporah. She is wise and knowledgeable as I cannot be. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Without Zipporah, Moses wouldn’t be Moses. Her thoughts are my thoughts. That’s why she became my wife.”

  There was embarrassment on every face. Even Aaron lowered his head as a sign of humility. Only Miriam, her eyelid deformed by the throbbing of her scar, continued to look at Zipporah with all the severity she could muster.

  “Let’s all go together to the slaves’ village,” Moses said, in a conciliatory tone, “and see if we’re welcome there.”

  That night, Moses came back to the tent earlier than usual and took Zipporah in his arms. They lay for a time in silence, savoring this moment of simple tenderness.

  “Don’t be angry with them,” Moses murmured. “Aaron knows perfectly well who you are, but they still need a little more time to accept . . .” He hesitated.

  Zipporah finished the sentence for him. “Accept his wife even though she’s a stranger.”

  Moses laughed, and kissed Zipporah’s temples and eyes. “And of course Aaron has no great love for the Midianites. He’s quite prejudiced against them, for learned reasons. He’s convinced they sold our ancestor Joseph to Pharaoh.”

  They both laughed, but then, abruptly, Moses turned serious. “Things are getting complicated,” he sighed. “These are the people for whose sake I came. They have suffered, and suffering has molded their minds. But they’re strong and they’re sincere. Give them time, and they’ll learn to love you and judge you by the good you do for them.”

  Zipporah thought of the way Miriam had looked at Eliezer and her. “You mustn’t fear my impatience,” she replied, as lightly as she could, kissing Moses’ neck as she liked to do. “You mustn’t fear anything! Not Aaron, not Miriam, not even Pharaoh. You are Moses. Your God has said to you, ‘Go, I shall be with you.’ How could I wish for any other joy than to be with you and our sons?”

  Two Mothers

  For two days, they followed the river, which was still dense with boats. Along the banks were brick houses with whitewashed walls and flat, square roofs, often with an upper floor. They had many windows, which were wider than the doors of bedchambers in Midian. The spacious gardens were adorned with colonnaded monuments, planted with vines, palms, pomegranate trees, fig trees, and sycamores, and surrounded by walls of beautifully stacked bricks, ten to fifteen cubits high.

  The walls ran along wide, straight roads that led to other gardens, even larger and overflowing with fruit and vegetables. Everywhere, men, women, and children bustled. The men were beardless and bare-chested. The women were dressed in short tunics held in below the breasts, their long, smooth, flowing black hair sometimes covered with straw hats. Slow-moving old men led heavily laden donkeys, while young men carried nets full of freshly caught fish.

  Farther on, as they came closer to the queen of cities, the road parted company with the riverbank, and they found themselves facing a vast expanse of palm groves between the river and the hills and ocher cliffs, beyond which the desert began. And there, finally, rising into the blue sky, were the temples of Pharaoh.

  There were about ten of them, the largest surrounded by smaller ones, as if they had given birth to them. Seeming to grow out of the rock, the tops reaching up into the sky, they beggared belief, so fantastically huge that beside them, even the cliffs seemed mere hillocks. Their faces shimmered in the heat like oil against the transparent sky. The neatly laid brick road leading to them burned in the sun.

  Zipporah remembered Moses’ words about the splendor of Pharaoh’s temples, but their hugeness surpassed anything she could have imagined. Nothing here was on a human scale. Not even the stone monsters with the heads of men and the bodies of lions that stood guard before them.

  Farther on, beneath great pyramids, they could see vast building sites. Colonnades and needles of white limestone and walls carved and painted with thousands of figures rose on the fronts of palaces hollowed out of the cliffs. There were unfinished monsters without wings, and statues without heads. In places, the roads became mere dirt paths, with bricks piled at the sides. And everywhere, the slaves swarmed, working, carrying, hammering, creating a din that rose into the heat of the day and was carried on the air from the farthest reaches of the building sites.

  Moses, who was familiar with the spectacle, remained impassive. But Zipporah was no more able than the shepherds and the handmaids to hold back an exclamation of admiration. Aaron, who had no doubt been expecting this reaction, pulled on the reins of his mule, turned, and raised his emaciated face to them. He seemed even older than before. He dismounted and waved his hand furiously in the direction of Pharaoh’s temples.

  “All this, all these things that are Pharaoh’s, all these things you admire, we built!” he cried. “We, the children of Israel, the slaves. Pharaoh takes pride in what he has been building with our blood for generations and generations. But look . . .”

  He ran to pick up two old bricks that had been left by the side of the road and vigorously rubbed them together. They crumbled
, giving off a fine dust, as if they were melting in Aaron’s hands.

  “Pharaoh builds, but what he builds is only dust,” he proclaimed.

  With a cry that might have been a laugh, he threw down what remained of the bricks, which shattered at the camels’ feet.

  “One breath from the Lord Yahweh will be enough to sweep away everything you think so prodigious,” Aaron concluded, scornfully.

  All those who, a moment earlier, had been contemplating Pharaoh’s extravagance with childlike amazement lowered their eyes. Zipporah glanced at Moses. He was looking at his brother with fervent admiration. As the Everlasting had said, if Moses needed someone to speak, Aaron could certainly speak.

  THE slaves’ village sprawled at the bottom of a disused quarry. It was a maze of long, narrow alleys, surrounded by a wall three cubits thick and five cubits high. The houses were shanties of rough brick, built back-to-back. They all looked the same, each with a door and a hole in the roof through which the smoke escaped from the hearth.

  Moses ordered the shepherds to pitch their tents on one of the slopes of the quarry, where a caravan of merchants had already camped. Only Murti and two other handmaids followed Zipporah as she set off behind her husband along a dirt path. Miriam watched them, but said nothing. Aaron was walking proudly at the head of their little band. Moses was surprised that there was no sign of Pharaoh’s soldiers.

  “No, they almost never come here anymore,” Aaron said. “What’s the point? They know very well we have nowhere else to go apart from these hovels. They simply come every two or three moons to count the pregnant woman and the babies.”

  Aaron and Miriam hurried along a dusty street that seemed to run through the middle of the village, then turned into a warren of alleys filled with rubbish. They finally came out into a square, in the middle of which was a deep well with a cane roof. Children sat by the well, the little girls washing clothes, the boys weaving mats out of straw. They looked up as the newcomers appeared and, recognizing Miriam and Aaron, immediately leaped to their feet.

  “They’re here! Mother Yokeved, Aaron and Miriam are back!”

  Alerted by the cries, a crowd filled the little square. There were shouts of joy. An old woman advanced toward Miriam, who smiled at her and seized her hand. “Mother . . .”

  But Yokeved walked past her and stopped a few paces from Moses.

  Despite her age and the tribulations that had turned her thick hair white, she still retained the beauty her daughter had inherited. Beneath the lines caused by exhaustion and suffering, there was an elegance about her features, and her eyes had a mixture of power and gentleness, a serenity that overwhelmed Zipporah. She stood there, short of breath, lips half open, hands shaking, but with a dignity that ensured her emotion did not come across as excessive. In a very low voice, she spoke Moses’ name. Only his name: “Moses.”

  It was not a cry, not a question, not an expression of doubt. Zipporah sensed that this woman, this mother, was savoring the extraordinary joy of uttering the name again after such a long, long time!

  “Moses!”

  Moses had understood her joy before even savoring his own. He smiled, and nodded hesitantly. “Yes, Mother, I am Moses.”

  Still without a tear in her eyes, she returned his smile. “My name is Yokeved,” she murmured.

  Only then did the two of them cross the distance that separated them and embrace. Now, at last, huddled in Moses’ arms, eyes closed on a sorrow that went beyond age, Yokeved let out a sob. “Oh my son, my firstborn son!”

  Zipporah trembled, realized she was clasping Eliezer a little too tightly to her chest, and loosened her embrace with a nervous laugh.

  All around, the villagers pressed, filling the narrow space with a great clamor of voices. Moses took Yokeved by the hand and led her to Zipporah. Yokeved looked at her with rapture. “My daughter!” she exclaimed. “You are my daughter!”

  Her eyes grew even larger at the sight of Gershom and Eliezer, and her gentle laugh was like a blessing. “And here are my grandchildren!” she cried, opening her arms. “My daughter and my grandchildren. May the Everlasting be praised!”

  These words, for which Zipporah had so long been waiting, warmed her chest like fire. Lacking Yokeved’s restraint, she found it impossible to hold back the flood of tears. Almost dropping Eliezer, she clasped the shoulders of Moses’ mother as she had never been able to clasp her own mother.

  THERE followed ten days full of joy and hope.

  Moses sacrificed half the flock that had been brought from Midian. The women ground the grain that had not been consumed during the journey. The air was filled with the smells of cooking, and makeshift tables were set up in the night, while men posted themselves on the road to give the alert in case there was a visit by Pharaoh’s soldiers. Sitting by the fires, Moses told his story. Whenever his voice became blurred with exhaustion, Aaron would continue, vigorously and with a greater profusion of details. When dawn rose, those who had to return to the building sites became slaves again, despite having had only a few hours of rest.

  But the next night, other men, women, and children would slip into the village and the little square in front of Yokeved’s house. They, too, wanted to see and hear the man who had received that extraordinary promise from the Everlasting: “I shall deliver them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them to a good, spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey!”

  The news spread through the building sites like the scent of flowers in spring. The faces, too, were like spring flowers, as if exhaustion no longer had any hold over them.

  As the days passed, Zipporah hardly saw Moses, who was always being detained by one group or another and rarely snatched more than a few hours’ sleep. She herself spent her time in the company of Yokeved, taking care of her sons and doing women’s chores. Miriam spent little time with the two women. On the few occasions that she did, she would remain distant and silent. Most often, she would busy herself with the village women or the newcomers, who treated her with great respect and asked for her counsel.

  Yokeved, whose one happiness was to look after Gershom and Eliezer, was unaware of Miriam’s coldness toward Zipporah. She did not notice the severity of her gaze, the way she pursed her lips whenever she, Yokeved, with much laughter, kissed and stroked Eliezer’s black skin. Not once did Zipporah’s own black skin stop Yokeved from tenderly calling her “my daughter.”

  And Zipporah would laugh to hear it. She could not get enough of these marvelous words: “Come now, my daughter.” “Zipporah, my daughter, where are you, my child?”

  Words that flowed into her like honey, as if the promise of a gentler, more just world that had been made to Moses were already coming true.

  SOON, a number of venerable old men arrived in the village. They were received with great consideration, and a family gave up its house to provide them with somewhere to stay. Zipporah realized that some of them had come a long distance, from the farthest building sites in Waset, both north and south. Moses’ name had spread there, too, like a seed carried on the wind. She was delighted at first: Everything was happening as the God of Moses had announced.

  But one morning, while he was sharing his meal with Moses as usual, Aaron said something that surprised Zipporah. “They’ll all be here soon, Moses. They’ll listen to you, and give their opinion on the best way to see Pharaoh. Then we can decide what to do.”

  His features drawn, dark shadows beneath his eyes, Moses had barely listened. “Decide what to do?” he asked, after a moment’s pause. “What do you mean?”

  “Decide on the best moment to approach Pharaoh. How to get to him. Many of those around him will try to stop us. We also need to think about what to say to him.”

  Moses seemed surprised. “Aren’t there too many of the elders? How will they ever reach agreement?”

  Aaron took offense at this, and assured Moses that this was the only way to proceed. “Our elders have always done this, and we must follow their example. Assemble the e
lders, listen to their counsels, and apply them. That’s the way things have always been done. It is our law. Nothing is greater than the mission that awaits us, and we must carry it out according to custom. The elders will decide.”

  Zipporah froze when she heard this. She could not believe her ears. Had Aaron forgotten the words of his God, which he himself had been repeating endlessly? Hadn’t the Lord Yahweh said to Moses, “You will go, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt”? Hadn’t he said, “I shall be your mouth, I will instruct you on what you must do, and to your brother Aaron you will be a god”? Weren’t those the very words of the voice on the mountain of Horeb?

  Hadn’t everything already been decided? What was the point, then, of further decisions? As for the difficulty of approaching Thutmose, which so worried Aaron, wasn’t Moses Moses? He simply had to appear outside Pharaoh’s palace, Zipporah was sure, and the guards would make themselves the instrument of the Lord Yahweh’s will.

  She was about to give vent to her irritation, but she bit her lips and held back. She hoped that Moses would look at her, but he merely approved Aaron’s words resignedly.

  At that moment, Zipporah realized how exhausted her husband was by what had happened so far and how much Aaron’s constant interventions were wearing down his spirit and his will.

  Remorse gripped her heart. Thinking that Moses did not need his wife, given all the acclaim with which he was surrounded, all the outpouring of hope, she had been happy to surrender to Yokeved’s gentle care. But now, seeing Moses again plagued by torment and doubt, she realized her mistake: She had abandoned Moses to Aaron’s intransigence, his self-belief, and his lust for power, which were eating away at the self-confidence and authority Moses had acquired during the journey.

  Wanting to avoid a confrontation with Aaron, Zipporah said nothing, thinking that she would soon find an opportunity to talk to Moses alone. But events were to overtake her.