Exodus 4:24-26

24-26. It came to pass… in the inn An incident which transpired at some well-known halting-place on the road ( the lodging-place) is so briefly related as to have occasioned much doubt and perplexity to all interpreters . It is most probably to be understood thus: Zipporah, the Midianitess, although she loved her husband, yet did not wholly sympathise with his great work, nor enter as she should into Jehovah’s covenant . At least through her influence Moses had not given their youngest son the covenant sign, and Eliezer was yet uncircumcised . But it was now needful that Moses should be most impressively taught the necessity of himself keeping the ordinances which he was about to teach to others, and this is one of the striking incidents in his spiritual education .

Sought to kill him Death was the penalty for neglecting the seal of the covenant. Genesis 17:14. As Moses advanced towards Egypt, Jehovah barred his way, as at a similar crisis in the history of Jacob he had crossed his path at Peniel, and would not allow him to go forward till, after his famous wrestling, he consecrated himself to the God of Israel. In some way, we are not told how, death stood in his path, and Zipporah recognised his mortal danger as a consequence of his neglect and her opposition.

Cut off the foreskin She herself circumcised the child, and threw the bloody token petulantly at Moses’s feet, calling him a husband of bloods, (text, a bloody husband,) in angry allusion to the bloody rite.

Then Jehovah released Moses from his danger, ( so he let him go,) and Zipporah, regarding him as wedded to her afresh, that is, redeemed from death, and made thus her husband anew, calls him with fresh emphasis a husband of bloods because of the circumcision.

Zipporah uses a stone knife, such as seems generally to have been then employed for this rite as may be seen in Joshua 5:2, margin although metallic tools had been in use for ages among these Shemitic peoples . But in this rite, as in the Egyptian process of embalming, ( Herodotus, 2: 86,) ancient custom seems to have kept in use the more primitive tool . Zipporah seems now, or soon after, to have returned to her father’s house in Midian, for there we find her with the children when Moses returns to Horeb at the head of Israel .