“Moses married an Ethiopian woman” is a common statement made in defense of interracial marriage.  The merits of this line of reasoning are examined herein, and the Biblical and profane record of Moses’ Ethiopian wife are explored.  An adequate treatment of this subject involves not only Biblical history, but also geography and chronology.  Few have the interest level or the patience for a full treatment, so I have tried to keep this as brief as possible while still covering the main points.  First, here’s the verse being referenced:

“Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman.”  ~ Numbers 12:1 (NKJV)

Descriptive Not Prescriptive

This verse merely recounts what happened; it does not contain any moral instruction.  While moral lessons are often taught through parables, fables, or allegories, this is just historical narrative.  A moral tale is of the general structure “Jim took action A with result B.”  Depending on the result, we should either imitate Jim or avoid his mistake.  This passage, however, is a classic example of “you can’t get doctrine from narrative”, which is to say, this is merely descriptive of what happened, not prescriptive for how all people should behave in all times and circumstances.  The Bible often recounts the sins of otherwise holy men (2 Samuel 11), including Moses himself (Exodus 2:12, Exodus 4:13-14, Exodus 4:24-26, Numbers 20:12).  Just because an admirable man took a certain action, that does not elevate his action to a universal principle (sometimes even when the Lord commanded it:  Hosea 1).

Summarizing Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron are envious of their brother Moses’ superior position with the Lord and Israel, and use his marriage to an Ethiopian woman as an opportunity for disparaging him.  Their envy was the reason, and Moses’ marriage was the occasion.  Paraphrasing, “Moses degraded himself by marrying an Ethiopian, so why should he have greater status than us, through whom the Lord has also spoken?”  The Lord manifests and rebukes their envy, demonstrating that Moses is their superior, because He speaks clearly and directly to Moses, unlike other prophets.  The Lord does not address the matter of Moses’ wife.

As punishment for their murmuring, the Lord strikes Miriam with leprosy, making her skin as white as snow.  Despite the fact that this verse describes events in the Near East almost 3500 years ago, pastors like John Piper shamelessly eisegete this passage, interpreting her skin’s whiteness as some sort of modern American object lesson against racist whites.  If Piper’s interpretation is correct, I find it strange that the Lord failed to make any mention of Miriam and Aaron’s “racism” when He appeared in a pillar of cloud specifically to rebuke them, and that Moses made no mention of it when he recorded this event under inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  No Bible commentator writing prior to the 20th century invention of the “sin” of racism made any observation similar to Piper’s.  Not the reformer John Calvin, the Baptist John Gill, the Puritan Matthew Henry, the Lutherans Keil and Delitzsch, the Methodist and outspoken critic of slavery Adam Clarke, the Anglican Charles Ellicott, not Matthew Poole, Robert Jamieson, Andrew Fausset, David Brown, Albert Barnes, or others.  I wonder what conclusion Piper would reach if he applied his critical theory approach to Exodus 4:6, where Moses is given the miraculous ability to make his hand snow white as proof of his divine endorsement.  When arguing from silence, imagination is the only limitation.

The bottom line is, this passage simply has no bearing on the moral status of interracial marriage.  If there’s any “moral of the story” to be had in regards to Moses’ Ethiopian wife, it’s that interracial marriage will cause friction with your biological family.

Polygyny Not Considered

While I could stop the article here and feel like I’ve said all that really needs to be said, in the interest of both defending Moses’ reputation and convincing the unconvinced, let’s delve deeper into this matter.  In the entire Bible, which contains five books authored by Moses himself, this Ethiopian woman is only mentioned this one time, with no name or further details given.  The wife of Moses that the Bible actually discusses multiple times was Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro from the tribe of Midian, a close racial cousin of Moses.  For the remainder of this article, I will consider the following:  A) was the Ethiopian woman Moses’ first wife or his second, and B) was Zipporah actually the woman being referenced by Miriam and Aaron?

I won’t consider the question of whether or not Moses was married to both simultaneously.  My goal is to show that Moses’ marriage to this Ethiopian woman has no positive bearing on the moral status of interracial marriage.  If this was a polygamous marriage, then it ruins the rhetorical value of using Numbers 12:1 as any sort of defense for interracial marriage.  There is a certain deprecated, special-circumstance toleration for polygyny in the Bible, but even its most ardent defender would not call polygyny normative.

Moses Didn’t Marry the Ethiopian Woman During the Exodus

Most who use Numbers 12:1 as a defense for interracial marriage assume that Moses married a black woman among the “mixed multitude” (literally, “great rabble”; Exodus 12:38, Numbers 11:4, Deut 29:11) at some point during the 40 year Exodus.  But the Bible never even hints at that, and its own record of the chronology of the Exodus does not reasonably allow for it either.  One writer, who actually made the effort to examine the timeline, resorted to Scofieldian temporal gymnastics in order to rescue his mixed multitude wife theory, claiming that Numbers 12 is radically out of sequence.  While it is true that Moses does not write in a strictly chronological format, sometimes organizing events topically, sometimes by order of importance, etc., the sequence of this particular event is clearly documented in Numbers.

Moses’ life was split into three 40 year periods:  the Egyptian period from birth to age 40 (Acts 7:23), the Midianite period from age 40 to 80 (Exodus 7:7; Acts 7:30), and the Exodus period from age 80 to 120 (Numbers 14:33; Deut 8:4, 29:5, 31:2, 34:7).  The 40 year Exodus may be split into two periods:  the first two years and the last 38 (Deut 2:14).  The first two years started with leaving Egypt, and ended when the Lord cursed the Israelites to wander in the desert until all over the age of 20 were dead, save only Caleb and Joshua (Deut 2:13-16, Numbers 1:45, 14:29-30, 26:63-65).  The Bible records a great deal of the history of the first two years (Red Sea crossing, quail and manna, water from the rock at Rephidim, receiving of the Law, golden calf, ethical/sacerdotal systems developed, tabernacle, twelve spies), but only a few events in the remainder (Korah’s rebellion, the budding of Aaron’s staff) until the story picks up again in the last two years of the Exodus (Moses’ failure at the waters of Meribah, Aaron’s death, the bronze snake, Balaam, conquest of Midian, Moses’ death, etc. ).

There are two events of interest that we need to examine.  At some point after the events of Exodus 4:24-26, Moses sent Zipporah and their two sons back to his father in law Jethro (Exodus 18:2).  While Israel was encamped at the wilderness of Sinai during the Exodus, Jethro brought Moses’ family back to him (Exodus 18:5).  This is the first event, and the second event is that of Numbers 12:1.  Both occurred within the first two years of the Exodus.  Israel made camp at the wilderness of Sinai 45 days (or two months, depending on the translation) after the beginning of the Exodus (Exodus 19:1) and stayed there for almost a year (Numbers 10:11).  After leaving Sinai, they briefly camped at Taberah (Numbers 11:3), then at Kibroth-hattaavah (Numbers 11:34, 33:16), afterwards staying at Hazeroth for some time (Numbers 11:35, 33:17).  The Hazeroth encampment is where Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses for his Ethiopian wife.  After Hazeroth, Israel camped at Kadesh-barnea in the wilderness of Paran, which is the location where the Lord cursed Israel to wander in the desert for 38 more years (Numbers 13:26, 14:34, 32:8-12; Deut 1:19, 2:13-16; Joshua 14:6-12).

Therefore, not only did these two events absolutely occur within a time period of two years, we can shave at least 1.5 months off the front (Exodus 19:1) and the same off the back (7 days + 40 days from Numbers 12:15 and 13:25), leaving us an absolute maximum of 21 months.  Reasonably, the time period is almost certainly less than six months.  While I am of the opinion that Jethro lived near modern day Al-Bad’ and that Mount Sinai is Jabal Maqla, which are only about 20 miles apart, the Scriptural record nevertheless seems to indicate that Jethro did not arrive until late in Israel’s nearly one year stay at Sinai.  The supporting evidence is: A) the first several months at Sinai were so demanding of Moses’ time that a family reunion could not be accommodated, with Moses climbing the mountain eight times and spending 40 days on the mountain two separate times, B) it appears that the Law had already been received by the time Jethro arrived (Exodus 18:16), C) Jethro’s burnt-offerings (Exodus 18:12) suggests that the altar of earth and uncut stone was already built (Exodus 20:24-26), D) the presence of Moses’ brother-in-law at the very end of their time at Sinai (Numbers 10:29), and E) the parallelism between Jethro’s advice (Exodus 18:21-23) and its apparent fulfillment (Deut 1:9-18, Numbers 11:16-30).  The book of Exodus starts with a prologue, moves to the plagues and the beginning of the Exodus, then once Israel reaches Mount Sinai, the book shifts to a topical organization of the salient developments during their time there:  the reunion with Jethro, the Law, the Covenant, the Tabernacle, and the priestly system.  To assume that the reunion occurred at the very beginning of Israel’s time at Mount Sinai is to treat the order of the text too woodenly, while ignoring the plain description of what transpired in their earliest days there (Exodus 19).

I would guess that Jethro arrived maybe as much as three months prior to their departure from Sinai.  The only chronological data given about Taberah and Kibroth-hattaavah is a month (Numbers 11:20) and three days (Numbers 10:33).  If Miriam and Aaron’s insult happened two months into their stay at Hazeroth, that leaves less than eight months for all the events between Numbers 12:14 and 14:34.  Three months plus one month plus two months gives my probable maximum of six months.  Bishop James Ussher, in his famous chronology, Annals of the World, places these two events no more than three months apart, which seems very reasonable given the Biblical record.

These chronological evidences by themselves render highly improbable the notion that the Ethiopian woman was Moses’ second wife.  Is it reasonable that within a six month time period containing some of the most epic events in history, to which Moses was the chief party, involving enormous demands on his time (Exodus 18:18), that Zipporah died and he remarried a negress from among the “great rabble”?  It strains credulity to say the very least.  Additionally, this was one of the most extensively documented time periods of the Exodus, which was recorded by Moses himself.  It seems even a five-word note like “Zipporah died and Moses remarried” might have been in order, had it actually happened.  Numbers 12:1 would have been an ideal place to add the note, yet Scripture is utterly silent about any of this.  Further, if Zipporah did die, it was certainly not from old age, as she was much younger than Moses.  Their sons, Gershom and Eliezer, where quite young, making Zipporah likely in her forties at most.  The supporting evidence is: A) at some point in the prior 40 years (Moses’ Midianite period), she was unmarried and of child-bearing age, B) Moses placed Zipporah, Gershom, and Eliezer on a donkey to ride to Egypt (Exodus 4:20), but an average donkey can’t carry more than about 125 pounds, and even a mammoth donkey could only carry about twice that, and C) even a toddler would have put up some serious resistance to Zipporah’s impromptu flint knife circumcision (Exodus 4:25).

All that said, the best argument against the Ethiopian woman being Moses’ second wife is recorded in Leviticus 21:14.  This verse, in a chapter about God’s requirements for priests, explicitly forbids them to marry interracially (so that they do not “profane their seed”, as verse 15 literally states).  While Moses was technically more a prophet than a priest, he performed all three offices of prophet (truth proclaimer), priest (intercessor/mediator), and king (judge/ruler).  Scripture often records Moses acting in a priestly role, and Psalm 99:6 plainly calls him one.  I suppose one could make the argument that since Moses was Aaron’s brother and not his son that this requirement did not apply to him, though that is certainly a pedantic line of reasoning.  Leaders are held to higher standards, but those standards are ones to which even the lowest man should aspire.  While I would argue that there was a general Creation ordinance against interracial marriage (the “meet” of “help-meet” meaning compatible, suitable, fitting, proper, appropriate – in harmony with the man’s own nature), the very specific command of Leviticus 21:14 was ex post facto as regards Zipporah.  It was not ex post facto, however, regarding Moses’ Ethiopian wife if she was his second wife.  Moses literally received this command directly from God, and told it to the people.  Are we to believe that Moses, with forethought aplenty, publically violated this law in the sight of God and all Israel in the most flagrant way possible, yet managed to maintain his position and authority?  The idea is too incongruous to warrant serious consideration.  Even if this command was not a factor, Moses was viewed as an outsider by his own people (Exodus 2:14, Acts 7:35), and could likely anticipate his siblings’ reaction as well, so why would he intentionally make the situation far worse by marrying a woman so obviously foreign?

The advocates for the Ethiopian woman being Moses’ second wife are asking us to believe that the octogenarian Moses, having just spent well over 80 days in the physical presence of the Creator of the universe, whose much younger wife died unexpectedly just weeks ago, leading a nation that viewed him as foreign, ruling the people to the point of exhaustion, having spotted a random Nubian female amongst the riffraff, decided to marry her, despite it being an egregious violation of a command given to him directly by the Lord.  This is “straining to do some explaining” in the extreme.  And if this were somehow, against all reason and experience, inexplicably true, how does it in any way commend to us interracial marriage as a sensible course of action?  We are reasonably only left with the possibility that she was his first wife, or that she and Zipporah are actually the same woman.

Race or Place?

If they’re actually the same woman, we need some plausible way of identifying Zipporah as an Ethiopian.  If the Bible only mentioned Miriam’s and Aaron’s grumbling and left it at that, we could simply take “Ethiopian” as a pejorative, in the same way that one might call a stingy gentile a “Jew”, a lazy white person a “nigger”, a workaholic American a “German”, or a bibulous Englishman an “Irishman”.  In fact, the approach of rabbinic Judaism in dealing with Numbers 12:1 is most often to simply treat Zipporah as sharing certain characteristics of an Ethiopian without actually being an Ethiopian (for example, her character was as obvious as an Ethiopian’s skin color, in the manner of Jeremiah 13:23).  The problem with that is, Moses does not stop with Miriam’s and Aaron’s insult, but plainly confirms that he did, in fact, marry an Ethiopian.  It seems, therefore, a very weak position to simply identify Zipporah as characteristically, but not actually, Ethiopian.

An actual Ethiopian in the most obvious sense would be a racial Ethiopian, but it also seems reasonable that Moses could have used Ethiopian as a demonym or gentilic, simply identifying Zipporah as being from the land of Ethiopia.  Consider the difficulties even with modern terms.  Germans are a people, and Germany is a place, but German is also a language.  Some Germans live in Germany and some merely trace their lineage to Germany, only some of whom speak German.  There is German work ethic, German engineering, German quality, German food, and German culture.  Muenster is a city in Germany, but also a small town in North Texas, populated by the descendants of German immigrants.  Consider me:  what if 3500 years hence someone tries to determine my race or place of origin?  My actual surname is Norman, but my family intermarried heavily with the Anglo-Saxons, yet we emigrated from Cornwall, one of the Celtic nations.  However, I am Palestinian by birth, as in Palestine, Texas, which was named for Palestine, Illinois by the pioneer Daniel Parker, which was named for the land of Palestine by the French explorer Jean LaMotte, which the Greeks named for the Philistines, who actually lived in the Gaza Strip up to Joppa, and who likely originally came from the island of Crete.

The issue is not as straightforward as it first appears.   As we progress, however, it will become clear that Numbers 12:1 may have reasonably been referring to the Midianitess Zipporah, by use of a demonym.

Cushite Not Ethiopian

So far, I have been following the KJV’s convention of using the word “Ethiopian”, but the KVJ itself was following the convention established by the Greek Septuagint (LXX), which was continued in the Vetus Latina and the Vulgate.  In Hebrew, Numbers 12:1 actually uses the term “Cushite”, as do the majority of modern English translations (Kush and Chus are other variants).  While we could just leave the Ethiopian identification at this point as a curiosity of translation, it’s important to remember that translators of the LXX were much closer to the events of Numbers linguistically, geographically, and temporally.  The LXX was written in Alexandria, Egypt during the third and second centuries B.C., about 1200 years after the Exodus, in the language from which we get the word “Ethiopian”.  There is some value, then, in examining what “Ethiopian” meant in the Hellenistic period.

The Hellenistic Concept of Ethiopian

The meaning of place names changes with time.  Names that were once inclusive of vast and rather ambiguous regions now refer to specific countries with precisely defined borders.  Syria once described a much larger region containing the Levant and western Mesopotamia.  The borders of India were quite vague, essentially consisting of vast areas to the east in south Asia, and was sometimes used even more generally as a term for “remote places”.  Libya was once the entirety of North Africa.  Ethiopia often meant the part of Africa that was not Libya (that is, sub-Saharan Africa), but could even more generally refer to any location in the Torrid Zone (for example, peninsular India).  “Ethiopian” properly means “sunburned” (literally, “burnt face”), which certainly included blacks, but also peoples who were swarthy or dusky as compared to the Greeks.  It was originally an identifier of certain peoples with a particular skin color, not certain places, but since specific peoples live in specific places, it came to mean the places as well (consider the discussion above concerning the varied meanings of the word German).  Even those who believe Moses married a black woman, and have spent the slightest amount of time researching the matter, do not place her in modern day Ethiopia, but in Nubia just south of Egypt in what is today Sudan.

As regards the question at hand, is it possible that during the Hellenistic period that the Midianitess Zipporah could have been considered an Ethiopian geographically?  Midian was uncontroversially located on the east side of the Gulf of Aqaba, in the modern Tabuk province of Saudi Arabia.  While this is certainly north of what most today would deem Ethiopia, consider that ancient writers often identified areas even further north as “Ethiopia”:

“[W]e find Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, &c., styled Ethiopia by some very good authors ; nay, it must he allowed, that the ancients called all those countries, extending themselves beyond each side of the Red sea, indifferently India or Ethiopia.” ~ T. G. Tomlins, A Universal History of the Nations of Antiquity

“Aethiopia, beyond Egypt, a country better known to the ancients, than that in Libya, or on the Atlantic, a distinction used by Homer.  The people of which last were called Aethiopes Hesperii.  Whether Chus is the Scripture name for Aethiopia is disputed ; Bochart maintains that it denotes Arabia.  The ancients comprised Chaldea under the name Aethiopia ; Strabo says that some called Phoenicia Aethiopia ; Aethicus, the cosmographer, places also the head of the Tigris in Aethiopia.  The inhabitants of Sagri, or Zagri, a mountain on the other side the Tigris, Hesychius makes a nation of Ethiopians.  And the inhabitants of the Susiana were anciently reckoned among the Ethiopians.  Memnon, who came from Susae, to the assistance of Priam, is called by Hesiod, king of the Ethiopians, mentioned also by Virgil.  It is to be observed that the Greek geographers called all the more southerly people, of whom they knew little or nothing, Aethiopes.” ~ Alexander MacBean, A Dictionary of Ancient Geography

“Homer and Herodotus call all the peoples of the Sudan, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine and Western Asia and India Ethiopians.” ~ Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia

Cepheus of Greek mythology, husband of the beautiful but vain queen Cassiopeia, and father of the stunning Andromeda, was a king of Ethiopia.  These three Ethiopians played prominent roles in the well-known Perseus story.  Geographically, Cepheus and Cassiopeia reigned from ancient Joppa (attested to by Pliny the Elder, Pomponius Mela, Josephus, Pausanias, and others; like much of Greek mythology, this story had an authentic historical basis, but was embellished and mythologized with time).  In ancient artwork, the Ethiopian Andromeda is repeatedly shown with fair skin, and very often with European features.  (When Jonah attempted to flee to Tarshish about 760 BC, he went through the port at Joppa, then under Phoenician control.  There is an interesting parallel between the sea monster Cetus of the Perseus story and the great fish of Jonah.  The “Kraken” may literally have been Jonah’s “whale”, the massive skeletal remains of which were carried off by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus to Rome from Joppa.)  In Homer’s Odyssey (c. 8^th Century BC), Menelaus, during his period of wandering after the Trojan War, visited an Ethiopia in association with other locations unambiguously known to be Levantine.  At least one scholar specifically identifies Menelaus’ Ethiopia with the greater Joppa area.  The ancient historian Ephorus (c. 400 – 330 BC), in a reference surviving in Strabo’s (64/63 BC – c. AD 24) Geographica, also references certain Ethiopians on the Mediterranean coast, despite Strabo’s glosses to the contrary.  Tacitus (c. AD 56 – 117), in his Histories, even mentions a theory of the origins of the Jewish people that conflates them with the Ethiopians.

There are even two references from the Hellenistic period directly addressing this matter that survived in Book 9 of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Praeparatio Evangelica.  The first reference was from Ezekiel the Tragedian, a Hebrew from third century BC Alexandria, who in his play retelling the Exodus wrote:

Then, concerning the daughters of Raguel, [Moses] adds this:

“But here, behold! some seven fair maids I see.”

And on his [Moses] asking them what maidens they were, Zipporah replies:

“The land, O stranger, bears the common name
Of Libya, but by various tribes is held
Of dark-skinned Aethiops: yet the land is ruled
By one sole monarch, and sole chief in war.
This city has for ruler and for judge
A priest, the father of myself and these.”

(Note that Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews also names Zipporah’s father “Raguel”, who the Bible confusingly names both Jethro and Reuel.  One was likely a title or an honorific in the manner of Mahatma or Atatürk.)

The second reference was from Demetrius the Chronographer, also a Hebrew from third century BC Alexandria, who wrote:

“There is therefore no inconsistency in Moses and Zipporah having lived at the same time. And they dwelt in the city Madiam, which was called from one of the sons of Abraham. For it says that Abraham sent his sons towards the East to find a dwelling-place: for this reason also Aaron and Miriam said at Hazeroth that Moses had married an Aethiopian woman.”

In its ancient usage, there is so much ambiguity in the term that the land of Midian could reasonably fall within the general category of “Ethiopia”, and clearly did in these two surviving references.  Further, it is significant that the translators of the LXX chose to use this broad, imprecise term when they could have specifically identified the woman of Numbers 12:1 as a Cushite, as the Hebrew did, by using a demonym form of “Χούς” or “Κους” (Chus or Kush/Kous).  The Kingdom of Kush (c. 1069 BC to 350 AD), centered in Nubia just south of Egypt, would have been well known to them.  If they had been convinced that this wife of Moses was a Nubian woman from Cush-proper, why would they have favored the ambiguous term over a specific one?

The Biblical Location(s) of Cush

Reviewing all Biblical references to Cush leads to an initially surprising conclusion:  unless one is willing to embrace absurdities, there was clearly more than one land of Cush.  It seems the Cushites migrated and took their place name with them, much like the Galatians.  There are at least three Biblical lands of Cush:

• Mesopotamian Cush: This was located at the north end of the Persian Gulf in what is today the Iranian province of Khuzestan (notice the name artifact “Khuz”), and extending to Babylon under the Cushite Nimrod. The Karun River, which flows through Khuzestan into the Arvand Rud (the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates), is almost certainly the Gihon of Genesis 2:13, which “flows around the whole land of Cush.”  Khuzestan basically corresponds to ancient Susiana, whose capital Susa was the city of origin for the famous Ethiopian king Memnon (a mythologized figure killed by Achilles in the Trojan War).
• Arabian Cush: Over the span of many centuries, Semites have come to dominate the Arabian Peninsula, but they once shared Arabia side-by-side with Cushites.  While Cushite tribes were broadly dispersed in Arabia, their principal settlement was in Arabia Felix (basically, Yemen), where their descendants are still found to this very day.  It seems that Cushites emigrated from Mesopotamia to Arabia after the Babel dispersion, though that is not entirely uncontroversial.
• African Cush: The Arabian Cushites eventually colonized Africa south of their Hamitic cousins the Egyptians, in the regions of Nubia and Abyssinia, where Cushitic languages are still spoken.  It is of interest that the Kingdom of Aksum, centered in Eritrea, eventually came to rule the Cushitic settlements on both sides of the Red Sea, after they conquered the Arabian Himyarites in 525 AD.

Arabian Cush is often referenced in the Bible.  Check the “Cush” entry in any book of sacred geography written prior to the time when the subject of Africans in the Bible became highly politicized, and you will often find a discussion of Arabian Cush.  Samuel Bochart’s Geographica Sacra, Edward Wells’ An Historical Geography of the Old and New Testament, and Rev. Charles Forster’s The Historical Geography of Arabia, all expound the case for Arabian Cush.  A handful of others discussing this topic include Johann Michaelis’ Spicilegium Geographiae, Augustin Calmet’s Great Dictionary of the Holy Bible, Elijah Parish’s Sacred Geography, and John Mansford’s A Scripture Gazetteer.  Bible commentaries mentioning Arabian Cush as the proper, probable, or possible identification for a particular Biblical reference to Cush include those by Albert Barnes, Joseph Benson, John Calvin, Adam Clarke, Charles Ellicott, John Gill, Matthew Henry, Robert Jamieson-Andrew Fausset-David Brown, Carl Keil-Franz Delitzsch, Alexander Maclaren, Matthew Poole, and John Wesley, as well as the Geneva Study Bible, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, and The Pulpit Commentary.  (Bible Hub has a great many commentaries online.  If you want to check for yourself, the best verse to start with is none other than Numbers 12:1.)  Works discussing Arabian Cush outside of a strictly Biblical context include George Rawlinson’s The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, the abolitionist John Baldwin’s Pre-Historic Nations, and the exceedingly biased black apologist Drusilla Houston’s Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire.

As it pertains to this discussion, what we need to answer is if the land of Midian in Arabia Petraea can reasonably be considered a Cushite land.  References to Cush in Arabia Felix and Arabia Deserta are not germane.  Keep in mind that extreme northeastern Egypt, southern Israel, and northern Midian all meet in the same general region on the northeastern side of the Sinai Peninsula.  The following are the key verses that form a relationship between Midian and Cush (keeping in mind the equivalence between “Cush” and “Ethiopia”):

• Genesis 25:18: “[Ishmael’s descendants] settled from Havilah to Shur which is east of Egypt as one goes toward Assyria…” (NASB) and 1 Samuel 15:7:  “So Saul defeated the Amalekites, from Havilah as you go to Shur, which is east of Egypt.” (NASB)  There was a Semitic Havilah (Genesis 10:29, 1 Chronicles 1:23) and a Cushitic Havilah (Genesis 10:7 , 1 Chronicles 1:9).  Semitic Havilah was a son of Joktan, whose descendants are traditionally considered to have settled in southwest and central Arabia, from the northern part of Arabia Felix, extending north into Arabia Deserta along the eastern coast of the Red Sea.  Further, we are told in Genesis 2:11 that the Pishon River “flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.”  The Pishon is, controversially, the Wadi Al-Batin, an intermittent river in our times, which is the final section of the Wadi al-Rummah.  Near the western end of the Wadi al-Rummah is Mahd adh Dhahab (“Cradle of Gold”), where an ancient gold mine is located, possibly thought to be the source of the “gold of Ophir”, who was the brother of Semitic Havilah.  Given these evidences, it is safe to assume that Semitic Havilah was this central Arabian Havilah, and the northern Havilah east of the Sinai Peninsula (where Shur was located) was Cushitic.  This puts an entire tribe of Cushites in the vicinity of Midian.
• Numbers 12:1: While it would be circular reasoning for the purposes of this article, a great many scholars use this verse as key proof text for a link between Cush and Midian, given that the only wife of Moses ever discussed in Scripture is the Midianitess Zipporah.  For different translations of the Bible, how the translators interpret this verse also impacts how they translate other verses that reference Cush.
• Job 28:19: “The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it…” (NASB)  This is almost certainly a reference to topaz sourced from the geologically unique St. John’s Island (historic name: Topazios).  St. John’s Island is an island in the Red Sea, which could be a reference to either Africa or Arabia, but the Cushites of Arabia Felix were more famous as traders than their African cousins.  This verse offers no direct proof of a Cush in Arabia Petraea, so I only mention it here as evidence of the diversity and interpretational difficulty of what is meant by “Cush” in the Bible.
• 2 Chronicles 14:12-14: “So the LORD routed the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and the Ethiopians fled.  Asa and the people who were with him pursued them as far as Gerar; and so many Ethiopians fell that they could not recover, for they were shattered before the LORD and before His army. And they carried away very much plunder.  They destroyed all the cities around Gerar, for the dread of the LORD had fallen on them; and they despoiled all the cities, for there was much plunder in them.” (NASB)  Reading these verses without a preconceived notion of where the various warring parties were located, one would naturally assume that the Ethiopians were located in and around Gerar.  Gerar is one of the cities of Philistia, at the southern end of Israel.  It’s worth noting that W.F. Albright thought that there was an ancient Cushite colony located at Gerar (Tel Haror is the archeological mound for Gerar).
• 2 Chronicles 21:16: “Then the LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines and the Arabs who bordered the Ethiopians” (NASB)  Philistia was at the southern end of Israel, extending to the border of Egypt.  Even by modern highways, the southern end of Philistia to the northern end of African Cush is over 900 miles.  The Cush that bordered on the Philistines and the Arabs would have to have been in or near Midian in Arabia Petraea.
• Habakkuk 3:7: “I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.” (NASB)  This verse establishes an explicit parallelism between Cush and Midian, making them the same or adjacent places.
• Ezekiel 29:10: “Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.” (KJV)  Syene (Aswan) was the southern-most city of Egypt.  This verse obviously references opposite ends of Egypt, making Cush at the northern end.  If we interpret this as a reference to African Cush, which is south of Egypt, the verse is nonsensical.  The difficulty here is that the Hebrew word for “tower” is “migdol”, which a great many English translations interpret as a town name:  “…from Migdol to Syene, as far as the border of Cush”, making the double reference to the southern border of Egypt a Hebraism for additional emphasis.  Translators who assume that “Cush” must be south of Egypt are forced into this interpretation, but it is not necessary if you take “migdol” as the KJV does and “Ethiopia” as the Cush in Arabia Petraea.

These verses sufficiently establish the location of a Biblical Cush in or near Midian, such that it is reasonable for Zipporah to be called a Cushite as a demonym.  (For the sake of comprehensiveness, I would also mention that for a period of 80 years or so around the time of Isaiah, the Kingdom of Kush conquered and ruled Egypt until run out by the Assyrians.  This makes perfectly intelligible some of the references to Cush in Isaiah and other places that seem to conflate Egypt and Cush.  It is also of interest that both Strabo and Diodorus Siculus mention a penal colony of Ethiopians in Rhinocorura, on the border between Egypt and Israel, though this would have been well after the time of Moses.)

The Views of Rabbinic Judaism

Reviewing the works of rabbinic Judaism regarding this topic, it is striking how much of a problem the idea of Moses marrying a Cushite woman caused them.  A faith that knows no forgiveness cannot accept the idea of an imperfect saint.  For those who are unaware, the Pharisees were the only branch of Judaism who, in significant numbers, survived the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in the mid-130s AD (the Karaites also survived, but they are a tiny minority).  The Orthodox Judaism of today is simply Pharisaism with 2000 years of additional rancidity and piles upon piles of halachic legal commentaries.  Faithful Old Covenant Hebrews were the founders of Christendom, but the Pharisees only grew in their hatred of Christ and Christ’s people. While they spent a great deal of time and mental effort making loopholes and fundamentally upending everything Moses taught, a work they continue today, they nevertheless increasingly came to treat Moses as an idol.  If Moses violated his own law against interracial marriage, especially in light of the seriousness of such a violation as made evident during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, combined with the fact that interracial marriage specifically with the descendants of Ham was absolutely forbidden in the “oral Torah”, then his worthiness as an idol is obviously in question.

Rather than investigate this issue dispassionately, the Pharisees just did what they always do:  make up whatever they want and justify it with emendations, circumlocution, and outright lies.  Researching the targums (translations/interpretations/paraphrases) and related pharisaic commentaries for Numbers 12:1, a number of them (e.g., Targum Onkelos) simply substitute “beautiful” for “Cushite”.  Some of the Palestinian targums, for example, maintain the word “Cushite”, but explain that it was reference to Zipporah who was only characteristically similar to a Cushite (tall, smooth-skinned, dusky, etc.) without actually being one.  One claimed that what actually made Miriam indignant was that Moses refused to be intimate with Zipporah, whose good character was as obvious as a Cushite’s skin color.  The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan also maintains “Cushite” but references a story oft-repeated in the aggadic midrash (lore/narratives).

In this midrashic tale, found in the Chronicle of Moses, the Book of Jasher (despite its claims, not the actual Book of Jasher referenced in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18, which is lost to history), the Yalkut Shimoni, the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, and others, King Kikanos of Cush (south of Egypt) went off to war and left Balaam and his two sons Jannes and Jambres in charge of the capital city.  The magicians double-cross the king, and won’t let him back in the city.  Along comes 18 year-old Moses, having fled Egypt, and joins the Cushite army to retake the city for the king.  The king dies during the nine year effort, but Moses succeeds, and performs so admirably that the Cushites compel him, at age 27, to become their king and to marry Kikanos’ widow, Queen Adoniah.  While Moses is obliged to go along, he refuses to ever consummate the marriage.  During his 40 year reign, he goes to war with Edom and Syria, subduing them both.  But Queen Adoniah, after 40 years of getting the cold shoulder, has had enough and convinces her people to send Moses away and crown her son by Kikanos as the new king.  Moses is given great riches, then leaves in peace and heads for Midian.

This is a classic bit of rabbinic foolishness, invented to explain how Moses technically had a Cushite wife but without violating any rabbinic law.  The timeline completely disregards the Biblical 40/40/40 division of Moses’ life, and the Tanakh nowhere mentions that Moses was the king of Cush either.  Balaam, Jannes, and Jambres have no Biblical connection to Cush south of Egypt, but rabbinic tall tales often make cartoonish super villains and evil archetypes out of their enemies, inserting them in various settings just as they often do with Amalek, Haman, and now Hitler.  This is typical aggadic midrash:  Want to know something the Bible doesn’t discuss, or explain away an inconvenient fact?  It’s easy: just make it up out of thin air.

The rabbis clearly have an axe to grind, but rather than offer a reasonable solution to Moses’ Ethiopian wife, they simply lie, just as their father taught them (John 8:44).  While they offer a solution in keeping with my particular axe to grind, it’s simply untenable.  Even ignoring all of the timeline problems, it certainly seems odd that if Moses was the king of Cush for 40 years, even ruling Syria, that Stephen failed to mentioned that little fact in his biography of Moses given in Acts 7.

Josephus Offers a Possible Solution

Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews (Bk. II Ch. 10), recounts that during his time in Egypt, Moses led the Egyptian army against Ethiopia (Cush south of Egypt), and married an Ethiopian princess named Tharbis as a sort of peace treaty in exchange for not sacking the Ethiopian capital city and reducing them all to slavery.  This would initially seem to solve the puzzle, but there are a number of factors that lead one to doubt the veracity of this story.

Josephus wrote this over 1600 years after the birth of Moses, so he obviously had a source for the story.  Exactly who or what this source was has been researched extensively by a surprisingly large number of scholars.  Louis Feldman, an expert on the matter, breaks down the four most common views of Josephus’ source for the Ethiopic campaign as:  1) a lost midrashic tale, 2) an Alexandrian Jewish source, likely Artapanus of Alexandria, 3) it was modeled on a mythological or legendary tale, and 4) he just made it up.

Regarding the first view, if this was a lost midrashic tale, then it is no more credible than the surviving midrashic tale discussed above, given the biases and lying nature of the source.  Since the two versions of the Ethiopic campaign are almost completely at odds, one with Moses joining the Cushites, the other with Moses fighting them, it seems unlikely that Josephus sourced the surviving story.  I will mention one striking similarity, however:  In the rabbinic story, at Moses’ command, the Cushites capture young storks and raise them to hunt.  After the storks are trained and grown, they send them upon an approach to the city that is full of serpents to clear the path.  (Honestly, this sounds like the sort of goofy solution my four year-old would invent, but I’ll just take it at face value.)  In Josephus’s version, there is a certain path to Ethiopia never travelled because of the presence of a massive number of aggressive serpents.  Moses has his troops capture a large number of ibises, a bird sacred to Egyptians and deadly to serpents, and bring them along to keep the serpents from attacking his army.

The second view, that Josephus sourced this story from a Hellenized Jew, seems to be the most likely.  His story contains similar elements to one written approximately three centuries prior by Artapanus of Alexandria, in his now lost work Concerning The Jews.  A fragment of this work survives in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Præparatio Evangelica.  (Sir Walter Raleigh plainly stated in his History of the World that Artapanus was Josephus’ source, though I doubt that Raleigh knew as much as modern scholars.)  Both Artapanus and Josephus mention that the Egyptians were envious of Moses, and opportunistically sought his death by sending him to war against a powerful enemy.  Artapanus, however, does not mention any marriage, though he does spin many tall tales concerning Moses, even making him responsible for the idolatrous system of animal worship practiced by the Egyptians.  Basically, anything the Egyptians found praiseworthy about themselves, Artapanus ascribed to the genius of Moses, making the most outrageous claims:  “For he was the inventor of ships, and machines for laying stones, and Egyptian arms, and engines for drawing water and for war, and invented philosophy. Further he divided the State into thirty-six Nomes, and appointed the god to be worshipped by each Nome, and the sacred writing for the priests …”  If Josephus actually did source Artapanus, his story concerning the Ethiopic campaign is certainly suspect.

Of course, it is possible that both Josephus and Artapanus drew from a common source, now lost to history.  Petrus Comestor (literally, “devourer,” as in “devourer of knowledge”), in his broadly influential twelfth -century Historia Scholastica (required reading at European universities for centuries), essentially repeated Josephus’ version of events, but added: “But as he desired to return [to Egypt] his wife [Tharbis] was not pleased. Therefore Moses, a man most skillful in astronomy, carved two images in magic stones, one which caused to remember, and the other to forget. And he grafted a couple of rings, and gave the first, the ring causing forgetfulness, to his wife; carrying the other one himself, in order to remember the love; as he distinguished the two rings. Thus the in-love wife gradually became forgetful of her husband, and he was eventually free to return to Egypt.”  It is embarrassing that a Christian scholar like Comestor would give any credence to such superstitious nonsense, let alone repeat it as fact, but one has to wonder what was his source was, and if it was the same as that of Josephus.  This has the flavor of midrashic foolishness, but when I’ve seen rabbinic sources discuss these magic memory rings, they reference Comestor, which is something they would never do if they had their own source, given their reckless hatred of Christians.

It is important to note that beginning in the Hellenistic period that a number of anti-Judaic polemicists wrote works against the covenant people, and a number of pro-Judaic apologists, usually Hellenized Hebrews, wrote works in response defending the reputation of their people.  It was common to either undermine the history of the Hebrews, or to exaggerate and magnify the positives, depending on which side the writer was on.  Everyone had a bias, and the truth was seldom respected by either side.  This was far more than an academic matter for the Judeans, who had been brutally oppressed by Antiochus Epiphanes, on the basis that their religion taught them to hate all other men.  Manetho, an Egyptian priest writing in the third century BC, was the “grandfather” of the polemicists.  Artapanus was an early apologist.  Josephus, despite his claims of objectivity, was very much an apologist, even writing an entire work on the matter (Against Apion).  Hated by his own people as a traitor, Josephus walked a fine line in his works between defending his own people, and not offending his Roman benefactors.  He was especially adroit at saving his own skin, though his works are certainly helpful for understanding the era in which he lived.  One of his goals was to improve the estimation of the Hebrews in the eyes of his pagan Greco-Roman audience, and his history of Moses shows that, most notably in the fact that he quietly omits the part about Moses killing the Egyptian overseer.

The third view, that Josephus borrowed a mythological or legendary tale and applied it to Moses, has some basis.  Sesostris and Semiramis both defeated African Cush.  It is known that at least some apologists ascribed the accomplishments of the Egyptian Sesostris to Moses to make him an equally legendary figure.  The Ethiopians had a reputation as fierce fighters, and not even Alexander the Great could defeat them.  For Moses to so handily conquer them, and even gain their admiration, would certainly have improved the typical Greco-Roman estimation of Moses and his people.  Regarding his marriage to Tharbis, it is also known that the Egyptian king Psamtik I married an Ethiopian princess.  Did Josephus, or his source, simply borrow this story and apply it to Moses?  (Interestingly, the Byzantine Palaea Historica repeats Josephus’ story, but substituting India for Ethiopia, and making no mention of the marriage.)

Consider how Josephus’ telling of the Ethiopic campaign has the unmistakable flavor of a Hellenistic drama: Moses is an exceptional, but militarily untested young man.  His adoptive nation, Egypt, is envious of his superior abilities, and desires that he be slain.  Egypt is attacked by a ruthless enemy, the Ethiopians, and on counsel of oracles and prophecies, they discern an opportunity to rid themselves of both their enemy and Moses, while not openly violating the king’s pledge to Moses’ adoptive mother, a princess of their people, that he not be harmed.  The young warrior gladly accepts the mission, and outsmarts his enemy by employing a predatory bird, sacred to the people of his adoptive nation, to clear the route of the vicious serpents which lay between him and his enemy.  This cunning tactic permits him to surprise and overtake his enemy, of whom he proceeds to make a great slaughter.  A princess of his enemy’s people named Tharbis, upon discerning his superior abilities from afar, falls in deeply in love with the young warrior and gives herself in marriage to him, on the condition that he would spare her city.  Moses accepts the offer, and story closes with the consummation of their marriage and the return to his home.

That doesn’t quite seem to pass the “smell test”.  I realize that black Africans tend to admire alpha males and strongman dictators, even enemies, but for a princess to fall deeply in love with a man conquering her nation on the basis of his competency as a conqueror strains credulity.  The whole story just seems custom made to appeal to its audience.

Ezekiel the Tragedian and Demetrius the Chronographer, both referenced above, simply make Zipporah Moses’ “Ethiopian” wife.  Philo Judaeus, a Hellenized Hebrew who was arguably far more influential on the early church than Josephus, wrote a two-part book entitled On the Life of Moses just a few decades prior to Josephus’ works.  The first part of the book was an over 30,000 word biography of the life of Moses, and not once did he mention any Ethiopic campaign or any wife other than Zipporah.  I am left to conclude that Josephus’ story is false.

The fourth view, that Josephus just made it up, doesn’t really need to be explored for the purposes of this article.  Even if the entire matter is 100% historically accurate, I still don’t really see this as a problem, nor is it any commendation for the widespread practice of interracial marriage.  If one wants to argue that interracial marriages are permitted in special circumstances such as this one, to wit, a political marriage effected to prevent the slaughter of a people, then I really don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other.  Nations do not rise and fall on the basis of such outliers, nor can such exceptional incidents be employed to establish societal norms (Doug Wilson’s opinion notwithstanding).

Conclusion:  Only Zipporah Satisfies Immediacy

It is my belief that Moses had one wife, the Midianitess Zipporah, and that Miriam and Aaron called her a “Cushite” simply to cast opprobrium on her.  Moses only confirmed this because it was technically true in the sense of a demonym, and as a humble admission that, in the words of Calvin, “it was not accorded to him to have a wife of the holy race of Abraham.”

I have shown that he had no Cushite wife after Zipporah, and the most credible record of a Cushite wife prior to Zipporah really isn’t all that credible.  Even if Moses did have a first wife who was a Cushite, she utterly fails to satisfy the very thing that Zipporah supremely fulfills:  the immediacy of Miriam and Aaron’s complaint.  Is it reasonable that these two were grousing bitterly about a marriage that occurred 50 years prior, especially when the woman was no longer even in the picture?  There is nothing contemporaneous about a decades-absent first wife, making any identification of the woman of Numbers 12:1, other than Zipporah, thoroughly unsatisfying.

Consider the perspectives of the people involved:  Until recently, Miriam and Aaron hadn’t seen their brother for 40 years, and their relationship with him the 40 years prior to that was somewhat difficult, given his circumstances as an adopted prince of Egypt.  Now Moses returns, and through the might of the Lord, they together bring one of the most powerful nations on earth to its knees and lead their people out of bondage.  They experience a series of trials and successes together as a family for the first time, as they lead the ungrateful nation in the first months of the Exodus.  Then along comes Jethro with Zipporah and Moses’ two boys, none of whom they’d ever met previously.  Suddenly, Moses can’t give Aaron and Miriam the time and attention he had been.  He’s distant again, and Zipporah is the reason.  And who does this foreigner Jethro think he is to advise our nation on how it should be ruled?  Zipporah is an interloper, a third-wheel who has a lot of influence on their brother and messes up their family dynamic.  Many assume that a young wife has undue influence on an older husband, so there’s that factor as well.  And let’s not forget that Zipporah’s resistance to the sign of the covenant nearly got their brother killed.

Now consider the perspective of Moses:  This was an incident that involved all of the people he loved most in the world:  his wife and his siblings.  He’s stuck in a difficult position, not wanting to unduly criticize any party.  His brother and sister are envious that he’s been in the presence of God for so many days, while they’ve been down in the trenches with all the ingrates and complainers.  He’s been speaking to God as one friend speaks to another, but his brother and sister were not afforded this privilege.  And while he loves them all, and wishes he could give more attention to Miriam and Aaron, he knows that his greater responsibility is to his wife and boys.

Notice, also, a pattern in Moses’ writing:  The doctrine of inspiration does not turn the human authors of the Bible into some sort of living dictaphone for the Holy Spirit.  Peter’s poor Greek comes through just as much as Paul’s excellent Greek.  Infallibility is maintained, but individual personalities, vocabularies, and writing styles still remain.  Moses tended to be rather cagey when it came to writing about his own failures.  I still don’t know if his killing of the Egyptian taskmaster (Exodus 2:11-15) was a justified homicide or not.  Exodus 4:24-26 is one of the oddest passages of Scripture.  Why did the Lord seek to kill Moses just as he was setting out on the mission of the Exodus?  You basically have to supply from the context that Zipporah didn’t want to circumcise Eliezer, and Moses, favoring pleasing his wife over pleasing God, submitted to her wishes, and it very nearly got him killed.  Moses’ failure at Meribah (Numbers 20) confused me until I finally realized that God ordered Moses to speak to the rock, but Moses instead struck it with his staff, following what he’d correctly done at Rephidim nearly 40 years before.

Numbers 12 is likewise peculiar.  Why did Moses add the parenthetical comment in verse 3 that he was more humble than any man who was on the face of the earth?  What does this have to do with the preceding two verses, and does it seem normal that the world’s most humble man would feel the need to inform his readers of this fact?  Something more is going on here.  This is Moses letting his reading audience know that he’s just absorbing his sibling’s insult, not answering it.  Rather than agree and amplify, this was agree and de-escalate.  It is a humble admission that his wife, Zipporah, is indeed a foreigner, not an Israelite.  He’s walking a balancing act between his siblings and his wife.

Consider this:  There are a few small towns in Central Texas where the descendants of Czech immigrants live.  Let’s say a Czech man still living in the Czech Republic marries a racially Czech woman from Texas.  The man’s brother and sister find her to be uncouth, and grumble about “that Texan” that their brother married.  Is this not at least somewhat analogous to this situation with Zipporah and Moses?  Or consider this more offensive scenario that’s closer to what’s being described here.  When I was growing up in rural East Texas, the black part of any town was always referred to as “Niggertown”.  “Niggertown” was also a metaphor for anything low class, low morals, bad character, bad taste, or terribly maintained.  If your neighbor didn’t mow their yard, one might say, “Where does he think this is, Niggertown?”  If a friend bought some garish wheels for his car, you might chide him by saying, “I’m sure you’ll be right at home in Niggertown.”  As it relates to the subject at hand, if you knew a man dating a bitchy white girl who happened to live in the predominantly black part of town, you might make an insulting reference to her by asking him why he’s “dating that Niggertown girl”.  The statement is technically accurate, but casts aspersions on the woman by insinuating something that’s not actually true.

And finally, Zipporah is the only wife of Moses that the Bible names and discusses.  Writers, decent ones at least, do not just randomly insert oblique references to people they’ve never introduced.  It is for this reason that I, as well as a great many theologians, seeing a cursory reference to a wife of Moses in Numbers 12:1, look elsewhere to see where Moses tells us more about his wife, and doing so find only the daughter of Jethro.  The only reasonable conclusion is that the woman of Numbers 12:1 is none other than Zipporah.