“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. 8th 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.  (

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