In all the works that discuss Moses there are interminable dissertations on his natural parents and even more so on his adoptive parents who, according to some traditions, were members of the family of the Pharaoh. None of them, however, ever speaks about the family generated by Moses himself, his children and descendants. It is a matter that seems subject to a rigorous taboo: one searches in vain for information in the countless books that deal with Moses. Yet there is no doubt that he had a wife and children. But what happened to them? Who wanted to erase them from the Bible, and why?
When Moses fled from Egypt, followed by an “arrest warrant” for having killed an Egyptian, he took refuge in the country of the Midianites and was given hospitality by the priest Jethro, “and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter. And she bare [him] a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.” (Ex 2:22). Later Zipporah gave him a second son, Eliezer.
When Moses returned to Egypt to organize the exodus, according to Ex 4:20, he took his wife and children with him at least for a part of the journey. But clearly either this information is not correct, or he subsequently sent them back to his father-in-law Jethro in the Sinai, because this is where they were at the moment of the Exodus. Chapter 18 of Exodus is entirely dedicated to Jethro's visit to Moses in Rephidim, near the Holy Mount, on which occasion Jethro brought back Moses' family: “Jethro, Moses' father in law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back, And her two sons; of which the name of the one [was] Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land: And the name of the other [was] Eliezer; for the God of my father, [said he, was] mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh: And Jethro, Moses' father in law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God: And he said unto Moses, I thy father in law Jethro am come unto thee, and thy wife, and her two sons with her.”
This is the last time that Zipporah and Moses' two sons are mentioned in the Pentateuch. From this moment on they seem to vanish into thin air.
The hypothesis that they returned to the country of Midian with Jethro is to be excluded. In Ex 18:27 it says “And Moses let his father in law depart; and he went his way into his own land.” If Zipporah and her sons had gone with him, the account would have reported it. That Zipporah and her two sons remained with Moses is also confirmed by a curious episode cited in Num 12.
Chronologically, the Jethro episode is placed at the end of the sojourn on the Holy Mount, when Moses was already firmly at the head of the Jewish people and was in the process of giving them an administrative structure. This chronology is important because of the clear coincidence with an episode that took place a few days later. As soon as his father-in-law Jethro had been sent away, Moses, with the whole Jewish people, "on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year" (Num 10:11), left the area of the Holy Mount for ever, heading north towards Palestine. The first stop was Kibroth Hattaavah and after that Hazeroth. It was here, in Hazeroth, that the incident occurred that is reported in Numbers 12: “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married: for he had married a Cushite woman.”
Most texts, including the Jerusalem Bible, translate the word “Cushite” as "Ethiopian", assuming that it derives from "Kush", the name then given to Nubia, a region in the south of Egypt which paid tribute to the Pharaohs and was inhabited by a negroid people. On the basis of this translation some commentators suggest that Moses also had a black wife. This does not make any sense because, considering the chronology in the account, Moses had been joined just a few days earlier by his legitimate wife Zipporah, a Midianite. There is nothing strange about the fact that the woman who had suddenly turned up in the Jewish community provoked the jealousy of other “prima donnas”, like Miriam and Aaron, who up to that point had had an exclusive and privileged relationship with Moses.
There is no doubt that the “Cushite wife” against whom Miriam and Aaron muttered jealously was Zipporah herself. There is ample proof in the Bible that the term “Cushite” was used to define the Midianites belonging to the tribe of Jethro, and many exegetes agree with this interpretation. In Habakkuk 3:7, for example, Cushan is cited as the name of a tribe in Midian. In 2 Chr 14:7-13 there is a description of a war between Judah and the Cushites, clearly a people of the Sinai, and a little later, in 2 Chr 21:16, there is mention of the “Arabians, that were near the Cushites”, from which it can be deduced with certainty that the latter were Midianites who were neighbors to the Nabatites. The definitive confirmation that we are talking about the same tribe that Jethro and Zipporah belonged to, however, can be found in an apocryphal text in the Old Testament, datable to the second century B.C., in which they are both explicitly referred to as Cushites[1]. The term Cushite, therefore, does not mean Ethiopian (or anyway not only that), but refers to that particular tribe in Midian to which Jethro and his daughter Zipporah belonged.
The conclusion that must be drawn is that Zipporah, Moses' Cushite wife, had remained at his side, as had his sons. But the account in Num 12 is also significant in other respects. It clearly shows that Moses had decided to set his Cushite wife up as the “first lady” in Israel. He severely punished Miriam, Aaron's sister, who up to that point had played the role of first lady (it is she, in fact, who intoned the canticle of thanksgiving and led the dancing after the crossing of the Red Sea – Ex 15:20-21), banishing her from the encampment for seven days and thus publicly humiliating her, as a warning to the people. Aaron too is severely admonished by Yahweh and has to bow his head and beg forgiveness.
But it is from this moment, when Zipporah is set up as the first lady of Israel, that the removal mechanism comes into play. The woman is no longer mentioned by name, and nor is there any further reference to her sons. In the whole Pentateuch not another word is spent on them, nor even on the fact that Moses had a family at all. It seems incredible. Chapter 12 of Numbers provides the clearest proof, if any were needed, that Moses was no different from the Jews of his time and of all times in his consideration of and feelings and aspirations for his family. We can be certain that he provided for his sons' future. But how? There is not a word about it in the Bible.
[1]Herich Weidinger, “The Apocrypha – the other Bible that wasn't written by God”, pub. PIEMME, 1992. In the book “The Apocalypse of Moses” chap. 34:6 we read: “Moses ... fled to Midian, to the Cushite Reuel, priest of Midian. He took as his wife the daughter of the priest, the Cushite Zipporah; two sons were born of her: Gershom and Eliezer”.