How to follow the wisdom of Moses and Zipporah for the Black Lives Matter moment
Artist Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), in his painting “Moses and his Ethiopian wife Sephora,” depicts Zipporah as a Black woman. Creative Commons photo.
(OPINION) Amid the social upheaval of this time, what would Moses do?
Many Americans of varied backgrounds are looking during these hard days to beloved texts and traditions, seeking guidance. The ancient Biblical leader Moses had just the wisdom we need. These issues were close to home for him: Moses’ wife was black. And Moses understood why there is inherent legitimacy in the spirit and voices of “the camp” — in our terms, the street.
“And Miriam, and Aaron with her, spoke against Moses concerning the Cushite wife he had taken,” the Book of Numbers narrates. “Cushite” refers to a land south of Egypt, roughly equivalent to modern Ethiopia. Earlier, in the Book of Exodus, Moses indeed meets his wife Zipporah in a land far outside Egypt (in that passage the land is referred to as Midian: by either name, a remote foreign place). So, what underlies this malice by Moses’ siblings against his wife, their own sister-in-law? Their bias against the color of her skin and the land of her origin.
What happens next conveys unequivocally how bigotry must be seen: “And the Lord’s wrath flared against them…and, look, Miriam…was struck with skin blanch.” The punishment is pointed: “for insulting a dark-skinned woman,” Miriam “turns white,” as modern Bible scholar Masha Turner has noted.
Miriam is the one to get this penalty, Turner adds, because when Miriam and Aaron “spoke” against Zipporah, “‘spoke’ is in the feminine singular form, indicating that Miriam is the chief spokesperson.” Yet Aaron goes along with Miriam’s words, and Talmudic lore envisions Aaron as getting skin blanch as well.
What are we called to do about bigotry? The Bible provides a clue with the story just before this one.
That episode portrays two ordinary Israelites named Eldad and Medad: “And the spirit rested upon them…and they prophesied.” They start spontaneously, without rank or authorization. They go not to the designated place of prophecy, the Tent of Meeting, but instead throughout “the camp,” where the Israelites live their regular lives while journeying through the wilderness.
Moses’ deputy Joshua reacts: “My lord Moses, restrain them!” Moses replies: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would place His spirit upon them.”
The Hebrew for “‘restrain them!’” is kla’eim, from the root word keleh, “jail”: Joshua is proposing stopping Eldad and Medad through force. Moses rejects the notion utterly. And Moses knows that Eldad and Medad’s power to prophesy is independent from his authority. That is precisely what Moses celebrates.
What do these side-by-side stories of Zipporah and of Eldad and Medad have to do with each other? They have everything to do with each other — and with us.
We are living in a moment of deep suffering, arising out of a history of incalculable suffering, for African-Americans: the modern Zipporahs of the United States. Too many Americans, like Miriam, think and speak with bias against African-Americans. Too many Americans, like Aaron, go along with it, whether through agreement, laughter, shrugging or silence. Too often, Americans turn these thoughts and words into damaging deeds, even lethal deeds — against Rayshard Brooks, against George Floyd, against 400 years of names. The Bible does not let us deny this problem.
And in the story of Eldad and Medad, the Bible presents a solution. That story’s spirit of spontaneous prophesying is at work in our moment’s protests.
Indeed, these protests have been ones of social action by the Black community in tandem with a vividly diverse array of allies. It’s as if Zipporah herself is prophesying hand in hand with Eldad and Medad.
When people protest police brutality and systemic racism, their calls evoke timeless Biblical ethics. “Love your fellow as yourself.” “One law shall there be for native and stranger,” i.e. for people of different backgrounds on an equal basis. “For in the image of God He made the human being”: human dignity is inherent in each and every person.
Like Eldad and Medad, today’s protesters are not waiting for these calls to come from designated places of authority. People are speaking out spontaneously, throughout parks, streets and squares: “the camp” of modern America.
Most timely of all is the way the Bible authorizes the very phenomenon of unauthorized prophecy. The higher divine values of justice, human dignity and love grant authority, per se, to people at the grassroots level to speak out in the name of those values — bypassing human power structures and societal authorization as mere middlemen.
Now, as then, there are those who say that legitimacy in speaking out belongs only to some — and, as for others, kla’eim: restrain them, jail them, literally force them to stop.
What Moses understood is that when you speak out for justice, human dignity and love, you are pre-authorized. You are circumventing the status quo to channel divine spirit directly. Moses’ only wish was that more people would.
Black lives mattered in the time of Moses. Black lives matter now. We all must join in the prophecy of our time — speaking it, listening when it is spoken and, most importantly, acting on it.
Noah Lawrence writes on legal and religious ethics and has served at the UN tribunal system in The Hague and the Senate. He is the rabbinic intern at Congregation Kol Ami of Westchester, New York.