Wives of Moses

I want to dedicate a post specifically to this question, since it's something I haven't made up my mind 100% on yet.

Most famously is Zipporah, daughter of Jethro also called Raguel, a Priest in Midian.  That could imply they were ethnically Midianite (descendants of Abraham by Keturah) but maybe not.

There is a controversy in Numbers 12 about Moses marrying a Custhie Wife.  There have been two common theories about who this is.

Either it's the same person as Zipporah, thus making this relevant to speculation about the Tribal identity of her and her father Jethro.

Or the extra-Biblical tradition recorded in Josephus that Moses married a Nubian Cushite Princess when he conquered Kush for Egypt way back when he was still a Prince of Egypt.  (This is in DeMille's The Ten Commandments 1956 film, but it doesn't make their marrying explicit, cause it's 1950s America).

In either of those cases I'm inclined to question, why was it just becoming an issue now?

It's often overlooked that in Exodus 18:2 Moses sent Zipporah back to Jethro in Midian.

That Miriam and Aaron are condemned by God for objecting to Moses marriage is taken as proof their objection was wrong.  While that can suit my own agenda well, it's perhaps an oversimplification, since what God was directly angry at was their implying their authority was equal to Moses.  So it's more like this was a minor issue bringing a greater one to the forefront.

What were they objecting to however?  This passage becomes relevant to two debates about Marriage.  Mixed or "Interracial" Marriage, and Polygamy.

Zipporah is last mentioned by that name in Exodus 18. And this passage seems to be the only place after that Moses having a wife comes up.  So whether or not Polygamy is possibly relevant here is not just dependent on if they are the same woman.   Zipporah could have passed away by this point, leaving Moses free to remarry regardless of how okay with Polygamy you interpret the Torah as being.  If Polygamy was their objection, I think they would have said "in addition to".

None of the verses in the Torah taken as condemning mixed marriages even address descent from Cush, they seem to be about Canaanites, Moab and Ammon.  Intermarriages with Mizraimites are not objected to at all, so the ban on Canaan can't be inferred to include all Hamites.  I believe these are in truth about spiritually mixed marriages, not ethnicity, I'll be doing a post on that later.

That proves Yahuah wouldn't have objected to a Cushite wife, but Miriam and Aaron are a different story.

In The Torah Zipporah and Jethro's clan is never explicitly called Kenite.  So people who limit their Canon to the Torah might insist they aren't.

But for those of us who consider Judges a worthwhile source.  Judges 1:16 says the Father in Law of Moses was a Kenite.  Going off that verse alone it could be a different Father in Law is who was meant.  But later Judged 4:11 clarifies these are people who descend form Hobab, and again calls them Kenites.  Now this verse as it's rendered in English at least can be accused of contradicting Numbers 10:29.  Numbers Says Hobab was the son of Moses Father In Law, while this verse in Judges looks like it's saying Hobab was Moses Father in Law.  It might be something is lost in translation here, that it meant to call Hobab and the Father in Law of Moses ancestors of this clan.

Or maybe Numbers 10:29 can be taken as calling Hobab not Raguel the Father in Law of Moses, either way this verse means Jethro wasn't his only name.  Exodus 2:18 could have been referring to Reuel was Zipporah's father even though he was really her grandfather, the patriarch of the clan.  Exodus 2 is the only time Reuel is mentioned as someone clearly still alive, Jethro isn't mentioned till 40 years later in the first verse of Exodus 3.  Every time someone is called Moses' "Father in law" in the KJV the "father" part is added by the translation, the Hebrew just uses a word for in-law.  So maybe Reuel, Jethro and Hobab were three different male members of Zipporah's family.

Only Numbers 10:29 calls Raguel a Midianite, and not simply of the region of Midian.  But even then Midianite can mean that and not stickily ethnically.  Genesis 15 lists the Kenites as people who already existed at this time, that is different from other places in Genesis where I think the narrative voice is mentioning people who'll exist later.

People who don't want The Bible to make sense love to accuse Kenites of being the descendants of Cain, who's line logically perished in The Flood.  However if you look at Kenite's placement in the Strongs, the Pre-Flood patriarch name it's closest to is Cainan or Kenen of Genesis 5, the son of Enosh son of Seth.  Luke 3 tells us another person with this same name (in the Greek text it's spelled identically to the Genesis 5 Kenen) existed after the Flood as a son of Aprhaxad son of Shem.  My theory on this extra name of Luke 3 is that Shelah was a younger son of Arphaxad who married his niece Kenen's daughter.  The Kenites could be people who paternally descended from this Kenen.

That Exodus 4 strongly implies Jethro's family didn't practice Circumcision, I think is also evidence against them descending from Abraham.

I myself had strongly argued for Zipporah being the Kushite wife in my post about Cushites in Arabia.  However that argument was by no means dependent on that, I had another verse implying Cushites and Midian being associated with the same area.

Now my conclusion is most likely this was someone Moses married at the time this controversy broke in Numbers 12, or just a little before.  Given where they were, in Arabia, this Wife of Moses is still evidence for Cushites in Arabia.

For the Josephus tradition, you could get around my first question by saying Moses was obviously separated from her when he fled Egypt, and perhaps they were reunited now.   But still, I feel Josephus is recording a story someone before him imagined to explain this mysterious verse in Numbers while also making Moses more awesome.  I think it's also dependent on assumptions about "Egypt" that may be wrong.

Numbers 11 ends with the Israelites settling at a place called Hazeroth.  Could be this was a place where Arabian Cushites dwelt? and Moses married one of them?