²¹ Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage.^{(A) 22} She bore a son, and he named him Gershom,^[a] for he said, “I have been an alien residing in a foreign land.”^(B)

²⁰ So Moses took his wife and his sons, put them on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt, and Moses carried the staff of God in his hand.^(A)

²⁴ On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him.^{(A) 25} But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, touched his feet with it, and said, “Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!”^{(B) 26} So he let him alone. It was then that she said “a bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.

² After Moses had sent away his wife Zipporah, his father-in-law Jethro took her back,^{(A) 3} along with her two sons. The name of the one was Gershom^[a] (for he had said, “I have been an alien in a foreign land”),^{(B) 4} and the name of the other was Eliezer^[b] (for he had said, “The God of my father was my help and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh”). ⁵ Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, along with Moses’s sons and wife, came into the wilderness where Moses was encamped at the mountain of God.^{(C) 6} He sent word to Moses, “I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you, with your wife and her two sons.”

Aaron and Miriam Jealous of Moses

12 While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman),^(A)