Zipporah

Zipporah is a biblical figure in Exodus, the wife of Moses and a daughter of the Midianite priest Jethro, also called Reuel in some passages. Zipporah is generally dated to Traditional chronology: c. 15th–13th century BCE.

She meets Moses during his exile from Egypt and becomes the mother of his sons Gershom and Eliezer, linking Moses to a Midianite household before his return to confront Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Zipporah is the Midianite wife of Moses and daughter of Jethro whose actions form an important but brief part of the Exodus narrative.

In Angela Hunt’s The Shadow Women, Moses’s life is retold through the women who preserve, raise, challenge and accompany him: his Hebrew family, the Egyptian princess who adopts him, his sister Miriam and his Midianite wife Zipporah.