Topic
Cushite Woman; Ethiopian Woman
5 passages cited, from 1 classic reference work.
These works date from 1915 and are in the public domain. They reflect the Protestant scholarship of their time: their history, archaeology and dates can be out of date, and where they interpret, other traditions read the text differently. The verses are shown in the King James Version, the wording these works were written against.
The verses
The passages the works cite, those cited by more of them first.
- Exodus 2:21ISBE
And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.
- Exodus 12:38ISBE
And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.
- Numbers 11:4ISBE
¶ And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?
- Numbers 12:1ISBE
And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.
- Jeremiah 13:23ISBE
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
In the reference works
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · 5 references
kush'-it: In Nu 12:1 Moses is condemned by his sister Miriam and his brother Aaron "because of the Cushite woman ha-'ishshah ha-kushith whom he had married"; and the narrator immediately adds by way of needed explanation, "for he had married a Cushite woman" ('ishshah khushith). Views regarding this person have been of two general classes:
(1) She is to be identified with Zipporah (Ex 2:21 and elsewhere), Moses' Midianite wife, who is here called "the Gushite," either in scorn of her dark complexion (compare Jer 13:23) and foreign origin (so most older exegetes), or as a consequence of an erroneous notion of the late age when this apocryphal addition, "because of the Cushite," etc., was inserted in the narrative (so Wellhansen).
(2) She is a woman whom Moses took to wife after the death of Zipporah, really a Cushite (Ethiopian) by race, whether the princess of Meroe of whom Josephus (Ant., II, x, 2) romances (so Targum of Jonathan), or one of the "mixed multitude" (Ex 12:38; compare Nu 11:4) that accompanied the Hebrews on their wanderings (so Ewald and most). Dillmann suggests a compromise between the two classes of views, namely, that this woman is a mere "variation in the saga" from the wife elsewhere represented as Midianite, yet because of this variation she was understood by the author as distinct from Zipporah. The implication of the passage, in any case, is clearly that this connection of Moses tended to injure his prestige in the eyes of race-proud Hebrews, and, equally, that in the author's opinion such a view of the matter was obnoxious to God.
J. Oscar Boyd
Texts: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), from the CrossWire SWORD modules (public domain). Verse references were parsed from the works' own markup and checked against the KJV verse list.