details. According to the Samaritan version of this episode, Zipporah took a sharp flint and cut herself as a physical sign of repentance, because she realized that God was angry at Moses for bringing her and their two sons along on the divine mission to free the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. In an attempt to demonstrate her repentance and prove herself worthy of joining her husband. This different narrative arises from the voweling of the Hebrew root word בנה (b-n-h). Whereas the Masoretic version states the Zipporah circumcised "her son" ("b'nah"; בְּנָהּ), the Samaritan text describes her as having circumcised "her understanding" or "her blocked heart" ("binnah"; בִּנָּהּ, Samaritan alphabet: ࠁࠪࠍ࠙ࠣࠄ ). Moses saw Zipporah's act of self-mutilation as a remnant of his wife's idolatrous upbringing, and a demonstration that God's displeasure at her presence was indeed well-founded. Therefore, Moses sent Zipporah and their two sons back to her family in Midian. This assuaged God's wrath and spared Moses's life. It was only after the parting of the Red Sea and the Israelites' miraculous escape from Egypt that Moses's father-in-law Jethro brought Zipporah and her sons to rejoin Moses at the Israelite camp in the desert. Modern scholarship Many biblical scholars consider the passage fragmentary. James Kugel (1998) suggests that the point of the episode is the explanation of the expression "bridegroom of blood" , apparently current in biblical times. The story would seem to illustrate that the phrase does not imply that a bridegroom should or may be circumcised at the time of his marriage, but that Moses by being bloodied by the foreskin of his son became a "bridegroom of blood" to Zipporah. The story has also been interpreted as emphasizing the point that the circumcision must be performed exactly at the prescribed time, as a delay was not granted even to Moses. German orientalist Walter Beltz thought that the original myth behind this story was about the right of Yahweh, as an ancient fertility god, to receive in sacrifice the first born son. He reasons that the pronouns cannot refer to Moses, since he is not mentioned in the text preceding the passage. Moreover, the preceding text speaks of Israel as Yahweh's first born son and that Yahweh would kill the Pharaoh's first born son for not letting Israel out of Egypt. It is obvious, he concludes, that this leads the writer to insert this story