The scene is brief, bloody, and extraordinary. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it with theological clarity: Zipporah took a stone, and circumcised the foreskin of Gershom her son, and brought the severed part to the feet of the angel, the Destroyer.
Note what the Targum adds to the Hebrew. The angel is named: the Destroyer — Mashchit. This is the same destroying angel who will appear on Passover night over the homes of Egypt (Exodus 12:23). The Targum is drawing a line: the angel who threatens Moses on the road is the same kind of angel who will execute judgment on Egypt's firstborn.
A Woman's Quick Hands and a Husband's Life
Zipporah's speech is one of the boldest in Torah. The husband sought to circumcise, but the father-in-law obstructed him. In one sentence, she names what Moses could not: her husband wanted to fulfill the covenant; her father Jethro prevented it. Zipporah sides with the covenant against her own father.
And then the prayer: now let this blood of the circumcision atone for my husband. The verb atone — kippur — is the same root used for the Day of Atonement. Zipporah invokes the logic of sacrificial blood: Gershom's circumcision-blood becomes a substitute, shielding Moses from the angel's judgment.
The takeaway: the Jewish imagination places a Midianite woman at the hinge of the Exodus. Without Zipporah's quick hands and sharper theology, Moses does not reach Egypt. The redeemer owes his life to his wife's willingness to defy her own father and to act within the covenant of Abraham, alone, at an inn, with a stone knife, in the middle of the night.