Who was the daughter of Dibri?

        Shelomith the first (Lev. 24:11), prominent figure in the story of the stoning of her son for blasphemy. She was the daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. Hers had evidently been a mixed marriage with an Egyptian during the period the Israelites were in Egypt. Real problems arose when the latter made their exit from Egypt.
       In Leviticus 24:10 we are told that an Israelite woman's son, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel, and that he and a man of Israel quarreled together in camp.
       In the next passage, where it is related that the son blasphemed the name of the Lord, Shelomith is called by name, an indication that she was a well-known woman.
       Half-Egyptian and half-Israelite, her son evidently had quarreled with the Israelite in camp and had vented his rage in some shocking manner. Often the Egyptians cursed their idols when failing to obtain the object of their petitions.
       After Shelomith's son had blasphemed the God of his opponent, he was put in custody and then Moses ordered that he be stoned to death by the congregation.
       The youth's actions stirred Moses to enact a new law, stating "He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death." Lev. 24: 16.
       In the last sentence of Leviticus 24:23 there is the confirmation that Shelomith's son was stoned to death. A hard trial this was for a mother, but it illustrates the problems that arose in these mixed marriages, when God was not worshiped by both parents and the love of Him was not instilled in the offspring.
       The rabbis have a tradition that Shelomith was a handsome and virtuous woman, with whom an Egyptian overseer of the Hebrews became enamored, and that during her husband's absence he stole by night into her house. When she found she was with child by the Egyptian, her husband put her out and struck at the Egyptian.
       Moses, passing by, so continues the tradition, took the part of the Israelite and killed the Egyptian. The brothers of Shelomith called her husband to account for abandoning her. Moses again interfered, but the husband asked him whether he would kill him, as yesterday he had killed the Egyptian. And so it was Moses fled from the land of Midian.
      The rabbis' story of Moses and Shelomith's husband, based purely on tradition, is recorded in Sarah Josepha Hale's Biography of Distinguished Women.