So
Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord who delivered you from the hand of the
Egyptians and from the hand of Pharaoh, and who delivered the people from under
the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know
that the Lord is greater than all the gods; indeed, it was proven when they
dealt proudly against the people.” Then
Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God, and
Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses’
father-in-law before God.
After
hearing how God delivered the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt, Jethro,
Moses’ father-in-law, shares in the joy and goes even one step further – he
blesses the Lord and now believes He is greater than “all the gods”. Now, before we judge Jethro too harshly for
his reference to “all the gods” – afterall, wasn’t he Moses’ father-in-law? –
let us take a closer look at the Midanites and their religion.
Midianites
were descendants of Midian, who was a son of Abraham through his wife
Keturah. Genesis 25:1-2 tells us Abraham
took “another wife”. When Moses got in
trouble in Egypt after killing an Egyptian, he fled to the land of Midian where
the Midianites had settled. [In Genesis
26:4 we learn Midian’s descendants were basically five families. In Genesis 26:6 we learn that Abraham had
given them gifts and “sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land
of the East”.] Also of interest to us
may be the fact it was Midianites that had bought Joseph from his brothers many
years later, which sold him to the Egyptians (see Genesis 37); both events occurring
way before Moses’ time.
But back to
Jethro, who is also referred to as Reuel in Exodus 2:18 and as Hobab later in
the Old Testament. The Bible first
refers to him in Exodus 2:16 and 3:1 as a priest. This was before Moses’s
burning bush experience normally referred to by many as the time or point when
the worship of Yahweh is deemed to have officially originated.
The
potential dilemma with the multiple names of Jethro may be due to the fact that
in the Hebrew language, the term referring to male ‘in-laws’ is non-specific,
referring to a woman’s male relatives and could be used for her father, brother
or even grandfather. [This kind of language phenomenon occurs in English as
well. My own father used to tease me about who ‘poor the English language’
really was compared to Greek. He would
point out how Greek had two separate words for a brother-in-law that referred
to one’s wife’s brother (i.e. by blood) and a brother-in-law that referred to one’s
sister’s husband (i.e. by marriage).] One possible (but uncertain) solution to the
Jethro dilemma in this case is that Reuel may have been the grandfather head of
the clan, Jethro was Zipporah’s father, and Hobab could have been the
brother-in-law of Moses, Jethro’s son.
Another solution may have been that Jethro and Hobab were
brother-in-laws to Moses, and Reuel was their father. In any case, Jethro was a Midianite.
We note also
that there were interesting similarities in the way Moses met his wife to how
others had met their wives in some earlier biblical accounts. Moses met Zipporah at a well (as did
Abraham’s servant who met Isaac’s future wife at a well) and he was met by
daughters (as Jacob was met by the two daughters of his uncle Laban).
Midianites
inhabited the desert borders in Transjordan from Moab down past Edom. In Exodus 6:2-3 we learned that God was not yet
know to Moses by the name Lord (or Yahweh). Jethro may, however, have known Him. It is possible Jethro was worshipping the
Lord by a different name, as many of Moses ancestors had worshipped Him, as a
deity with the prefix El. You may recall
God being called El Elyon in Genesis 14:18 and El Sheddai in Genesis 17:1. In Genesis 16:13, Hagar called God Elroi, the
“God who sees me”.
Whatever the
historical background of Jethro’s religion was, he now blesses the Lord God of
Israel who delivered Moses from the Egyptians and Pharaoh, and who delivered
the Israelites from the Egyptians. One
may wonder why Jethro separates God’s act of delivery into the personal
deliverance of Moses and the collective deliverance of the Israelites. Two possible ideas come to my mind. The first is that Jethro was responding first
as a father-in-law blessing God for saving the husband of his daughter and the
father of his grandchildren, and then as a human being caring for the people of
Israel with whom he was connected ancestrally and soon to be connected in faith. The second idea is that even here in these early
writings of Moses, God wants to reinforce the fact that He is a personal God as
well as a God of nations. In the New
Testament this theme continues, as His Son Christ Jesus is both a personal
Savior as well as the King of Kings. Jethro now blesses this God as he comes to
know Him better. Do you this Yahweh?
The next
sentence is rather interesting and may help us with what Jethro may have
believed before, as touched on above. Jethro
now knows the Lord is
greater than all the gods. It appears
from this statement that Jethro, while he may have worshipped El as a deity, he
did not see Him as the greatest of all the others. The reference to the “they” that dealt proudly
against the people is to the Egyptians who were so proud in their actions
against the Israelites. Jethro now sees
that God is greater than all of them and their gods combined. And in his condemnation, he likely included
all the magicians that joined and abetted Pharaoh in opposing God and
attempting to compete against Him.
Matthew Henry writes, “The magicians were baffled, the
idols shaken, Pharaoh humbled, his powers broken, and, in spite of all their
confederacies, God's Israel was rescued out of their hands. Note, Sooner or
later, God will show himself above those that by their proud dealings contest
with him. He that exalts himself against God shall be abased.”
And what
does one do when he comes to that realization in his/her own life? Well, in Jethro’s case, and as a priest (but
not of the children of Israel), he offers up a burnt offering. The commentator Robert Jamieson says that
this friendly reunion between two people, Moses and Jethro, ends up in “a
solemn religious service” for all the chiefs of Israel, where burnt peace
offerings were consumed on the altar in a feast of joy and gratitude,
officiated over apparently by Jethro, now as a dedicated priest of the true
God. We may well ask ourselves how our
periodic reunions with friends or family members end up.
Chuck Smith
points out that this account verifies that “other people knew God and worshiped
God, who were not the children of Israel in those days, Jethro being one of
them. He was a priest of God.” Matthew
Henry says, “Here was a Midianite rejoicing”.
Jethro’s faith was confirmed and he made a public confession of it. And what did he confess? He confessed our true God is able to silence all
the others and subdue them. Smith says Jethro
“knew it before, but now he knew it better; his faith [grew] up to a full assurance, upon this
fresh evidence.”
Just
to recap. Moses and Jethro were
reunited; they shared about what God had done; Jethro offers a burnt sacrifice
and confesses the power of the Almighty as being above all other gods; and then
together with the elders of Israel they ate a meal before God. This was
a means of expressing their joy and thankfulness – being in communion and peace
and love with each other – not only in the sacrifice service that preceded, but
also now in a feast. Jethro, the Midianite,
was now cheerfully admitted into fellowship with Moses and Israel. (You will remember that the whole issue of
the official priesthood in Israel that eventually went to the Levites was not
yet settled.)
I
love the observation Henry makes when he says, “Mutual friendship is sanctified by joint-worship.” What
a delight it is to those involved and to God Himself when relations and friends
who come together join in the spiritual sacrifice of prayer and praise, keeping
Christ at the center of their own unity.
I was thinking about this, as many of our youth are meeting and
developing good friendships with others of different faiths. Sometimes these friendships turn into romance
and ultimately marriage. But if a mutual
friendship has no hope of becoming an occasion of joint-worship, then one needs
to be very wary of it. As much as it may
hurt, one needs to guard their heart in such cases to avoid either loneliness
in their worship and service to God, or a walking away from their faith in
order to support their relationship. A
big loss no matter which road is taken.
Those present with Jethro and Moses did indeed eat bread, likely
manna. Jethro as a Gentile had to see
and taste the bread from heaven. Together we as believers must share such meals
with non-believers – showing the world how as Henry writes, “we eat and drink
to the glory of God, behaving ourselves at our tables as those who believe that
God’s eye is upon us.” What is your
table scene like these days? I know mine
can be improved.
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