Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
Jethro Hears What God Has Done
Exodus 18:1-12
1 Now Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel his people, how Yahweh had brought Israel out of Egypt. · WEB
A Midianite priest hears the story, draws the conclusion Egypt refused to draw, and offers sacrifice.
Now Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel his people Exodus 18:1.
The report has traveled. A man on the far side of the wilderness has heard what happened at the sea, which was the stated purpose from the beginning — that my name may be declared throughout all the earth Exodus 9:16. Egypt saw everything and concluded nothing. A foreign priest hears about it secondhand and comes.
He brings Moses' family with him. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, received Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her away, and her two sons Exodus 18:2–3. The dismissal is mentioned without explanation and is the only notice the book gives of it; somewhere between the lodging place on the road and the plagues, the family had gone back to Midian. The narrative declines to say why.
The two sons are named for the two halves of their father's life. Gershom, for Moses said, "I have lived as a foreigner in a foreign land" — the name of the exile. Eliezer, for he said, "My father's God was my help and delivered me from Pharaoh's sword" Exodus 18:3–4 — the name of the rescue. A man's children can be a record of what he has learned, and these two are.
Moses told his father-in-law all that Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, all the hardships that had come on them on the way, and how Yahweh delivered them Exodus 18:8.
The hardships are included. It is not a triumphal account, and the ordering is honest: what God did, what went wrong, how it was met.
Blessed be Yahweh, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians... Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all gods because of the way that they treated people arrogantly Exodus 18:10–11.
Jethro's reasoning is worth following, because it is the response the whole book has been trying to produce. He does not say Yahweh is stronger, though that is evident. He says Yahweh is greater, and the ground he gives is moral: the Egyptians dealt arrogantly with people, and this God took the matter up. Superiority is inferred from justice rather than from force, which is precisely the difference between the God of this book and the gods of Egypt, and a priest of another nation is the first person on record to state it in so many words.
Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God. Aaron came with all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before God Exodus 18:12.
He offers the sacrifice, and Israel's leadership eats with him. The meal is placed immediately before the covenant at Sinai, and its guest list matters: a Midianite presides, the priesthood of Israel does not yet exist, and the elders of a nation about to be called God's own possession sit down with an outsider who has just confessed his faith. The order of events is not accidental. Before Israel is set apart, the book records a foreigner worshiping alongside them.
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