Event III
MOSES AND REUEL
by Charles Quigley
As we continue to examine events in Biblical history in which interactions between Jews and Gentiles lead to a favorable outcome, we move forward in time near to the end of the period of Jewish slavery in Egypt. We consider a most unlikely relationship between Jew and Gentile.
We speak now about Moses, the man of GOD, who become deliverer of the Word of GOD to the sons of Israel in the wilderness, also an intercessor of the Jewish people before GOD, and also a prophet. Moses was like no other man, for GOD knew Moses face to face, according to the Bible.(1) Each time that Moses went before the LORD to speak with Him, afterward the sons of Israel would see that Moses’ face glowed. (2)
Moses’ service was almost entirely to the sons of Israel, on the way in the wilderness to becoming a nation. Yet there were just a few occasions, very few in number, when Moses met with Gentiles.
The story of Moses — how he came to lead the sons of Israel (the Jewish people: men, women and children) in the wilderness is well known. There came a pharaoh in Egypt who did not know Joseph(3), and who sorely oppressed the Jewish people in slavery, even to putting the Jewish male infants to death. There is the remarkable story how Moses the infant is set adrift in a basket, is found by Pharaoh’s daughter who adopts him, and he is raised in Pharaoh’s household, having access to the great library of Pharaoh and the best learning in Egypt.
Surely his learning in Pharaoh’s household is one of the great resources that Moses used in preparing the historic narrative which appears in the early portion of the Jewish Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. But beyond the available knowledge that Moses drew on — the history of the ancient world documented in that extensive library — there was yet more knowledge Moses accessed which as of today appears in no other document or relic or archaeological artifact, namely knowledge that could only come by direct revelation from GOD, concerning the origins of the universe and the events of the Fall of Man.
So this, then is a measure of the man Moses, that by a remarkable series of events, he was raised in the very household of Pharaoh of Egypt, with access to all the learning that provided. But also, that Moses by GOD’s grace had access to GOD’s revelation concerning the beginning, before recorded history.
To continue, there are the events in Moses’ story leading to Moses’ discovery of his Jewish roots, of his intervention on behalf of a Jewish slave in which he kills an Egyptian, and Moses’ flight from Pharaoh, who seeks to kill him for that act.
THE WAYS OF GOD are marvelous. For it is difficult to deny the hand of a Creator and Ruler of the Universe in the life of this man up to this point. But if all that is not enough — and never mind the wonders and miracles GOD has in store for His servant Moses later on — what happens next in Moses’ life is worthy of note.
In the Book of Acts we learn that, at the time of Moses’ flight from Egypt (4), Moses was forty years of age. To flee from Pharaoh, Moses traveled east and south across a desert, a distance of approximately 150 miles (240 km) beyond the Sea of Egypt across the desert. Understand, Moses FLED from his pursuers across the desert IN HASTE, by a means of which the Bible does not tell us — a dangerous, harrowing, exhausting journey, arriving in the land of Midian, located beyond the Sea of Aqaba in what is now southwestern Jordan. (However long it took Moses to travel alone, the sons of Israel later would require three months (Exod.19:1) to travel out of Egypt across the wilderness of Paran only as far as Horeb, the mountain of GOD, 85 miles (136 km) beyond the Sea of Egypt.)
At the end of this harrowing journey, Moses finds himself in Midian. Following an encounter at the well where Moses aids the daughters of Jethro to water their father’s flock, Jethro (also known as Reuel) priest of Midian welcomes Moses into his household. Moses later marries Jethro’s (Midianite) daughter Zipporah, who presents him with a son whom he names Gershom ("a stranger there"). For Moses said, "I have been a stranger in a foreign land."
There Moses, who had been raised in the household of Pharaoh, most favored of young men in Egypt, now found himself tending sheep, a very lowly occupation indeed. He did so for forty years, until about the age of eighty, when GOD considered that Moses was finally ready to be called by GOD for a special mission.
Moses, a prince of Egypt, recognized he was now a sojourner in a foreign land, very likely the condition in which he could expect to remain.
Now the Bible makes an important distinction between three different types of people.
- A stranger is a foreigner, an intruder, or simply a person with whom one is not acquainted (that is, may be Jewish or Gentile).
- An alien is a stranger who belongs to another country, one who is excluded from certain privileges.
- A sojourner is a stranger who stays with you,(5) a 'stranger with thee,’(6) one who dwells in a place as a temporary resident.
Moses recognized that he was a sojourner, a stranger who had been provided a temporary resting place by Jethro, the Gentile priest of Midian. Thus he found himself a Jewish person among Gentiles, though one who was accepted as a visitor, one who dwelled among them as a temporary resident.
WE CONSIDER IT especially noteworthy that the Bible, the Hebrew scriptures, say much about the stranger and the sojourner.
In Genesis 23, Abraham sought a burial place for his wife Sarah, so he went to the tribe of Heth, who were not of Abraham’s lineage, and announced,
"I am a stranger and a sojourner among you.
"Give me a burial site among you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight." (Gen.23:4)
Abraham proceeds to negotiate a purchase price for the cave of Machpelah in Hebron, where the patriatchs (except Joseph) are buried to this day. (The bones of Joseph were buried at his request in Shechem, which is modern-day Nablus.)
The LORD speaks often about provisions under the Mosaic Law for strangers. Repeatedly He reminds the sons of Israel,
"And you shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Exod.22:21. Also typical: Exod.23:9; Lev.19:34.)
In particular, we draw attention to the remarkable passage of Leviticus 25, which deals primarily with the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee.
As C.R.Keil and F.Delitzsch observe,(7) just as Sabbath was set aside as a day of rest every seventh day, so the land which the people of Israel filled was also to rest, a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years they were to sow the fields and cut the vineyard and gather their produce, but in the seventh year the land was to keep a Sabbath of rest. And whatever would grow that year of its own accord, without cultivation, would be food for all of them, intended for the common good of man and beast. Indeed, GOD would provide that the produce that year would be over much, extending into the eighth year when the land once again would be sown and cultivated, with the normal harvest once again at the end of the eighth year.(8)
Here is the principle of physical rest extended to nature, that is, to the land. This was not intended, it was made clear, to benefit man so much as the land itself, that the land might be allowed to restore itself once more.
A time of temporary rest.
That principle is extended in the case of the Year of Jubilee, namely, seven Sabbatical Years plus one year, or every fiftieth year. This is to be rest of an altogether different sort: a year of liberty, a time when to every man would be returned his own possession, when debts would be forgiven, when the slave would be redeemed, based on his redemption price calculated up to the Year of Jubilee. (The provisions are far more detailed than there is space to present here.)
And very much intertwined with the discussion of the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee, are provisions set forth for the sojourner, "the stranger who lives among you." Thus the concepts of rest and safeguards for the sojourner are closely connected in this section.
AND SO IT IS (returning to our narrative concerning Moses) that the biblical narrative abruptly finds Moses at a place of rest, in Midian.
There follow in the Biblical account several wonderful opportunities for exchanges between this hunted, pursued Jewish man Moses, who now finds himself at rest — 'a sojourner’ as he later accounts — and the Gentile Jethro the Midianite and his family.
After the LORD meets Moses at Mt. Horeb in the burning bush and instructs Moses what he is to do, to bring the sons of Israel out of their captivity in Egypt, Moses asks Jethro’s permission to depart, then takes his wife and sons with him to Egypt.(9)
Later, Jethro comes to meet Moses in the wilderness where he is camped, at the mountain of GOD. Seeing Moses’ stress as Moses sits judging the peoples’ cases all day long, Jethro offers good advice concerning the appointment of lesser judges to hear the easier cases, in order that Moses might hear only the most difficult of these.
This is all we hear in the entire Bible concerning Jethro (Reuel), priest of Midian. Though, much later in the trek through the wilderness, Moses asks the assistance of Hobab the son of Reuel to guide them as they travel, and to find the good places to camp, a request to which Hobab finally agrees.
NOW IN ALL THE preceding, we have taken every opportunity to note that Jethro was a priest of Midian, whom readers will recall worshiped a pagan god. In fact, Moses, the man of GOD, chose to marry a Midianite, Jethro’s daughter. But readers may also recall how, later in the trek in the wilderness, how the sons of Israel began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab, who seduced them to stray from GOD and worship instead Ba’al of Peor, and how a Midianite woman was found with one of the man of Israel. As the wrath of GOD was about to strike the people, only at the last minute was GOD’s wrath assuaged when Phinehas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron ran both the man and the woman through with a spear.(10) And subsequently, the Midianites are all declared enemies of the sons of Israel.
How it is that Moses, the man of GOD, is allowed a Midianite for a wife, in the light of this, is not clear. The Bible never explains this. We do know that Miriam, following the census in the wilderness, rebelled against Moses, because of Moses’ Cushite wife (presumably a different wife), challenging Moses’ leadership.(11)
In response (and possibly as an answer to both questions), the LORD then called Moses, Miriam and Aaron (who also rebelled) to meet Him in front of the Tent of Meeting. GOD spoke to them out of the pillar of cloud to reaffirm Moses, with whom GOD speaks mouth to mouth. And when GOD had departed, Miriam was stricken with leprosy.
THERE IS ONE final observation we wish to make, bringing the matter of Jethro up to the present day. In modern times, Jethro is considered a holy man by a religious Arab sect, the Druze, which is not related at all with Islam. Jethro’s bones are considered most holy by the Druze, and he is buried today in a cave in the north face of Mt. Arbel in Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. While the Druze are found scattered in enclaves throughout the Middle East, the Druze in and near Israel until recent times have always been found in wartime alongside the Israelis in the Israel Defense Force (IDF), fighting courageously on the side of Israel.
1 Deuteronomy 34:10.
2 Exodus 34:29-35.
3 See Event 2.
4 Most likely about 1490 BCE, near the start of the reign of Thutmose III in Egypt.
5 Deuteronomy 5:14.
6 Psalm 39:12.
7 C.R.Keil and F.Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. I: Pentateuch, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996. Pp. 624-625.
8 In the Jewish calendar, the nearest Sabbatical Year occurs in the period from Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year's Day) in the year 2000 (that is, sundown of September 30) through the following Erev Rosh Hashanah (New Year's Eve) (sundown of September 17, 2001).
9 Exodus 4.
10 Numbers 25.
11 Numbers 12.
