Exodus18chapter 18

Exodus 18:1-2

the priest of Midian: The news of the exodus travels outside Israel, and the first man on record to act on it is a priest of Midian. Chapter 17 closed with Amalek, a people at war with Israel from generation to generation, and chapter 18 opens with a foreigner setting out toward the God who did it. The narrator calls Jethro the father in law of Moses thirteen times in twenty seven verses, which keeps the family tie in front of the reader through every scene.

Exodus 18:3-4

Gershom was named at Exodus 2:22, where Moses said he had been a stranger in a strange land, and the same explanation is repeated here as an alien in a strange land. Eliezer is named in one verse of Exodus and nowhere else in the book, and what his name records is a rescue, that the God of my father was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh. Moses had fled that sword at Exodus 2:15, and the private deliverance he put into a son's name is the thing God has now done for a nation.

Exodus 18:5-6

Jethro reaches Moses at the mount of God, which Exodus 3:1 calls Horeb and names as the place where Moses was keeping this same man's flock when he saw the bush. God's answer to Moses there was a token that could only be checked at the end of the errand, that when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain. The people are camped at that mountain when Jethro walks in, so the sign of Exodus 3:12 has now come due.

Exodus 18:7-8

Moses went out to meet his father in law: Moses bows and kisses a Midianite shepherd in front of the camp he leads, which is the courtesy of a son in law rather than the bearing of a national head. Matthew Henry takes the scene as a rule about relatives, that a man whom God has advanced still owes what he owed before. What Moses then hands over is a report that includes the hard road as well as the victory, all the travail that had come upon them by the way.

Exodus 18:9-10

Jethro answers the report with gladness and then with a blessing spoken to the LORD by name. Israel's own answer through the same stretch of the book had been complaint, at the sea in 14:11, at Marah in 15:24, in the wilderness of Sin in 16:2 and at Rephidim in 17:2. Matthew Henry sets the two side by side and writes that while the Israelites were themselves murmuring, here was a Midianite rejoicing.

Exodus 18:11

Now I know that the Lord is greater: The confession comes from outside Israel, and it answers in plain words the question the song of Moses had asked at 15:11, who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods. Exodus 12:12 had promised that against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment, and Jethro is the first man in the book to say out loud that the judgment landed. His ground is the place where Egypt was proudest, in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them, which commentators have generally read as the sea.

Exodus 18:12

A Midianite priest brings burnt offering and sacrifices to the God of Israel, and Aaron and all the elders come to eat bread with him before God. Israel has no priesthood yet, since the instructions for consecrating Aaron are still eleven chapters ahead at 29:9, and both Matthew Henry and John Wesley read the offering as one Jethro made himself in the office he already held. The meal is eaten at the mountain where the covenant has not yet been cut.

Exodus 18:13-14

This is the first court in Israel and it has one judge in it, with the people standing from the morning unto the evening. The cases themselves are never described, and chapter 17 has just recorded a battle with Amalek and the division of what came out of it. Jethro's question is about the shape of the arrangement rather than the rulings, why sittest thou thyself alone.

Exodus 18:15-16

Moses describes two tasks, deciding between one man and another, and making them know the statutes of God, and his laws. Adam Clarke and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read that mention of statutes and laws, together with Deuteronomy 1:9 to 1:15, as evidence that the chapter sits out of chronological order and belongs after Sinai. Others keep the sequence as written, since Exodus 15:25 had already made a statute and an ordinance at Marah, before any law was given from the mountain. The chapter itself gives no date for the visit.

Exodus 18:17-18

The correction is delivered to Moses by a man outside Israel and outside the covenant, and it is blunt. The Hebrew at verse 18 doubles the verb, which Adam Clarke renders as in wearing away thou wilt wear away, and Jethro applies the wearing to the people standing in line as much as to the man on the seat. The chapter records no word from God prompting any of this, and it stands one chapter before Sinai.

Exodus 18:19-20

Jethro keeps two things in the hands of Moses and hands the rest away. Moses is to stand for the people to God-ward and bring the causes unto God, and he is to teach them ordinances and laws and shew them the way wherein they must walk. What goes to other men is the volume of ordinary cases, and what stays with Moses is access to God and the teaching of what God has said.

Exodus 18:21

Four things are asked of the men chosen, ability, the fear of God, truthfulness and a hatred of covetousness, and three of the four describe character rather than skill. Deuteronomy 1:13 gives Moses' own account of the same appointment and has the tribes pick their own men, and Acts 6:3 puts the church under the same procedure when the apostles tell it to look out seven men of honest report. Gregory the Great built a chapter of The Book of Pastoral Rule on this passage, writing that Moses was reproved by a man of alien race for spending himself on earthly strifes with nothing left for teaching.

Exodus 18:22-23

The plan sorts cases by weight, with every small matter settled below and every great matter carried up, and the stated aim is that they shall bear the burden with thee. Jethro then puts his own advice under review in the same breath he gives it, if thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so. He also names the destination as their place, which is the land, so a Midianite priest speaks of Canaan as Israel's home before Israel has a law.

Exodus 18:24-25

Moses takes the advice, and the text reports it in one line with no word from God on either side of it. The summary at verse 25 keeps ability and passes over the other three qualifications Jethro had named, while Deuteronomy 1:13 adds that Moses had the tribes choose the men themselves. Israel's judiciary begins from counsel given by a Midianite priest, and the chapter lets that stand without comment.

Exodus 18:26-27

The report matches the instruction with one shift of wording, since Jethro said every great matter and the execution says the hard causes, which is the phrase Deuteronomy 1:17 uses when Moses recounts the charge he gave the judges. Then Jethro goes home, and the man whose counsel shaped Israel's courts is out of the camp before Sinai. Numbers 10:29 to 10:31 records Moses later pressing this same family to stay and be to us instead of eyes.