Exodus 18:6

God had told Pharaoh that he was acting so that his name would be declared throughout all the earth (Exodus 9:16), and the song at the sea said that the nations would hear and tremble (Exodus 15:14–16). Jethro is one of the first outside Israel in whom that comes true, and later Rahab in Jericho tells the spies that her people too have heard of what the LORD did (Joshua 2:9–11). Israel itself had grumbled again and again in the wilderness, and here a man from another people hears of the LORD’s works and responds with awe. The psalmist calls God’s people to declare his glory among the nations (Psalm 96:3), and the LORD says of his servant that he will be a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6).

Jethro was Moses’ father-in-law and a priest with spiritual standing among his own people. Exodus leaves open how much he knew of the LORD before this news reached him, but once he hears, he comes. In the verses after this passage he greets Moses, praises the God of Israel and shares a meal and worship with Moses and the elders (Exodus 18:7–12). He is also the man God uses to bring Moses wise counsel. After watching Moses judge the people’s disputes from morning till evening, he urges him to appoint able, trustworthy, God-fearing men to judge the smaller matters and bring only the hardest cases to Moses, and Moses heeds him (Exodus 18:13–27). Moses later recalls appointing those leaders (Deuteronomy 1:9–18). So wisdom and praise of the LORD came to Moses through a man from outside the covenant line.

The likeliest occasion is the night at the lodging place on the road to Egypt (Exodus 4:24–26). The LORD met Moses there and sought to kill him because his son had not been circumcised, the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham, and Zipporah circumcised the boy at once and so saved Moses’ life. After that, with a dangerous mission before him in Pharaoh’s court and then the march out of Egypt, Moses most likely sent his wife and sons back to Jethro for their safety. Their coming now closes a thread left open since that night. Moses’ family had been set aside for a season for the sake of his calling, and now, with Egypt behind them, God brings them back to him through Jethro’s care.

Gershom, Gêrᵉshôm, was born and named in Midian (Exodus 2:22), and Moses gives the reason: “I have been an alien in a strange land.” The name is explained from gêr, a sojourner, and sham, “there”, so it says “a sojourner there”. A gêr is a resident alien, someone living among a people who are not his own, in a place that is not his origin, and his stay may be long or even permanent. In Israel the sojourner was counted among the weaker members of the community, and God commanded his people to love him, because they themselves had been strangers in Egypt (Leviticus 19:34, Deuteronomy 10:19).

The land is called “strange”, nokrîy, the word for foreign, and “land” is ʼerets. Moses had a wife, a home and a flock in Midian, and he still knew himself a stranger there. His heritage was with his own people, and the name of his firstborn kept that before him.

The word runs all through Scripture. Abraham called himself a stranger and a sojourner (Genesis 23:4). God told Israel that the land was his, “for ye are strangers and sojourners with me” (Leviticus 25:23). The psalmist prays, “I am a stranger in the earth” (Psalm 119:19), and Hebrews says that the patriarchs confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Hebrews 11:13). Peter calls believers “strangers and pilgrims” (1 Peter 2:11), and Paul says that our conversation, our citizenship, is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). The Son of God himself took on flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), and in his ministry he had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). Through him strangers are brought home: “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19–22), and at the end God will dwell with his people and wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:3–4).

The second son is Eliezer, ʼĔlîyʻezer, formed from El, “God”, and ʻêzer, “help”, so the name means “God of help”. Moses explains it: “the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.” ʻêzer is aid or help, and when God is the helper it means help that saves where human strength fails. The same word describes the help God made for Adam, “an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18).

“The God of my father” ties Moses’ own rescue to the covenant God of the patriarchs. At the burning bush God had said, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). The God who had kept faith with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was Moses’ own helper too.

“The sword of Pharaoh” is first of all the death Pharaoh sought for Moses after he killed the Egyptian, when Moses fled to Midian (Exodus 2:11–15). It also stands for the whole killing power of Egypt, which pursued all Israel to the Red Sea (Exodus 14). The verb “delivered”, nâtsal, means to snatch away, to pull out of danger. Moses is the one delivered, and the sword is what God took him from, and the words “and delivered me” say what kind of help God had given.

The order of the names matters. The first remembers the trouble, and the second the God who brought him through it, so every time Moses called his younger son, he spoke his thanks. God’s people have always said the same: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). God says through Isaiah, “I will help thee” (Isaiah 41:10), and the song of Moses gives the LORD as the one who kills and makes alive, wounds and heals (Deuteronomy 32:39). The name Jesus means “the LORD saves”, and he came to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14–15).

Exodus stops here because God cares for his servant’s household as well as for the nation he leads. Moses, chosen by God and carrying the burden of a whole people, still needed his wife, his sons and the counsel of his father-in-law. At the beginning God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18), and a psalm says that “God setteth the solitary in families” (Psalm 68:6). The reunion also opens the way for Jethro’s counsel, which gave Israel judges and order before the law was given. Proverbs says, “in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14), and that plans are established by counsel (Proverbs 15:22). Even the greatest leader God raised up in Israel received help through ordinary family ties.