JETHRO.
Exo 18:1-27.
The defeat of Amalek is followed by the visit of Jethro; the
opposite pole of the relation between Israel and the nations, the
coming of the Gentiles to his brightness. And already that is true
which repeats itself all through the history of the Church, that
much secular wisdom, the art of organisation, the structure and
discipline of societies, may be drawn from the experience and wisdom
of the world.
Moses was under the special guidance of God, as really as any
modern enthusiast can claim to be. When he turned for aid or
direction to heaven, he was always answered. And yet he did not
think scorn of the counsel of his kinsman. And although eighty years
had not dimmed the fire of his eyes, nor wasted his strength, he
neglected not the warning which taught him to economise his force;
not to waste on every paltry dispute the attention and wisdom which
could govern the new-born state.
Jethro is the kinsman, and probably the brother-in-law of Moses;
for if he were the father-in-law, and the same as Reuel in the
second chapter, why should a new name be introduced without any mark
of identification? When he hears of the emancipation of Israel from
Egypt, he brings back to Moses his two sons and Zipporah, who had
been sent away, after the angry scene at the circumcision of the
younger, and before he entered Egypt with his life in his hand. Now
he was a great personage, the leader of a new nation, and the
conqueror of the proudest monarch in the world. With what feelings
would the wife and husband meet? We are told nothing of their
interview, nor have we any reason to qualify the unfavourable
impression produced by the circumstances of their parting, by the
schismatic worship founded by their grandchildren, and by the
loneliness implied in the very names of Gershom and Eliezer--"A-stranger-there,"
and "God-a-Help."
But the relations between Moses and Jethro are charming, whether
we look at the obeisance rendered to the official minister of God by
him whom God had honoured so specially, by the prosperous man to the
friend of his adversity, or at the interest felt by the priest of
Midian in all the details of the great deliverance of which he had
heard already, or his joy in a Divine manifestation, probably not in
all respects according to the prejudices of his race, or his praise
of Jehovah as "greater than all gods, yea, in the thing wherein they
dealt proudly against them" (Exo 18:11, R.V.). The meaning of this
phrase is either that the gods were plagued in their own domains, or
that Jehovah had finally vanquished the Egyptians by the very
element in which they were most oppressive, as when Moses himself
had been exposed to drown.
There is another expression, in the first verse, which deserves
to be remarked. How do the friends of a successful man think of the
scenes in which he has borne a memorable part? They chiefly think of
them in connection with their own hero. And amid all the story of
the Exodus, in which so little honour is given to the human actor,
the one trace of personal exultation is where it is most natural and
becoming; it is in the heart of his relative: "When Jethro ... heard
of all that the Lord had done for Moses and for Israel."
We are told, with marked emphasis, that this Midianite, a priest,
and accustomed to act as such with Moses in his family, "took a
burnt-offering and sacrifices for God; and Aaron came, and all the
elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before
God." Nor can we doubt that the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, who laid such stress upon the subordination of Abraham to
Melchizedek, would have discerned in the relative position of Jethro
and Aaron another evidence that the ascendency of the Aaronic
priesthood was only temporary. We shall hereafter see that
priesthood is a function of redeemed humanity, and that all
limitations upon it were for a season, and due to human shortcoming.
But for this very reason (if there were no other) the chief priest
could only be He Who represents and embodies all humanity, in Whom
is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free,
because He is all and in all.
In the meantime, here is recognised, in the history of Israel, a
Gentile priesthood.
And, as at the passover, so now, the sacrifice to God is partaken
of by His people, who are conscious of acceptance by Him. Happy was
the union of innocent festivity with a sacramental recognition of
God. It is the same sentiment which was aimed at by the primitive
Christian Church in her feasts of love, genuine meals in the house
of God, until licence and appetite spoiled them, and the apostle
asked "Have ye not houses to eat and drink in?" (1Co 11:22). Shall
there never come a time when the victorious and pure Church of the
latter days shall regain what we have forfeited, when the doctrine
of the consecration of what is called "secular life" shall be
embodied again in forms like these? It speaks to us meanwhile in a
form which is easily ridiculed (as in Lamb's well-known essay), and
yet singularly touching and edifying if rightly considered, in the
asking for a blessing upon our meals.
On the morrow, Jethro saw Moses, all day long, deciding the small
matters and great which needed already to be adjudicated for the
nation. He who had striven, without a commission, himself to smite
the Egyptian and lead out Israel, is the same self-reliant, heroic,
not too discreet person still.
But the true statesman and administrator is he who employs to the
utmost all the capabilities and energies of his subordinates. And
Jethro made a deep mark in history when he taught Moses the
distinction between the lawgiver and the judge, between him who
sought from God and proclaimed to the people the principles of
justice and their form, and him who applied the law to each problem
as it arose.
"It is supposed, and with probability," writes Kalisch (in
loco), "that Alfred the Great, who was well versed in the Bible,
based his own Saxon constitution of sheriffs in counties, etc., on
the example of the Mosaic division (comp. Bacon on English
Government, i. 70)." And thus it may be that our own nation owes
its free institutions almost directly to the generous interest in
the well-being of his relative, felt by an Arabian priest, who
cherished, amid the growth of idolatries all around him, the
primitive belief in God, and who rightly held that the first
qualifications of a capable judge were ability, and the fear of God,
truthfulness and hatred of unjust gain.
We learn from Deuteronomy (Deu 1:9-15), that Moses allowed the
people themselves to elect these officials, who became not only
their judges but their captains.
From the whole of this narrative we see clearly that the
intervention of God for Israel is no more to be regarded as
superseding the exercise of human prudence and common-sense, than as
dispensing with valour in the repulse of Amalek, and with patience
in journeying through the wilderness.
THE TYPICAL BEARINGS OF THE
HISTORY.
We are now about to pass from history to legislation. And this is
a convenient stage at which to pause, and ask how it comes to pass
that all this narrative is also, in some sense, an allegory. It is a
discussion full of pitfalls. Countless volumes of arbitrary and
fanciful interpretation have done their worst to discredit every
attempt, however cautious and sober, at finding more than the
primary signification in any narrative.[32]
And whoever considers the reckless, violent and inconsistent methods
of the mystical commentators may be forgiven if he recoils from
occupying the ground which they have wasted, and contents himself
with simply drawing the lessons which the story directly suggests.
But the New Testament does not warrant such a surrender. It tells
us that leaven answers to malice, and unleavened bread to sincerity;
that at the Red Sea the people were baptized; that the tabernacle
and the altar, the sacrifice and the priest, the mercy-seat and the
manna, were all types and shadows of abiding Christian realities.
It is more surprising to find the return of the infant Jesus
connected with the words "When Israel was a child then I loved him,
and I called My son out of Egypt,"--for it is impossible to doubt
that the prophet was here speaking of the Exodus, and had in mind
the phrase "Israel is My son, My firstborn: let My son go, that he
may serve Me" (Mat 1:15; Hos 11:1; Exo 4:22).
How are such passages to be explained? Surely not by finding a
superficial resemblance between two things, and thereupon
transferring to one of them whatever is true of the other. No
thought can attain accuracy except by taking care not to confuse in
this way things which superficially resemble each other.
But no thought can be fertilising and suggestive which neglects
real and deep resemblances, resemblances of principle as well as
incident, resemblances which are due to the mind of God or the
character of man.
In the structure and furniture of the tabernacle, and the order
of its services, there are analogies deliberately planned, and such
as every one would expect, between religious truth shadowed forth in
Judaism, and the same truth spoken in these latter days unto us in
the Son.
But in the emancipation, the progress, and alas! the sins and
chastisements of Israel, there are analogies of another kind, since
here it is history which resembles theology, and chiefly secular
things which are compared with spiritual. But the analogies are not
capricious; they are based upon the obvious fact that the same God
Who pitied Israel in bondage sees, with the same tender heart, a
worse tyranny. For it is not a figure of speech to say that sin is
slavery. Sin does outrage the will, and degrade and spoil the life.
The sinner does obey a hard and merciless master. If his true home
is in the kingdom of God, he is, like Israel, not only a slave but
an exile. Is God the God of the Jew only? for otherwise He must,
being immutable, deal with us and our tyrant as He dealt with Israel
and Pharaoh. If He did not, by an exertion of omnipotence,
transplant them from Egypt to their inheritance at one stroke, but
required of them obedience, co-operation, patient discipline, and a
gradual advance, why should we expect the whole work and process of
grace to be summed up in the one experience which we call
conversion? Yet if He did, promptly and completely, break their
chains and consummate their emancipation, then the fact that grace
is a progressive and gradual experience does not forbid us to reckon
ourselves dead unto sin. If the region through which they were led,
during their time of discipline, was very unlike the land of milk
and honey which awaited the close of their pilgrimage, it is not
unlikely that the same God will educate his later Church by the same
means, leading us also by a way that we know not, to humble and
prove us, that He may do us good at the latter end.
And if He marks, by a solemn institution, the period when we
enter into covenant relations with Himself, and renounce the kingdom
and tyranny of His foe, is it marvellous that the apostle found an
analogy for this in the great event by which God punctuated the
emancipation of Israel, leading them out of Egypt through the sea
depths and beneath the protecting cloud?
If privilege, and adoption, and the Divine good-will, did not
shelter them from the consequences of ingratitude and rebellion, if
He spared not the natural branches, we should take heed lest He
spare not us.
Such analogies are really arguments, as solid as those of Bishop
Butler.
But the same cannot be maintained so easily of some others. When
that is quoted of our Lord upon the cross which was written of the
paschal lamb, "a bone shall not be broken" (Exo 12:46, Joh 19:36),
we feel that the citation needs to be justified upon different
grounds. But such grounds are available. He was the true Lamb of
God. For His sake the avenger passes over all His followers. His
flesh is meat indeed. And therefore, although no analogy can be
absolutely perfect, and the type has nothing to declare that His
blood is drink indeed, yet there is an admirable fitness, worthy of
inspired record, in the consummating and fulfilment in Him, and in
Him alone of three sufferers, of the precept "A bone of Him shall
not be broken." It may not be an express prophecy which is brought
to pass, but it is a beautiful and appropriate correspondence,
wrought out by Providence, not available for the coercion of
sceptics, but good for the edifying of believers.
And so it is with the calling of the Son out of Egypt.
Unquestionably Hosea spoke of Israel. But unquestionably too the
phrase "My Son, My Firstborn" is a startling one. Here is already a
suggestive difference between the monotheism of the Old Testament
and the austere jealous logical orthodoxy of the Koran, which
protests "It is not meet for God to have any Son, God forbid" (Sura
19:36). Jesus argued that such a rigid and lifeless orthodoxy as
that of later Judaism, ought to have been scandalised, long before
it came to consider His claims, by the ancient and recognised
inspiration which gave the name of gods to men who sat in judgment
as the representatives of Heaven. He claimed the right to carry
still further the same principle--namely, that deity is not selfish
and incommunicable, but practically gives itself away, in
transferring the exercise of its functions. From such condescension
everything may be expected, for God does not halt in the middle of a
path He has begun to tread.
But if this argument of Jesus were a valid one (and the more it
is examined the more profound it will be seen to be), how
significant will then appear the term "My Son," as applied to
Israel!
In condescending so far, God almost pledged Himself to the
Incarnation, being no dealer in half measures, nor likely to assume
rhetorically a relation to mankind to which in fact He would not
stoop.
Every Christian feels, moreover, that it is by virtue of the
grand and final condescension that all the preliminary steps are
possible. Because Abraham's seed was one, that is Christ, therefore
ye (all) if ye are Christ's, are Abraham's seed, heirs according to
promise (Gal 3:16, Gal 3:29).
But when this great harmony comes to be devoutly recognised, a
hundred minor and incidental points of contact are invested with a
sacred interest.
No doctrinal injury would have resulted, if the Child Jesus had
never left the Holy Land. No infidel could have served his cause by
quoting the words of Hosea. Nor can we now cite them against
infidels as a prophecy fulfilled. But when He does return from Egypt
our devotions, not our polemics, hail and rejoice in the
coincidence. It reminds us, although it does not demonstrate, that
He who is thus called out of Egypt is indeed the Son.
The sober historian cannot prove anything, logically and to
demonstration, by the reiterated interventions in history of
atmospheric phenomena. And yet no devout thinker can fail to
recognise that God has reserved the hail against the time of trouble
and war.
In short, it is absurd and hopeless to bid us limit our
contemplation, in a divine narrative, to what can be demonstrated
like the propositions of Euclid. We laugh at the French for trying
to make colonies and constitutions according to abstract principles,
and proposing, as they once did, to reform Europe "after the Chinese
manner." Well, religion also is not a theory: it is the true history
of the past of humanity, and it is the formative principle in the
history of the present and the future.
And hence it follows that we may dwell with interest and
edification upon analogies, as every great thinker confesses the
existence of truths, "which never can be proved."
In the meantime it is easy to recognise the much simpler fact,
that these things happened unto them by way of example, and they
were written for our admonition.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Take as an example the
assertion of Bunyan that the sea in the Revelation is a sea of
glass, because the laver in the tabernacle was made of the brazen
looking-glasses of the women. (Solomon's Temple, 36:1.)