Parshat Shemot5 min read

How Moses Grew Greater Than the Man Who Sheltered Him

An angel met Moses at the lodging place and sought to kill him. Zipporah took a stone. Circumcision blood bought her husband back.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. He Asked Yithro for Leave
  2. The Ass, the Staff, and the Road
  3. The Angel at the Lodging Place
  4. Aaron Met Him at the Mountain
  5. Yithro Named Himself by Moses
How Moses Grew Greater Than the Man Who Sheltered Him Click for full size

He Asked Yithro for Leave

Moses went back to Yithro with the staff in his hand and a warrant still hanging over his name in Egypt. He had arrived in Midian with nothing. The priest of Midian had sheltered him, given him a wife, given him sons, given him a name to stand under. When people asked who Moses was, he said he was Yithro's son-in-law, and he prided himself in that.

He had already argued with God about his mouth. "I am heavy of speech and of a deep tongue." God had answered without softening. "Who appointed the mouth of man, and who appointed the mute, or the deaf, or the open-sighted, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?" Still Moses asked to send someone else. God gave him Aaron as interpreter and sent him anyway.

Before that sending, God had made him drop the staff. It became a serpent. Moses fled from it, then seized the tail, and it was a staff again. He put his hand into his bosom and drew it out white as snow, then put it back and drew out living flesh. Signs enough for Egypt. He still went to Yithro first.

He stood in that house, the younger man claiming the older man's name, and said, "I will now go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see if they still live."

Yithro said, "Go in peace."

The Ass, the Staff, and the Road

Moses took his wife Zipporah and his sons and made them ride upon the ass. He took the staff with which the signs had been done. God spoke to him in Midian. "Go, return to Egypt, for all the men who sought to kill you are dead." He said also, "Israel is My son, My firstborn. Tell Pharaoh that. If he refuses, I will kill his son, his firstborn."

They started. The staff rode in Moses' hand. The uncircumcised child rode on the ass. Moses had the greater errand in his mouth and the smaller obedience still undone.

The Angel at the Lodging Place

It was on the way, at the place of lodging, that the Angel of the Lord met him and sought to kill him.

The attack did not come from Pharaoh. It came from the road God had just ordered him onto. Moses, who had been told that the men who wanted him dead in Egypt were already dead, went down under an angel in a rented room.

Zipporah took a stone. She circumcised the foreskin of her son. She approached the angel with the blood and said, "On account of the blood of this circumcision let my husband be given back to me."

The angel desisted. She said, "But for the blood of this circumcision my husband would have been condemned to die."

The man who had prided himself as Yithro's son-in-law was bought back by Yithro's daughter and a flint. The household that had sheltered him was still the household that kept him alive.

Aaron Met Him at the Mountain

God said to Aaron, go meet Moses in the desert. Aaron went and met him at the mountain on which the glory of the Lord had been revealed, and he kissed him. Moses showed Aaron all the words and all the signs. The heavy mouth had a speaker now. The staff was still in his hand. The blood of the circumcision was still on the child.

Then the plagues. Then the sea. Then a mountain in fire. Moses grew. The borrowed name could not hold him anymore.

Yithro Named Himself by Moses

Years later Yithro came to the camp in the wilderness, bringing Moses his wife and sons. People asked him, "Who are you?"

He did not say, I am the priest of Midian. He said, "I am Moses' father-in-law."

The man who had sheltered a fugitive now took his standing from the fugitive. Moses had gone out from that house as the lesser name. He had come through an inn where an angel tried to kill him and a Midianite woman saved him with a stone. He had stood in front of Pharaoh with a mouth God had appointed. He had become the greater name in the family that once gave him cover.

Yithro walked into the camp under that name and did not ask for the old one back.

MosesYithroExodusProphecyCircumcision
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Mekhilta Tractate Amalek 3:12Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Mechilta, translated by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein · CC-BY

The Mekhilta notices something peculiar about how the Torah identifies Yithro. In the beginning of the story, Moses is the one who boasts about the relationship. When Moses returns to Midian, the Torah says: "And Moses went and returned to Yether, his father-in-law" (Exodus 4:18). Moses prided himself in being Yithro's son-in-law. The connection gave him status. Yithro was a prominent man in Midian, a priest or an officer, depending on which rabbi you ask. And Moses was glad to claim the association.

Later in the story, the dynamic reverses. By the time Yithro arrives at the Israelite camp in the wilderness, Moses has become the most famous man in the ancient world. He has confronted Pharaoh, brought ten plagues upon Egypt, split the Red Sea, and received the Torah at Sinai. Now it is Yithro who claims the connection.

When people asked Yithro who he was, his answer was simple: "I am Moses' father-in-law." The man who had once been the distinguished one, the one whose name gave Moses credibility, now introduced himself entirely through Moses' fame.

The Mekhilta reads this reversal as embedded in the Torah's own language. The shift from "Moses went to his father-in-law" to "the father-in-law of Moses" tracks a transfer of prestige. It is a story about how the Exodus changed every relationship it touched, even the private one between a man and his wife's father. Before Sinai, Moses needed Yithro's name. After Sinai, Yithro needed his.

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Targum Onkelos, Exodus 4Targum Onkelos

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria-hosted English Targum translation · Public Domain

The Hebrew Bible says God told Moses, "Who gave man a mouth, or who makes a person dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I. God?" (Exodus 4:11). Targum Onkelos translates this verse without alteration. No softening. No buffer. God claims direct responsibility for disability, for limitation, for the full range of human capacity and incapacity.

This is striking because Onkelos normally works to distance God from anything that might seem harsh or physical. But here, the theological point is too important to obscure. Moses has just protested that he is "clumsy of mouth and clumsy of tongue" (Exodus 4:10), he cannot speak well enough to lead. God's response is not sympathy. It is a statement of absolute sovereignty. The God who made the mouth can make it speak.

The chapter's strangest episode, the attack at the inn, receives Onkelos's characteristically restrained treatment. The Hebrew says God (or an angel) "sought to kill him" (Exodus 4:24), referring either to Moses or his son. Zipporah circumcises their son with a flint and touches "his feet," and the attacker withdraws. Onkelos translates without significant deviation, preserving the passage's unsettling ambiguity.

Throughout Exodus 4, Onkelos renders God's promises to Moses with his signature phrase: "My Word will be with your mouth" (Exodus 4:12). Not "I will be with your mouth." God's Memra. His Word, serves as the active agent. Moses will speak, but the words will come from a source beyond Moses. The reluctant prophet's mouth will become a vessel for divine communication, and the Aramaic makes clear that the power behind the words is not human eloquence but divine speech.

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