Jethro Was a Better Brother to Israel Than Esau Ever Was

The Day the Brothers Did Not Come

They moved in chains along the road to Babylon. Hands bound behind their backs, bodies coupled in iron, naked in the heat. When they reached the territory of the Ishmaelites, the exiles begged to be brought to their cousins, to Ishmael's children, the descendants of Abraham's firstborn. The Ishmaelites brought them salty bread and meat, then hung empty water bags on the doors of their tents. The exiles saw the bags and believed water was inside. The Ishmaelites said: "Eat first." After they had eaten the salty bread and the meat, they reached for the bags. The bags were empty. The torment was the point.

When the exiles reached the territory of Esau's descendants, they received worse. Not the cruelty of deceived thirst but the cruelty of open contempt. The brothers who were supposed to come in the day of calamity did not come. They turned their backs and mocked.

What Proverbs Already Knew

The verse from Proverbs had warned them: your own friend and your father's friend forsake not, neither go into your brother's house in the day of your calamity, for better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off. The midrash reads this verse as a map of the whole story. Your friend is God. Your father's friend is Abraham, who was called God's friend. Do not forsake them. And as for brothers -- look at what the brothers did.

Esau and Ishmael were not strangers. Both had grown up in the shadow of the covenant, both had heard Abraham's voice, both remembered the household where God was spoken of as a near and daily presence. When the catastrophe arrived and Israel was in chains, neither one moved. The memory of shared ancestry counted for nothing. The day of calamity exposed what the ordinary days had hidden.

The Foreigner Who Showed Up

Jethro was none of those things. He was a priest of Midian, a Kenite, a man who worshipped at altars Moses had never heard of when they first met. When Moses fled Egypt after killing the overseer, Jethro gave him water, gave him shelter, gave him a daughter. When Moses was in the wilderness with a nation of former slaves, Jethro came to him. He heard what God had done for Israel. He said: "Blessed is the Lord who delivered you." He offered sacrifices and sat down to eat with Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel.

He also told Moses something no one else had thought to say: you are doing this wrong. Sitting from morning to evening judging every dispute, exhausting yourself and exhausting the people. Jethro laid out the system: appoint capable men, men who fear God, who hate dishonest gain, and set them over thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens. Handle only what is too difficult for them. Moses listened. He did what Jethro said.

Better Than a Brother

The midrash counts the ways Jethro out-served the brothers. He welcomed Moses as a son. He gave him a home in Midian for forty years. He entrusted him with his daughter Zipporah. He came to the wilderness to see the nation that Moses had led out. He brought wisdom about governance that kept Moses standing. He rejoiced when Israel was delivered. At no point did he use Israel's vulnerability against them.

This is why Moses calls him father-in-law more than twenty times in the text. Not legal precision. Recognition. Jethro acted as a father acts. The brothers acted as neither brothers nor strangers. They acted as people who had seen a moment of weakness and chose to make it worse.

The verse from Proverbs does not say the neighbor is better than the brother because the neighbor is more virtuous. It says the neighbor is better because the neighbor was near when it mattered. Esau was near geographically. Ishmael was near by blood. But closeness in the physical sense meant nothing without the will to act. Jethro was close in the only way the midrash cared about: close when there was a need, and not a calculation to be made about it.