Jethro Was a Better Brother to Israel Than Esau Ever Was

The Torah gives Jethro a title that seems strange for a foreigner: Moses calls him his father-in-law more than twenty times. No other figure in the Exodus narrative is mentioned so often in that relational role. Midrash Tanchuma, reading the parasha of Yitro through Proverbs, explains why: Jethro earned it.

The verse is from Proverbs 27:10: Your own friend and your father's friend forsake not; neither go into your brother's house in the day of your calamity; better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off. The midrash maps this verse onto history. Your own friend: God. Your father's friend: Abraham, called the friend of God (Isaiah 41:8). And then the warning: do not forsake them. If you do, look at what happened to your brothers.

Which brothers? Esau and Ishmael. Both descended from Abraham's household. Both carried the memory of that friendship. And when Israel's calamity came, the day of the Babylonian exile, neither one showed up.

Rabbi Joshua the son of Levi describes the scene on the road to Babylon. The Israelites, bound in chains, hands behind them, naked and coupled in iron. As they passed through Ishmaelite territory, they begged to be brought to their cousins. The Ishmaelites brought them salty bread and meat and hung empty water bags at the doors of their tents. The exiles saw the bags and believed water was inside. The Ishmaelites told them: eat first. After they had eaten the salt and the brine, the Ishmaelites produced the empty bags. Water that was only air. The Israelites bit the bags, warm air rushed into their stomachs, and they died. The prophet Isaiah described it precisely: the inhabitants of the land of Tema met the fugitives with bitter bread (Isaiah 21:14).

And then the midrash turns to Jethro.

Jethro was not related to Israel. He was a Midianite priest, a man from a nation that would later, in the book of Numbers, be implicated in Israel's worst moral crisis at Shittim. But at the moment that mattered, at the moment when Moses was a fugitive and a stranger in a foreign land, Jethro fed him. When Moses appeared at the well and helped Zipporah and her sisters, Jethro's first response was: why did you leave him? Call him, let him eat bread (Exodus 2:20).

The contrast the midrash builds, point by point, is devastating. Where Esau's descendants ravished the women of Zion (Lamentations 5:11), Jethro gave Moses Zipporah his daughter (Exodus 2:21). Where Esau consumed my people as they eat bread (Psalms 14:4), Jethro said: call him that he may eat bread. Where Esau feared not God (Deuteronomy 25:18), Jethro commanded that only God-fearing men be selected as judges (Exodus 18:21). Where Esau abolished the sacrifices when Rome destroyed the Temple, Jethro brought a burnt-offering and sacrifices to God (Exodus 18:12).

The third month section of the same parasha adds the cosmic context. The midrash on the third month explains why everything sacred in Israel comes in threes: three divisions of Scripture, three agents of redemption, three daily prayers, three-fold holiness in the angelic hymn. The third month after the Exodus is when the Torah was given. Why not sooner? God waited three months so that those injured in Egyptian labor could heal completely before receiving the Torah. You do not give a recovering man a heavy load. You wait for him to be ready.

Jethro also waited for Israel to be ready. He did not arrive while they were slaves. He came after the sea, after Sinai, after they had become what they were always meant to become. He arrived at the right moment and offered advice that Moses, for all his closeness to God, needed to hear: you cannot judge this people alone, you will wear yourself out, choose capable men and delegate (Exodus 18:18).

Later, in the book of Samuel, King Saul would honor the Kenites, Jethro's descendants, before the battle against Amalek: Go, depart from among the Amalekites, for you showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt (1 Samuel 15:6). The debt was remembered across centuries. Kindness shown in the wilderness was recorded and repaid generations later.

Esau heard and attacked. Ishmael smiled and served empty bags. Jethro heard and came running. The midrash is not arguing that outsiders are better than brothers. It is arguing that the word brother means something, and when those who carry the name fail to carry the reality, the neighbor who actually shows up gets the title.

Better a neighbor who is near, says Proverbs. The midrash adds: who was that neighbor? Jethro. The one who called the stranger to eat bread. The one whose descendants were spared when the scorner was struck, because they were on the right side when it counted.