Jethro Proved a Nearer Friend to Israel Than Esau or Ishmael

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The Column Asked to Be Taken to Their Uncle

Nebuchadnezzar's soldiers marched them out of the ruins with their hands tied behind their backs.

They were coupled together with iron, one man's chain running to the next man's, and they were driven along the road without clothes, the way animals are moved to a market. The road to Babylon ran past the country of the sons of Ishmael, and somebody in the column worked out where they were and started begging the officers.

"Have pity. Take us over to our brothers. Those are the sons of Ishmael out there. That is our uncle's house."

The officers agreed. It cost them nothing to walk a chain gang a little to one side.

Salt Bread and Wet Skins

The sons of Ishmael came out to meet them and they came out carrying food, and the sight of it went through that column like water itself.

Bread. Meat. And hanging at the tent doors, skins for water, the outsides of them dark and dripping, because someone had dipped every one of those skins in a trough and hung them up wet.

The bread was salted. The meat was salted harder. "Eat first," the hosts said, "and we will bring the water after," and the men who had walked from Jerusalem in chains ate what was put in front of them because they could see the skins swinging on their cords ten paces away.

Then the hosts came back and said they were very sorry. There did not seem to be any water.

The Israelites got their teeth into the skins anyway. What was inside them was air, warmed all day in the sun, and it went down into their bodies and they died there on the ground in front of their cousins' tents.

I Opened a Well for Your Mother

Heaven answered Dedan for that, and the rebuke has a memory in it.

"Is this the way a man treats his uncle's sons? Anyone on any road brings out water to a thirsty man, and you had been told they were running from a drawn sword and a bent bow and the ruin of a war. And when your own father's mother sat down in the desert with a boy she thought was dying, who opened her eyes and put a well in front of her?"

The proverb tells Israel not to forsake its own friend or its father's friend. Its own friend is the One who called Israel's brother and friend. Its father's friend is Abraham. And if Israel is ever tempted to walk away from that friend, the houses of its actual brothers are standing there to be looked at.

Better a nearer neighbor than a brother far off. The proverb is older than that road, and after that road it stopped being an observation and became a verdict.

The Priest Who Sent Bread the Other Way

The nearer friend has a name. Jethro ran a household of idols in Midian and he still comes out ahead of Israel's own blood in every line of the comparison.

Esau's descendants took the women of Zion by force. Jethro heard that a stranger had watered his daughters at a well and sent word back down the hill. "Why did you leave the man out there? Call him in, so he can eat bread." He fed the fugitive at his own table, and then he gave him Zipporah, his own daughter, in marriage.

Esau's line ate God's people the way a man eats bread. Esau did not fear God, and it is said so in the plainest words the Torah uses. Jethro is the man who told Moses to appoint judges who fear God and hate a bribe. Esau's heirs put an end to the offerings in Jerusalem. Jethro walked into the camp in the wilderness carrying a burnt offering and sacrifices for a God he had spent his whole life not serving.

And when the reports came out of Egypt, the two of them heard the same reports. Esau's people heard that Israel was in trouble in the wilderness and attacked the stragglers at the back of the column. Jethro heard, and came.

Saul Halted an Army for Them

The account was still open generations later, when Saul was sent to wipe out Amalek and found the Kenites camped in among them.

He stopped the whole operation to send them a message. "Get out. Move away from the Amalekites so I do not destroy you with them, because you showed kindness to the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt."

They were Jethro's people, and the kindness in question was a bed, a flock, and a meal for a wanted man four hundred years earlier. They picked up their tents and walked out of the valley before the swords came down. The blood kin had failed on the road to Babylon. The Midianite stayed.

What Friendship Cost Obadiah

The other way to be a near neighbor is expensive.

Obadiah ran Ahab's household and feared God enormously, which was a dangerous combination in that house. When Jezebel started killing prophets, he hid a hundred of them in caves and fed them out of his own money, and when his own money ran out in the famine he went and borrowed from Joram, Ahab's son, at interest, and kept feeding them.

Joram took the interest. Heaven put the question about him in one line. He has lent at interest and taken increase, and shall he live.

Years later Jehu drew a bow at full strength and put an arrow between Joram's shoulders. It came out at the heart and Joram went down into the floor of his own chariot.

A doctor tells one household to feed the patient anything he wants, and warns the next household to watch every mouthful. The first patient is dying either way. The second one is expected to live, which is why he gets the rules. The fences around money in the Torah are that second kind of instruction, and Obadiah is the man who took a loss inside them so that other men would eat.