Jethro's Descendants and Their Four Centuries at Jericho

There is a question that the tradition asks quietly about converts, about those who come to the God of Israel from the outside: do they receive a portion in the land? And if they do, what happens to that portion when the original purpose for which it was given is eventually fulfilled?

The descendants of Jethro lived this question for four hundred and eighty years, and their answer is one of the most quietly powerful stories in all of rabbinic lore. The account comes from Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg's great compilation of rabbinic tradition assembled between 1909 and 1938, drawing on a wide range of earlier sources including Talmudic discussion and the midrashim of the Second Temple period.

The Problem of the Proselytes Without Land

When the Israelites completed their conquest of the land of Canaan and the twelve tribes began dividing the territory among themselves, a practical question arose. Jethro's descendants had come with Israel. They had left Midian, crossed the wilderness, and arrived in the Promised Land. But they had no tribal portion. The land had been allotted according to ancestry, and Jethro's line was not descended from any of the twelve sons of Jacob. They had come by choice, not by birth, and the system of inheritance did not provide for them.

According to Ginzberg's retelling, the tribes faced this situation and made a decision that reveals something generous about their understanding of covenant. They recognized that the converts who came from Jethro's family had abandoned their homeland, their property, and their community to join Israel. They deserved a place in the land. The question was which place.

Midrash Rabbah, the 5th century CE collection of rabbinic homilies from Palestine, engages with the principle that a proselyte who fully joins Israel receives a share in its blessings. The converts of Jethro's line were not treated as guests tolerated on someone else's land. They were recognized as members of the community with a legitimate claim to permanence.

The Agreement About Jericho

At the time of the conquest, the tribes had made an agreement about one particular piece of land. Jericho, the ancient city in the Jordan Valley, surrounded by the most fertile territory in the entire region, a place synonymous with abundance and agricultural wealth, would belong to whichever tribe eventually had the Temple built on their land. This was understood to be the tribe of Judah, whose territory would encompass Jerusalem. But the Temple had not yet been built. Its construction lay centuries in the future.

In the meantime, the fertile land of Jericho sat unclaimed, or rather claimed conditionally, waiting for a future event. The tribes decided that Jethro's descendants, the proselytes without a portion, should hold this land during the interval. It was a creative and generous solution: the converts would live on the most productive land in the region until the condition that would transfer it to Judah was finally met.

The Talmud Bavli, compiled in Babylonia in the 6th century CE, preserves discussion of the inheritance rights of converts that illuminates why this arrangement was meaningful. Converts could not inherit tribal land in the ordinary way, but the community could make specific grants, and this grant was substantial. The land around Jericho was not marginal territory set aside to fulfill a technical obligation. It was prime agricultural land, given freely and without conditions except the original one about the Temple.

Four Hundred and Eighty Years of Belonging

Generation followed generation. Children were born in Jericho who had never known Midian. Grandchildren grew up tending the orchards and the fields their great-grandparents had received. The family of Jethro, who had been a Midianite priest, became Israelites of Jericho across nearly five centuries of continuous settlement, as deeply rooted in their place as any tribe descended from the patriarchs.

For four hundred and eighty years, Jethro's descendants thrived in Jericho. The length of time is astonishing, almost half a millennium, longer than many nations have existed. The tradition preserves the number with precision because the length of the occupation matters to the story's meaning. These were not temporary residents who held the land briefly and moved on. They were a people who built their entire civilization on this soil, who loved it and worked it and made it their own across generations too numerous to count individually.

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, composed in the 8th century CE, situates the story of Jethro's descendants within a larger account of how God honors those who come to Israel from outside. The converts were not marginalized in their new home. They flourished there, as the tradition says they deserved to flourish, in merit of Jethro's faithfulness and the faithfulness of his line.

What Happened When the Temple Was Finally Built?

Then the Temple was built. Solomon erected it in Jerusalem, on the land of the tribe of Judah, and the condition of the original agreement was fulfilled. Jericho now belonged, by right of the four-hundred-year-old arrangement, to the tribe of Judah as indemnity for the Temple site.

Jethro's descendants honored the agreement. They gathered what was theirs, left what was Judah's, and gave up the land without dispute. Four hundred and eighty years of roots, of orchards grown and harvested across a dozen generations, of houses built and children raised and elders buried, and they released it all because the original terms required it.

The tradition does not describe this as a tragedy or a dispossession. It describes it as the fulfillment of a commitment made in good faith and honored in good faith. The converts who had been given land because they had no portion received their portion, held it faithfully, and returned it when the time came. This is how Legends of the Jews closes their story: with an act of generosity so complete it loops back to become a kind of definition of what belonging to Israel actually means.