The Priest Who Threw Away His Idols

By the time Moses arrived at the well in Midian, Jethro had already lost everything he had spent his life building. He had been the chief priest of the city, the man who stood before the idols and performed the sacred rites. Then he looked at what he was doing and could not do it anymore.

The Legends of the Jews, compiled by Louis Ginzberg from midrashic sources and published in seven volumes between 1909 and 1938, tells the story this way: Jethro stood before his townspeople and said that he had grown too old for the duties of the priesthood. He delivered all the paraphernalia of idol worship back to the people and told them to give his position to whoever they thought best. He said nothing about why he was leaving. But the people suspected his hidden motives, and they placed him under the ban.

The ban in ancient Near Eastern tradition was a severe social death. No one was permitted to do Jethro the slightest service. The shepherds of Midian would not pasture his flocks. His seven daughters had to go themselves to the well, and even there they were not safe. The male shepherds drove them away from the troughs they had filled and watered their own flocks with water the women had drawn.

This had been going on for some time before Moses appeared. The day he arrived, the shepherds went further than usual: they drove the women away, then threw them into the water with intent to kill them. Moses pulled them out, drove the shepherds off, and gave all the flocks to drink, Jethro's first and the shepherds' flocks after, even though the shepherds had earned nothing from him. The water rose to meet them, the same well, according to the Ginzberg tradition, where Jacob had met Rachel and where Isaac's servant had met Rebekah, the well God had created at the beginning of the world on the eve of the first Sabbath.

The girls came home early. Jethro was astonished. When he heard about the Egyptian who had helped them, he said: perhaps he is one of the descendants of Abraham, from whom blessing issues for the whole world. He rebuked his daughters for not inviting the man inside. They went back and brought Moses home.

What the Legends of the Jews add is that Jethro's journey out of idolatry had begun even earlier, in Pharaoh's court. When Pharaoh was first considering how to oppress the Hebrews, three counselors were consulted: Jethro, Balaam, and Job. Jethro spoke in the Hebrews' defense and was expelled from the court, banished to Midian in disgrace. Balaam recommended drowning all the male infants. Job said nothing and was punished for his silence with his famous sufferings. Jethro's reward for speaking was exile. His path to the priesthood of Midian was itself a kind of second life, and his eventual renunciation of it was a third.

His seven names, as catalogued in the Ginzberg collection, mark the stages of his transformation. Putiel: he who has renounced idolatry. Reuel: the friend of God. Hobab: the beloved son of God. Jethro: he who overflowed with good deeds. Keni: he who was zealous for God and acquired the Torah. The tradition preserved seven names because seven stages of a man's spiritual life require seven names to describe them.

When Moses stayed in Jethro's house, he found there the rod that had passed from Adam to Enoch to Noah to Shem to Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph. When Joseph died, the Egyptians had taken it to Pharaoh's palace. Jethro, then still a prominent scribe at court, had stolen it. He had planted it in his garden, and it had taken root. Moses pulled it from the ground without effort, and Jethro understood at once who was standing before him: the prophet all the wise men of Egypt had foretold would destroy their land. He threw Moses into a pit. He kept him there, not knowing that his daughter Zipporah was keeping the man alive.

Seven years later, Zipporah engineered Moses's release. Jethro opened the pit, recognized his error, and gave Moses his daughter in marriage. Long afterward, when Israel stood at the foot of Sinai and the Law had been given, Jethro came to Moses in the wilderness and heard what God had done for the people. He said: blessed be the Lord, who has delivered you from the Egyptians. And he offered burnt offerings and sacrifices. The man who had thrown away his idols in Midian was the first person outside Israel to say, formally and publicly, that the God of Israel was greater than all other gods.

The Talmud and the midrashic tradition wrestle over Jethro's final significance. His seven names already tell the story of transformation: a man begins as a priest of false gods, is exiled for defending the innocent, goes through stages of searching, renounces what he had been, and ends as someone who acquires Torah. The Ginzberg collection records all of this without resolving whether Jethro converted formally or remained a Midianite who recognized the truth. What it insists on is that his recognition at Sinai mattered. The nations saw what happened in Egypt and remained unmoved. Jethro heard a secondhand report and was moved immediately. His name Keni, the zealous one, was earned last, at the end of a life that had taken him from the altars of Midian to the foot of the mountain where the world changed.