The Rod in Jethro's Garden Had Waited Since Eden

The Fugitive at the Well

Moses sat down at the well in Midian not knowing what came next. He had killed an Egyptian taskmaster in Egypt, had watched two Hebrews fighting the following day and been asked by one of them: do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? He had run before Pharaoh could arrest him. He was sixty-six years old, having spent forty years as the king of Cush before being sent away from that kingdom with honor but without a future. He was a man without a country sitting at a well in a place he had never been, and the seven daughters who came to draw water that afternoon had no idea who he was.

He drove off the shepherds who were abusing the women, drew water for them, and helped them water the flocks. They went home and told their father an Egyptian had helped them. Moses was invited to the household and stayed. He gave his name as Moses the Egyptian and did not correct it when the family used the designation. The tradition notes this as a small failure of self-declaration: Joseph, who had said publicly that he was a Hebrew, was buried in the land of the Hebrews. Moses, who allowed himself to be called an Egyptian, would die outside that land.

The Rod No One Could Move

When Moses asked for Zipporah's hand, Zipporah warned him about what her father required. There was a rod planted in the garden. Every man who had come to court one of Jethro's daughters had been invited to try to pull it from the earth. None had succeeded. Several had been killed by it.

The rod's history was long. It had been created at twilight on the sixth day of Creation, in the last hour before God rested, as one of ten primordial objects made outside the natural order. Adam had carried it out of Eden. It had passed to Enoch, then to Noah, then to Shem, then to Abraham, then to Isaac, then to Jacob, who had used it to cross the Jordan with nothing else when he fled from Esau and who had brought it down to Egypt when the family descended. Joseph had received it in Egypt and had it in his possession when he died. It had been carried to Jethro's house in Midian and planted in the garden, and there it had stayed, waiting, rooted in the earth, killing the men who tried to uproot it.

What Moses Did in the Garden

Moses walked into the garden and read the inscription on the rod. It was engraved with the name of God and with the ten plagues that would fall on Egypt. He took hold of it and drew it from the earth without effort. Jethro, watching from the house, understood what this meant: this was the man for whom the rod had been waiting since the first Sabbath eve of the world. He came out and gave his daughter Zipporah in marriage and with her the rod, and Moses carried it with him back to Egypt, and before Pharaoh he raised it, and the plagues the rod named fell on Egypt one by one.

Zipporah herself would turn out to be the sharper-minded of the two in certain moments. When Moses was on the road back to Egypt with his family and God's presence came against him in a night attack that would have killed him, Zipporah took a flint knife and circumcised their son and touched Moses with the blood, saying: you are a bridegroom of blood to me. The attack withdrew. Moses had almost died on the road to the mission God had just given him, and it was his wife who understood in a moment what needed to be done and did it before he could think through the implications.

The Rod as Instrument

The rod Moses carried was not just a staff. It had been a vehicle for the divine will from the beginning, passing through each generation of the patriarchal line until the right hands could hold it. It split the sea. It drew water from the rock. It turned into a serpent before Pharaoh and swallowed the serpents the Egyptian magicians produced. It stretched over Egypt during the plague of hail. It stretched over the Red Sea and the sea divided.

When Moses lifted it, the people prevailed in the battle against Amalek. When his arms grew heavy and other hands held them up, the battle turned again in their favor. The rod was an extension of Moses, and Moses was an extension of the promise that had been inscribed on the rod before anyone living had been born.