When Moses Sat Down with His Father-in-law Yithro After the Exodus

Curated by Maggid·Edited by Arthur Sabintsev·

When Moses sat down with his father-in-law Yithro after the exodus from Egypt, he did not simply give a dry report of events. The Mekhilta explains that Moses "related to his father-in-law" everything. And the word "related" here carries a specific purpose. Moses told the story in a way designed to appeal to Yithro's feelings, to draw him near to the Torah.

This was not manipulation. It was persuasion through wonder. Moses understood that Yithro, a priest of Midian who had worshipped many gods, needed to hear exactly what the God of Israel had done, not as abstract theology, but as lived experience.

So Moses described three categories of miracles. First, "all that the Lord did", referring to the mighty acts during the exodus from Egypt itself, the plagues and the liberation. Second, "all the ordeals that they had undergone", the terrors at the Red Sea, when the people stood trapped between the water and Pharaoh's advancing army. Third, the dangers "on the way", meaning the war with Amalek, who attacked Israel's weakest and most vulnerable stragglers in the desert.

Then the summation: "and the Lord had rescued them", from everything. Every threat, every enemy, every moment of despair. The cumulative weight of the story did exactly what Moses intended. Yithro heard, and Yithro believed.

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