Yithro warned Moses with a vivid and frightening prophecy (Exodus 18:18): "You will languish." The Hebrew word used here prompted two different interpretations from the rabbis, and both painted a dire picture of what would happen if Moses continued judging the people alone.
R. Yehoshua read "languish" as physical exhaustion. The endless stream of litigants, the unceasing demand for decisions from morning to night — it would wear Moses out and cause him to collapse. A single man cannot absorb the weight of an entire nation's disputes without eventually breaking under the strain. Even Moses, who had climbed Mount Sinai and spoken with God, had a body that could fail.
R. Elazar Hamodai offered a more poetic and troubling reading. "They will belabor you and vex you," he said, "as a fig tree whose leaves are wilted." He drew the image from the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 1:30): "like an elah of wilted leaf." Moses would not simply grow tired. He would dry up from the inside, like a tree that has lost its moisture — still standing, but brittle, withered, no longer nourishing anything.
And the damage would not be limited to Moses alone. Yithro's warning extended to three groups: "also you" — meaning Moses himself; "also" — meaning Aaron; "also this people" — meaning the seventy elders. The entire leadership structure would wilt under the impossible burden of centralized judgment.