Few lines in the Torah are as unexpectedly tender as the one the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves at the moment of Jethro's arrival. He sends a message to Moses: "I, thy father-in-law Jethro, have come to thee to be a proselyte; and if thou wilt not receive me on my own account, receive me for the sake of thy wife and of her two sons who are with her" (Exodus 18:6).
The Aramaic reading turns a plain announcement into a request — almost a prayer. Jethro does not arrive as a visiting in-law. He arrives as a candidate for conversion. "I have come to thee to be a proselyte" — to become a ger, a convert who accepts the covenant.
And then the extraordinary humility: "if thou wilt not receive me on my own account, receive me for the sake of thy wife and of her two sons." The prince of Midian, priest of seven faiths, is willing to be admitted by family association if his merit alone is not enough. He leverages Zipporah, Gershom, and Eliezer because he wants to be inside the covenant more than he wants his pride.
This is the Torah's first theology of conversion: come as you are, come through whatever door is open, but come. The takeaway: the gate to covenant is wider than dignity alone. Even kings must sometimes knock through family.