"Yitro, the priest of Midian, heard all that God had done for Moses and His people Israel" (Exodus 18:1). What exactly did Yitro hear? Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev says he heard something the Egyptians themselves had confessed at the moment of their death: "I must flee on account of Israel, for God is battling on their behalf against Egypt" (Exodus 14:25).
Yitro understood that the plagues and the splitting of the sea were not punishments for violating God's abstract will. They were responses to specific wrongs done to Moses and the Israelites. God's intervention was personal.
When Yitro declared, "Now I know that God is greater than any deity" (Exodus 18:11), Rabbi Levi Yitzchak dissects the Hebrew with care. The word mi-kol (מכל), "than all," is attached directly to the word kol (כל) rather than using the standard construction min kol (מן כל). Had Yitro said min kol ha-elohim, it would imply a quantitative comparison: other gods can lift 500 kilograms, but God can lift a ton. By saying mi-kol, Yitro expressed qualitative superiority. God is not merely stronger than other forces. He is in a category entirely His own.
The proof was in the method. God defeated Egypt using water, the very element the Egyptians worshipped. The Nile was their god. Their economic prosperity depended on it. And God turned their god into their executioner. The waters that had sustained them drowned them. First the waters obeyed God's command to split, letting Israel through. Then they obeyed His command to return, destroying the Egyptian army.
This was not just power. It was irony on a cosmic scale. God demonstrated that the forces nature-worshippers deify are nothing more than tools in His hand, equally capable of nurturing life and dealing death, depending entirely on the will of the One who created them.