Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

Jethro

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: Jethro

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 056

Dictation Name: RR171AD56

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, oh Lord. In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee and look up. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly father, we give thanks unto thee that in a troubled world thou art our peace. That in a world that rages against thy kingdom, thou art greater than all the powers of man, and that thou hast said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” We thank thee, our Father, for thy peace, for thy power, thy grace and thy mercy, and we come into thy presence to cast our every care upon thee who carest for us. Bless and strengthen us by thy word and by thy spirit. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 18:1-12, and our subject: Jethro. Jethro. Exodus 18:1-12. “When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father in law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel his people, and that the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt; then Jethro, Moses' father in law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back, and her two sons; of which the name of the one was Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land: And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh: and Jethro, Moses' father in law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God: And he said unto Moses, I thy father in law Jethro am come unto thee, and thy wife, and her two sons with her. And Moses went out to meet his father in law, and did obeisance, and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they came into the tent. And Moses told his father in law all that the LORD had done unto Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, and all the travail that had come upon them by the way, and how the LORD delivered them. And Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which the LORD had done to Israel, whom he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians. And Jethro said, Blessed be the LORD, who hath delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh, who hath delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods: for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them. And Jethro, Moses' father in law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God: and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father in law before God.”

We come now to the point where shortly we shall see that Moses is called up into the mount for the giving of the law, and in this instance, Jethro speaks also concerning the law. It is important for us to take the subject of law very, very seriously, because certainly the law does not mean much in our time. This morning I read two incidents of what is happening today in the country with regard to law. In Fort Worth, Texas, a pastor whom I met once was arrested for giving away sandwiches to the homeless in a downtown park. He was charged with operating a temporary food establishment without a license, and this carries a fine of up to $1,000. Then another item. It seems in Boston, two brothers, apparently Irishmen with a name of Malone, when it came to promotion for their jobs as firemen, put down as their racial background that they were black, and now, they face a hearing and potential charges against them, if they cannot prove that, in spite of being Boston Malones, they are also black. Well, that’s justice today. These two brothers were apparently showing the absurdity of the system, and are being penalized. So, it is important for us to know what scripture says about law, about justice.

In our text, we have an account of the visit of Moses, to Moses by his father in law, a very godly man and a man of wisdom. He comes with Moses’ wife, Zipporah, whom Moses had sent back as an impediment to his calling in Egypt. There is no indication in the text dealing with Zipporah that Moses did not love his wife. In fact, he may have been, judging by our previous encounter with the situation, unduly patient with her in the matter of circumcisn, enough to anger God. The fact that she did not share his strong faith did not mean a lack of love on his part, but he did have a sense of priorities, and she did not come first.

The name of Moses’ father in law is usually given in the Bible as Jethro. In Exodus, there are ten references in which the name Jethro is used. The name Jethro means preeminence. However, he has two other names. He is called Hobab in Numbers 10:29 and in Judges 4:11. This name means beloved. In Exodus 2:18, Jethro is called Ruel, meaning God is friend. Well, for us, such a plurality of names is strange. However, in the New Testament, we find that some men had a Greek name as well as a Hebrew name. In cultures where several differing peoples and languages are common, men have often had and still have names derived from each particular tongue. Jethro’s names are all Hebraic, which may mean that related languages were spoken by the various groups.

Jethro came, according to Honeycutt, with two related concerns, and these are important. First, Jethro came after hearing of the deliverance and victory of Israel. He came to lead a celebration of God’s salvation. He came rejoicing. But second, Jethro was a priest, and because the dispensing of justice was originally openly a religious act, Jethro therefore was an authority on justice and he advised Moses to adopt a better method of dispensing justice. Moses, as a Levite of the priestly tribe, had a legitimate jurisdiction. Justice is a religious fact. To separate justice from God is to destroy it. Our contemporary view of justice as the distillation of human experience, or as Holmes declared, experience rather than logic, is destructive of social order and leads to a variety of differing opinions as to what justice is. And the result is that real justice and the process disappears, and we have today, lawyers who are indifferent to the question of justice, who despise any attempt to direct them towards the subject, because for them what counts is legality, and this is also what counts for the courts.

As a priest, Jethro felt it was his duty, as more experienced and older, to instruct Moses in this area. The modern insistence that the church be silent in matters of justice is a great impediment to the furtherance of order in any society.

In verse 11, Jethro says, “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods, for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them.” The word translated as gods is “elohim,” it is the plural of “el.” Now, the absurd approach of so many scholars is to say, “Aha! They were polytheistic!” and he said, “our God is greater than all these other gods.” This is nonsense. It is clear, from the use of elohim in scripture that it can also mean judges. All who have to do with justice are called elohim, little gods. Administrators for God, but if they depart from the word of God, we are told they are to die.

Now, because it means magistrates or justice, judges, it has to do with the administration of justice, and what Jethro is saying is that the Lord is the source of all true justice. When rulers such as Pharaoh dealt arrogantly and unjustly with Israel, He was above them and greater than they were and thus, He dealt with them, and when Amalek came forward despising God and God’s people, He dealt with them. Because these nations, and Pharaoh in particular, refused to give justice, God brought His justice into action against them. Now this is the only sensible meaning, the logical meaning, because He comes having heard what God has done for Israel and he says, “God has demonstrated Himself in His justice to be greater than all these tyrants who feel they are dispensing what constitutes right order,” and we must say with Jethro, that in our time similarly, God is above all our human administrators of justice, and will judge them all.

Asaph, in Psalm 82:6-7, refers to this. “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” Because of the influence of Greek philosophy, men tend to read verse 11 as a concern with an idea, an abstraction, whereas the Bible is specific and anti-abstractionist. Therefore, this verse cannot be seen as an early statement of monotheism, or a break with polytheism, as some say, but as an affirmation of God’s justice.

In verse 7, we have an interesting fact which is very strange to our time. Moses, on hearing of Jethro’s approach, went out to meet him, bowed before him and kissed him. Although Moses was the more powerful figure, he recognized Jethro as his elder, and as father in law, family superior. Respect for age and authority is commanded repeatedly in such statements as this, in Leviticus 19:32, “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man, and fear they God, I am the Lord.” The lack of respect and civility in a society is an indication of inner decay.

Verses 8 and 9 tell us that Moses gave a very specific report to Jethro on all that God had done for Israel, and Jethro rejoiced. It is worth noting that both Amalek and Midian were, like Israel, descended from Abraham, so that both Amalek and Jethro, and Moses came from a common ancestor. The difference between men of these three strands was not a genetic one, but a religious fact. Jethro was a Midianite, and like Moses, a godly man, and unlike other men of Midian, even as Moses was unlike other Israelites.

There is an important fact in verse 1 which must not be overlooked, because we are told that Jethro came when he heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel, his people. Again, we cannot look at the Bible abstractly. Our history books increasingly tend to deal with movements, classes, and less and less with individuals. This is not biblical. Moses is more than God’s instrument. Things are more than abstractions in the Bible. God uses his instruments, but things are not done for an instrument. God did things for Moses, he was God’s servant. He was not only used by God, but blessed and honored by God. It is anti-biblical to reduce ourselves or anyone else to no more than tools used by God. God works in history with men and nations but, at the same time, He is mindful of us as persons. We too often hear people say, “I’m no more than an instrument in the hands of God.” You can be and should be an instrument in the hands of God, but you’re also a person, and God never treats us merely as instruments.

In verse 12, we are told that Jethro, after hearing Moses’ account of God’s deliverance of Israel, offered a burnt offering and other sacrifices, and the elders of Israel joined Jethro and Moses in a communion meal. They dined before God to witness to their peace and gratitude towards God, and their own community in faith. This was a covenant celebration, an affirmation of faith in God’s grace and justice. The Bible, as we have seen, is very specific. This specific character has, over the generations, troubled many, and many people prefer to reduce the Bible to abstractions. Because they are reared in the context of Hellenic, philosophical premises, profundity for the scholars too often means abstractions. Modern man is so in love with abstractions that he has carried it into the spheres of art and music, among other things. We have abstractionist music, we have abstract art, and we have a depersonalization in every sphere.

Now, the religious respect and love of Hellenism, which was born with the Enlightenment and made even more prominent by Romanticism, has led to the depersonalizing of men and history. It has led to a brutalization of life, of tremendous proportion, and as a result, we have today a society which increasingly despises personal considerations. We are given by historians accounts of social movements and the so-called collective mind, as though persons are irrelevant to history. The Bible allows no compromise with such a view. It is centered on the triune God and He works in history in many ways, and very clearly through persons, not abstract social forces. History will not return to any common sense or reality until it realizes that God governs all things, and it is men who make history, not abstractions. Because of our love of abstractions, we are becoming a brutalized and inhuman culture. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God we give thanks unto that thy word is personal and specific. That thou art mindful not only of the nations, but of us. That no man is too great is escape thy judgment, or too small or insignificant to be out of thy mercy, and thy grace. We thank thee that thou art mindful of us, and that we have thy words that thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us, so that we may boldly say in the face of all the powers of this world that the Lord is our helper. We shall not fear what men may do unto us. How great and marvelous thou art, oh Lord, and we praise thee. In Christ’s name, amen. Are there, yes?, any questions now?

[Audience] Well, it’s a Marxist practice to describe people as types, instead of as individuals, as white males, or black females, or capitalists, or whatever.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and the Marxists have that from Greek philosophy, because Plato’s Republic typed people, three classes, and there had to be a separate standard for each and a separate justice for each. We will touch on that next time, but with the Hellenic revival, you had again the revival of a concept of classes as essential to any kind of social order and to the administration of justice. Yes?

[Audience] One other point, and that is that it’s astonishing that the people of the United States have so far put up with the judges that we have.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That’s a very good observation. However, I think that is perhaps ending. I have mentioned this before but all the new courtrooms are built so that the man on trial is somewhat removed from the judge and in a large oblong room. The judge is at one end and three or four seats are at the far other end, a great distance, with a bailiff watching. In other words, the necessity for this, I was told, in one such courtroom, the first one I encountered some years ago, was to protect the judge from the people, and in some you go through a metal detector as at an airport before you can enter into the courtroom. Now, this is routine for very ordinary trials, not anything sensational. So this tells us that they are increasingly fearful of the people.

[Audience] They have good reason.

[Rushdoony] Yes, with good reason. Now without approving of the violence towards judges, which I feel is the wrong way of going about it. They need to vote them out and to take steps to bring them under justice themselves. Nonetheless, it does indicate that judges no longer have their previous stature in the community. Any other questions or comments?

Just the one observation. The two episodes I referred to at the beginning, the Malone brothers and the Fort Worth pastor, are instances of something that is happening increasingly. In a society filled with increasing violence, drugs, murder, we see the police sent out to deal with trivialities of this order, and we have actually, as in one periodical this past month, a defense of Washington, D.C. as a very law-abiding place. The high rate of murder is presented as though it were a simply freakish thing, that is essentially a law-abiding community. Well, this tells us how far gone we are. We can get worked up as Otto has observed more than once, over a limited number of murders or violence that kills people in South Africa, when it is surpassed in a year in some of our cities like Detroit. That indicates a Phariseeism of a remarkable character. Yes?

[Audience] Do you think that the Jethro knew about true religion just because it had been passed down {?} it would have been passed down in Abraham’s time, or something or, how did somebody like a Midianite know about these things?

[Rushdoony] Did Jethro know the true faith.

[Audience] I’m assuming that he did, and I’m wondering if it just came from a, like a cultural memory from stuff that Abraham told him, or something like that, or how did he know?

[Rushdoony] Well, he obviously did and a great many others did. Abraham, for example, encountered Melchizadek, a very godly man, and there a number who had still the faith that Moses, or uh, Noah had, but gradually it perished, and in due time of course, the faith was more and more limited to those who were in the stream of biblical faith, but it, at that time still had some prevalence. Now we know that while Jethro was a true believer, most of the Midianite were not, and they were mistreating his daughters by preventing them from having access to the watering holes, so he was no longer popular even though he was a leader of the people supposedly. Well, if there are no further questions let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee that, although men have turned the courts and law into a mockery, and made of them instruments of injustice, thy law still stands and shall prevail and shall judge all righteous men, nations, and judges. We give thanks unto thee that thou art mindful of us, and we come always into thy presence joyful in thy grace, mercy, and love. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape.