The Set Up - Exodus 18:13-27

18:13-27 – After everything that has happened with Pharaoh and Egypt and crossing the desert and the miracles, Moses is still acting like he’s just the guy everyone looks to when they are having problems. He’s a really interesting guy because while his father-in-law is visiting and after his wife and children just returned to him, he “sat to judge the people,” which I think means that the people just brought him all their problems and he was the one who was supposed to sort it out. Jethro saw this and asked him “what is this thing that thou doest to the people? Why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto evening?” I took this to mean, “why are all these people talking to you all the time?”

Moses answers saying, “because the people come unto me to inquire of God: When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.” There are several problems here, first that the people don’t know God’s laws, second that they thing they should receive divine revelation concerning their individual issues by the prophet himself, and third, that they all go to Moses for everything. I guess this is probably a nature progression of things in a new religious environment, I know that Joseph Smith struggled with this exact issue when he was the first president of the Church.

Jethro had decades of experience as the head of a large clan at this point so he saw that Moses was doing and knew that it wasn’t good for many reasons. First, the people needed to learn to work out most of their own problems, two Moses was going to get burned out, and three Moses shouldering the whole burden deprived other men from learning and growing spiritually as leaders in their own communities.

Jethro tells Moses to teach the people the “ordinances and laws” so that they can have the law themselves. He also tells Moses to take “able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, and rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.” These are the men who will judge the people and their problems using their wisdom and inspiration and if something has to be escalated to Moses then so be it, but for the most part, most things should be handled at the lower levels.

Moses listened to Jethro and divided up the leadership of the people into the groups Jethro recommended, and it worked out great and “every small matter they judged themselves.” The IM notes, “Moses shows commendable humility and wisdom in accepting the old Priest’s advice.” This was just such an interesting insight into Moses’ character and who he was as a person that even after all that, he still had to be shown what to do to run the people.