See Exodus 18.
I've long puzzled over Jethro's role in Exodus, and I think I'm making some progress at last.
Jethro features in Exodus 2 (as Reuel, where he welcomes Moses the refugee), in Exodus 4 (where he sends Moses back to Pharaoh in peace, although Moses hasn't been strictly honest about the nature of his mission), and in most detail in Exodus 18.
In the next week or two, The Well, the magazine that the church produces and distributes free of charge to all 5000 residents of our two parishes, will land on people's doormats.
As usual, page 4 has a letter from me:
Dear friends,
We’ve just come through the most unpredictable General Election for many years; people are talking not only of there being a new government but of a whole new way of doing politics. Time will tell what difference these changes will make, and whether they are great or small.
We find Exodus chapters 7 to 10 quite hard to read. When we ask why this is, Motyer is surely spot on.
Another post quoting Alec Motyer on Exodus. His introduction is extremely helpful at drawing threads together and helping to make clear how the details of the book go to make up the whole.
Alex Motyer is not exaggerating when he describes how important the book of Exodus is in the unfolding story of the whole Bible:
Alec Motyer wrote this very helpful paragraph in his commentary on Exodus.
Re-reading Exodus 1:1-7:7 a few times in preparation for next Sunday's sermon, I have been struck again by just how well-crafted the book of Exodus is.
Here are a handful of details that I observed in those chapters, that are reproduced here in the hope that they might intrigue a few people to read the book of Exodus again. What, I think, we need is to read the whole book (because it functions and speaks to us as a whole), but to combine that with close attention to the details.
Peter Leithart makes a wonderful observation about Jacob, Esau and Joseph.
He says this:
Esau is a “hairy man” (sa’iyr), something we learn only when Jacob dresses himself in goat hair to approach his father (Genesis 27:11, 23). Jacob becomes a hairy one, subbing in for his brother. The only other use of the word in Genesis is in 37:31, where it describes the “kid” killed to fool into thinking that Joseph has died. Both passages involve substitution, and both involve deception of a father.
I think this has struck me before. Re-reading 1 Samuel, we find that:
I thought the reference in Mark 6:23 to "up to half my kingdom" sounded familiar. Sure enough, the phrase also occurs in Esther 5:3 and Esther 7:2.
That got me thinking.
In the book of Esther we have a king with an extravagant party who makes an oath to depose his queen, which would be (for her) a kind of death. He promises a girl up to half of his kingdom, and then executes somebody because it is effectively what that girl asked for. We have someone (Haman), who has the king's ear, asking for the people of God to be put to death. Sound familiar?
