Moses is Reuel; Jethro is God: Clarifying Some Things of Exodus Three, the Beginning of the Bible
Dear Reader,
I am going through old blog post drafts I have never published. Maybe their ideas I have expressed in other posts (you might recognize the repetition), or I could never get the composition "up to snuff." Some are just left over material. I usually try to cram too much into a post, and give up trying to order the mess. So I am posting their better bits and pieces. Trusting God to order them. In this one I deal with the misreading and misunderstanding of Who Jethro is. I think I did not publish it because I realized that I still had not got to Who Jethro is. So this is halfway into a transition. See "An Explanation of the Burning Bush, Exodus 3:14," Tuesday, March 24, 2020.
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In Victor Alexander's translation of Exodus from the ancient Aramaic, there is an asterisk on the name 'Jethro' in verse 3:1. I desperately want to know what Jethro meant in ancient Aramaic, but there is no corresponding definition or discussion in the footnote section. I guess Vic forgot to go back to it. Today, though, I finally understood Jethro and that I have for ages misread the beginning chapters of Exodus, which book is the foundation and beginning of the whole Bible. I thought (from Alexander) that God said in 3:14, "I come -- Ashur -- his coming." In this, "his coming" would be Jethro's (His Excellence's coming). I now realize it might actually be the opposite order: that it was JETHRO (!) who in Moses' mind said, "I come -- Ashur -- His coming," with "His" referring to God's coming.
"Dan," you might say, "that is plum loco. Everybody and his brother knows that it was God who spoke to Moses. It says it right there: 'And God said to Moses.' It weren't Jethro sayin' nuthin to Moses at all. You're crazy and all mixed up, 'n' ya better repent right now."
Hold your horses, chief. I did think to look at the beginning of Exodus again. I wondered if that asterisk on Jethro referred back to Reuel in Exodus 2:18, for they are apparently the same character. 'Reuel,' according to my Cornwall and Smith Exhaustive Dictionary of Bible Names means, 'the friend of God'. Anyway, I opened Alexander's Exodus to the beginning, and accidentally noticed that the first name in the list of the sons of Jacob (Chapter 1) was Reuel.
Huh? What? Wait. What? I ain't no rube; I know the first son of Jacob was Reuben. So I grabbed my volume of Alexander's Genesis to look up Reuben, and it opened DIRECTLY to the footnote for Genesis 29:32, "Lit. Aramaic: 'Reu-Eil,' or 'God-looked-upon.' Reu-Eil was the Aramaic name for Jacob's first son Reuben. (Opening directly to that footnote was weird, but the page is almost exactly in the middle of the book -- page 112 out of 215). Reu-Eil was not "a friend of God." He is the blessed, God-looking-upon God's Excellence, His "Son" His IMAGINATION. He, the Milta, is looked upon because of his mother's OBEDIENCE.
I read Exodus as the first book of the Bible, with Genesis being its prequel. Jacob was MOSES' inner man. Reu-Eil was a quality of MOSES' inner man, God's interest in his OBEDIENCE which was "king-priest of the Medians." Now, all commentators will tell you that Reuel was Jethro, and that the angel of God was actually God. What they miss is that Jacob was Moses' inner man; that Reu-Eil was a quality of Jacob, Moses' attitude; and that Jethro, the excellence of God in Moses, was the "angel"who spoke to Moses. It turns out that THE WHOLE KIT AND CABOODLE OF THEM WERE MOSES.
Dadgumit, folks, Moses here was just trying to tell us how he happened to become a mystic. He found that the kingdom of God, the power of the Ineffable's imagination's action among us, YHWH, was 'God.' The kingdom is the Ineffable. IT. IS. ALL. ONE. It is all Moses there in the Bible, and Moses is YOU!!
My last shot at saying it clearly: God's Excellence, "Jethro," says, "My absolute intent to become is the Beginning Spark who kindles the fire of the Ineffable's becoming."
I am going through old blog post drafts I have never published. Maybe their ideas I have expressed in other posts (you might recognize the repetition), or I could never get the composition "up to snuff." Some are just left over material. I usually try to cram too much into a post, and give up trying to order the mess. So I am posting their better bits and pieces. Trusting God to order them. In this one I deal with the misreading and misunderstanding of Who Jethro is. I think I did not publish it because I realized that I still had not got to Who Jethro is. So this is halfway into a transition. See "An Explanation of the Burning Bush, Exodus 3:14," Tuesday, March 24, 2020.
______________________________________
In Victor Alexander's translation of Exodus from the ancient Aramaic, there is an asterisk on the name 'Jethro' in verse 3:1. I desperately want to know what Jethro meant in ancient Aramaic, but there is no corresponding definition or discussion in the footnote section. I guess Vic forgot to go back to it. Today, though, I finally understood Jethro and that I have for ages misread the beginning chapters of Exodus, which book is the foundation and beginning of the whole Bible. I thought (from Alexander) that God said in 3:14, "I come -- Ashur -- his coming." In this, "his coming" would be Jethro's (His Excellence's coming). I now realize it might actually be the opposite order: that it was JETHRO (!) who in Moses' mind said, "I come -- Ashur -- His coming," with "His" referring to God's coming.
"Dan," you might say, "that is plum loco. Everybody and his brother knows that it was God who spoke to Moses. It says it right there: 'And God said to Moses.' It weren't Jethro sayin' nuthin to Moses at all. You're crazy and all mixed up, 'n' ya better repent right now."
Hold your horses, chief. I did think to look at the beginning of Exodus again. I wondered if that asterisk on Jethro referred back to Reuel in Exodus 2:18, for they are apparently the same character. 'Reuel,' according to my Cornwall and Smith Exhaustive Dictionary of Bible Names means, 'the friend of God'. Anyway, I opened Alexander's Exodus to the beginning, and accidentally noticed that the first name in the list of the sons of Jacob (Chapter 1) was Reuel.
Huh? What? Wait. What? I ain't no rube; I know the first son of Jacob was Reuben. So I grabbed my volume of Alexander's Genesis to look up Reuben, and it opened DIRECTLY to the footnote for Genesis 29:32, "Lit. Aramaic: 'Reu-Eil,' or 'God-looked-upon.' Reu-Eil was the Aramaic name for Jacob's first son Reuben. (Opening directly to that footnote was weird, but the page is almost exactly in the middle of the book -- page 112 out of 215). Reu-Eil was not "a friend of God." He is the blessed, God-looking-upon God's Excellence, His "Son" His IMAGINATION. He, the Milta, is looked upon because of his mother's OBEDIENCE.
I read Exodus as the first book of the Bible, with Genesis being its prequel. Jacob was MOSES' inner man. Reu-Eil was a quality of MOSES' inner man, God's interest in his OBEDIENCE which was "king-priest of the Medians." Now, all commentators will tell you that Reuel was Jethro, and that the angel of God was actually God. What they miss is that Jacob was Moses' inner man; that Reu-Eil was a quality of Jacob, Moses' attitude; and that Jethro, the excellence of God in Moses, was the "angel"who spoke to Moses. It turns out that THE WHOLE KIT AND CABOODLE OF THEM WERE MOSES.
Dadgumit, folks, Moses here was just trying to tell us how he happened to become a mystic. He found that the kingdom of God, the power of the Ineffable's imagination's action among us, YHWH, was 'God.' The kingdom is the Ineffable. IT. IS. ALL. ONE. It is all Moses there in the Bible, and Moses is YOU!!
My last shot at saying it clearly: God's Excellence, "Jethro," says, "My absolute intent to become is the Beginning Spark who kindles the fire of the Ineffable's becoming."
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
2:07 AM
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