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Inside Out: Jethro, the Midianites and a Biblical Construction of the Outsider
Adriane Leveen
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 2010 34: 395
DOI: 10.1177/0309089210365966

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 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Vol 34.4 (2010): 395-417
© The Author(s), 2010. Reprints and Permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/0309089210365966
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Inside Out:
Jethro, the Midianites and a Biblical
Construction of the Outsider*

ADRIANE LEVEEN
Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, 3077 University Avenue,
Los Angeles, CA 90007-3796, USA

Abstract
Attitudes toward the outsider exist on a continuum in the Hebrew Bible. He or she may
be attacked, critiqued, brutalized or praised, respected, and at times intentionally
included. The treatment of the Midianites is an interesting case in point because it encom-
passes both ends of that continuum. The Midianite priest Jethro represents an outsider
who is welcomed as a trusted advisor and valued participant. The Midianites as a group
represent a sexual and idolatrous threat and are ruthlessly attacked by the Israelites. In
this article, a close reading examines how such diametrically opposed views of Jethro and
the Midianites are constructed, represented and maintained. Violence does not need to be
the inexorable outcome of difference.

Keywords: Outsider, Midianites, father-in-law, priest, distinctions, boundaries.

* I wish to offer my thanks to Amy Kalmanofsky, Arnie Eisen, Esther Hamori,

Karina Hogan, Vered Shemtov, and Andrea Weiss for their comments on earlier drafts of
this article.

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396 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

The ‘other’ has appeared as an object of desire as well as an object of

repulsion; the ‘other’ has rarely been an object of indifference.1
Cultural identity…is a matter of ‘becoming’…a production which is never
complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside,
representation.2

Fleeing for his life from an Egyptian Pharaoh, Moses nds sanctuary in
the tent of a Midianite priest. A few years later that same priest, Jethro,
by then father-in-law to Moses, nds his Israelite son-in-law camped at
the foot of Mt Sinai just before the people of Israel hear the words of
YHWH. When informed that Jethro is approaching the camp, Moses
hurries to greet him: ‘…and he bowed low and kissed him and each
asked after the peace of the other and they went into the tent’ (Exod.
18.7). The tents of Jethro and of Moses provide the backdrop for an
intimate and enduring connection between the priest of Midian and the
prophet of Israel. Yet such a promising collaboration is brutally disrupted
forty years later in front of yet a different tent, the sacred tent of meeting
(Num. 25.6). Phinehas, grandson of Aaron the priest, unhesitatingly stabs
an Israelite man and the Midianite woman he brought into the camp in
front of the entire community of Israel (Num. 25.8).3
As these vignettes suggest, attitudes toward the outsider exist on a
broad spectrum in the Hebrew Bible. He or she may be attacked,
critiqued, and brutalized or praised, respected, and at times quite pur-
posefully included: ‘And you shall celebrate in everything good that
YHWH your God has given to you and to your house, you and the Levite
and the stranger that is in your midst’ (Deut. 26.11). The treatment of the
Midianites is an interesting case in point because it appears to encompass
both ends of that spectrum. The Midianite priest Jethro represents an

1. Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2004), p. 259.
2. Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity,
Community and Cultural Difference (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), pp. 222-37
(222-23). I wish to thank Jonathan Krasner for drawing my attention to Hall’s work.
3. The negative portrait of the Midianites found in the book of Numbers ‘is over-
determined by the values or ideology of the producers of the document’, according to
F.V. Greifenhagen, Egypt on the Pentateuch’s Ideological Map (JSOTSup, 361; Shef-
eld: Shefeld Academic Press, 2002), p. 6. Greifenhagen reminds us that Midianites
briey appear in Genesis and sell Joseph into slavery (p. 142). Thus a more negative
appraisal of the Midianites precedes Jethro’s appearance and perhaps is associated with
the later condemnation of the Midianites in Numbers.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 397

outsider who is welcomed as a trusted advisor and valued participant in

the communal life of the people at a crucial stage in their formation.4 In
contrast, the Midianites as a group come to represent a sexual and
idolatrous threat and are ruthlessly attacked by the Israelites. Taken
together, the stories of Jethro and that of the Midianites allow one to ask
‘upon what basis is one sort of outsider to be tolerated and another to be
banned…?’5 A close reading of the pertinent texts may begin to answer
that question, at least in the case of the Israelites and the Midianites. I
will examine how the Bible’s diametrically opposed views of Jethro and
the Midianites are constructed, represented, and maintained; what
interests that opposition might serve; the extent to which those views
interact; and the assumptions or possible anxieties of the ancient writers
that fueled such diametrically opposed stories.6
A brief consideration of terminology and methodology is in order. As
outsiders, Jethro and the Midianites constitute one category of ‘other’ in
the Bible. The ‘other’ is both a broader and more imprecise term since it
encompasses not only outsiders but relative insiders—men vs. women,

4. Nahum Sarna emphasizes the remarkable role of Jethro, ‘not least because so
important an Israelite institution as the judiciary is ascribed to the initiative and advice of
a Midianite priest’, Exodus: The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1991), p. 100. The present study uses that observation as a starting
point in developing a fuller portrait of the Midianite priest and his role in the life of
Moses and of the people of Israel.
5. Preface to Jacob Neusner and Ernest Frerichs (eds.), ‘To See Ourselves as Others
See Us’: Christians, Jews, ‘Others’ in Late Antiquity (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985),
p. xiv.
6. A study of the Midianites provides only one example of the many possible
relationships depicted in the Bible between Israelite and outsider. A broader discussion
lies outside the purview of the present study. A recent full-length study on the subject is
offered by Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy (JSOTSup, 320; Shefeld: Shef-
eld Academic Press, 2000). Camp focuses on the importance of gender as a key
component in biblical attitudes toward the other in an analysis of the Strange Woman of
Proverbs. While my focus is not on gender per se, I do extend some of Camp’s methods
to the present reading of Jethro and am a beneciary of many of her insights. Jethro is
clearly another gure at the border, triggering enough anxiety in his crossing that border
with Moses that other biblical writers respond by emphasizing a separate tradition of
enmity between the Israelites and Midianites as recorded in the book of Numbers.
Unfortunately, I was not aware of Camp’s book when I published my work on Numbers,
Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008). Her discussion of the Levites vs. the sons of Aaron complements my analysis of
that internal priestly struggle as the crucial context for the redaction of Numbers.

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398 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

the familiar vs. the strange, and even the sons of Aaron vs. the Levites.
As has been shown in prior studies, the other and the outsider play
crucial roles in the development of a subject’s identity and allow him/her
to formulate a self in opposition to what he/she is not. Values are
claried and particular beliefs or practices conrmed through interactions
with outsiders.7 At other times, the outsider may represent a legitimate
threat. At still other moments, an outsider may become a scapegoat,
providing a convenient explanation for the failings or punishments of the
subject. Whether as ally, threat, or scapegoat, the presence of outsiders
galvanizes and unies a group. In our present case, both an individual
subject (Moses) and a collective subject (the people of Israel) are
depicted at a very early stage of formation. Moses and the people must
determine how to structure their edgling community. Who belongs and
who does not is an urgent question in their endeavor. Strikingly, Jethro
and the Midianites play crucial roles in the process as captured and
developed by means of the extended narratives in which they appear.8
Insider or out, both Israelite and Midianite are creatures of language,
narrated into being by means of rhetoric and literary art. I will illustrate
the extent to which language does the work of fashioning self and
outsider by means of precisely deployed epithets, key words, contrasting
characterizations of important personages, and framing devices. Only
through a close reading may we glimpse the narrative process in which
self, outsider, and the relations between them are constituted and
challenged in the Hebrew Bible.

7. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy, pp. 13, 323, 329. Since self/other is an important
distinction in the development of identity both on an individual and on a national level it
is no coincidence that in the founding stories of Israel as a people we have a patriarch,
Abraham, who is entangled with different kinds of foreign leaders (Pharaoh and
Abimelech) and who is married to an Egyptian woman named none other than Hagar (the
stranger). Moses follows that pattern in his own relationships—both with a Pharaoh and
an ally, Jethro the Midianite, as well as with his own foreign wife, Zipporah. For a
discussion of Abraham and his outsiders, see my ‘Reading the Seams’, JSOT 29 (2005),
pp. 259-87. Joel Kaminsky would label these outsiders as the ‘nonelect’, that is, ‘those
many other peoples, often portrayed positively, in relation to whom Israel works out her
destiny’ (Yet I Loved Jacob [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007], p. 12).
8. I am not making an historical argument in the present study, but a literary one. As
James Kugel put it in The God of Old, I intend to ‘allow a text to tell everything it
knows…’ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 2.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 399

In the Tent of Jethro

Chapter 2 of Exodus introduces us to the land of Midian before we
actually meet the priest himself. It is a land that exists outside of the
sphere of Pharaoh:
And the Pharaoh heard of this thing [that Moses had slain an Egyptian] and
sought to kill Moses and Moses escaped from Pharaoh and settled in the land
of Midian and sat down beside a well. (Exod. 2.15)

Thus the land of Midian offers Moses a possible refuge in contrast to the
land of danger—Egypt. Physical location signals its importance as a
signicant variable in a construction of the outsider.
Moses begins his life in Midian by defending the seven daughters of
an unnamed local priest against shepherds who drive the girls away as
they attempt to water their ock (Exod. 2.17).9 The choice of verb in this
scene is quite precise. The shepherds ‘drive away’ ()HC8JH), a word
choice that precisely hints at recent events in Moses’ past. Just as the
shepherds drive away the daughters, so too has Moses been driven away
from the land of his birth.10 That parallel leads him to realize the extent to
which he has become, or perhaps always was, alienated from Egypt. The
past soon reasserts itself forcibly in the name Moses gives his son—
Gershom. In an echo of the verb ‘drive away’, the name literally means
‘a stranger there’. As we will see, temporality as well as space provides
Moses with perspective and inuences the way in which he comes to see
not only the family of Jethro but himself.
Noticing that his daughters have returned earlier than usual from the
well, Reuel (Jethro) demands an explanation.11 When they recount the

9. See Greifenhagen, Egypt on the Pentateuch’s Ideological Map, pp. 65-67 and 142,
for a briefer but insightful discussion of the texts concerning Jethro.
10. While the result appears the same, the Hebrew verbs are not identical. In Exod.
2.15 Moses ‘escapes’ the Pharaoh, while in 2.17 the shepherds ‘drive away’ the
daughters of Jethro.
11. The narrator calls the Midianite priest Reuel in Exod. 2.18, a name mentioned
only one more time in the Torah—in the book of Numbers. One proposal for the meaning
of Reuel, ‘friend of God’, anticipates his important role in the subsequent narrative. Jethro
could be considered an honoric as suggested by the Akkadian atru (watru), ‘preeminent
or foremost’. Both suggestions are found in Sarna, Exodus, p. 12 n. 18. William Propp
identies the J source as the origin for Reuel and lists seven different explanations for the
name. Propp also provides a useful summary of the names not only of Reuel but also of
Jethro and Hobab. See William H.C. Propp, Exodus 1–18 (AB, 2; New York: Doubleday,
1998), pp. 172-73.

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400 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

events, including their rescue by an Egyptian, Reuel immediately

reproaches them for leaving the Egyptian behind: ‘…And where is he?
Why did you leave this man? Call him and he shall break bread’ (Exod.
2.20). ‘And where is he?’ is uttered in such a succinct and direct fashion
as to imply that the daughters should have brought the stranger back with
them. Their father is incredulous at their failure to express their gratitude
by bringing the outsider, whose name he does not even know, into his
tent. That the Midianites are the rst to speak in this episode, and that
they speak of Moses as an Egyptian, is noteworthy. In the ordering of the
narrative Moses is the rst to be considered an ‘outsider’.12 The text itself
points out that the identication of self and other in biblical narrative is
unstable and based on shifting perspectives.
Does Jethro consider Moses a threat, an ally, or a superior whom he
must placate? Is Jethro acting out of self-interest (identifying Moses as a
prospective partner for one of his daughters)? Or is the Midianite culture
one that prizes hospitality? The laconic text gives us little upon which to
answer those questions. Yet it does seem to suggest that in inviting the
outsider into his tent, Jethro senses no threat. He expresses no fear.
Breaking bread (rather than reaching for a weapon or placating the
stranger with a gift) is a generous act dictated by Moses’ behavior as a
protector of Jethro’s daughters. If so, then Moses’ actions, rather than his
alleged ethnic afliation, are the chief inuence in shaping Jethro’s
attitude toward him.13 That Jethro evaluates Moses based on a concrete
instance rather than a theoretical abstraction nicely conrms a claim
made by Jonathan Z. Smith: ‘Despite its apparent taxonomic exclusivity,

12. On this point see Greifenhagen, Egypt on the Pentateuch’s Ideological Map, p. 66.
13. What might the notion of an ‘ethnic afliation’ mean in the biblical period? As
argued by Claudia Camp, ‘We may not…be able to imagine a pristine “Israel” at any
point in time; Israel emerged from and as a mixture’ (Wise, Strange, and Holy, p. 22).
Elizabeth Bloch Smith suggests that the emergence of ‘Israelite’ as a term did indeed
occur over time and in changing circumstances. She identies two types of afliations,
primordial and circumstantial, as key components in dening an ethnic self. Primordial
afliations are those based on kinship, tribe (captured in genealogical lists), and territory.
Circumstantial afliations are those activated in response to changing situations. See
Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, ‘Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I: Archeology Preserves What is
Remembered and What is Forgotten in Israel’s History’, JBL 122 (2003), pp. 401-25
(403). She concludes that ethnic identity in general in the biblical context is unstable and
characterized by uidity and dynamism. As a consequence, one’s identication of the
other over against the self, along with those traits that would most dene the self vs.
other, must of necessity partake of such instability and ux. We clearly observe such ux
in the early relations of Jethro and Moses.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 401

“otherness” is a transactional matter…’14 In fact, as Jethro and Moses

engage in such transactions the perspective of the observer vs. the
observed shifts from one to the other. At least at the outset it is not at all
clear who is the other, and who is the subject. Of course, Moses is a
striking example of such uidity as he is an Egyptian who is actually an
Israelite about to settle in the tents of a Midianite.
This happens almost immediately. After Jethro’s order to his
daughters to bring the Egyptian stranger into their tent, we learn that
Moses consents to ‘settle with the man’ who gives Moses his daughter
Zipporah as his wife (Exod. 2.21).15 Family ties make Jethro a proximate
‘other’ to Moses. Those ties are poignantly, though subtly, dened. The
preposition ‘with’ (E ) may connote a positive and intimate connection
or partnership, as when Eve has a male child ‘with’ the implied aid of
God in Gen. 4.1.16 Thus, while the early interactions between Moses and
Jethro may register the labels of ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’, those labels
seem of glancing consequence and little tangible import.
This rst description of Moses’ relations with Jethro concludes with
the birth and naming of Moses’ son. As noted above, now that he nds
himself outside of the land of Egypt, Moses gains the perspective to be
able to look back at his life there. As he does, so he recognizes feelings
of alienation and estrangement. In naming his son, Moses acknowledges:
‘I have been a stranger in a foreign land’ (Exod. 2.22). This brief speech
suggests not only that Moses the Egyptian rst appeared as an outsider to
Jethro, but that he has long been an outsider to himself. Self and other
are momentarily fused. The other in Moses’ early life is none other than
Moses himself. Could this sense of an alienated self who existed in the
past but not in the present contribute to Moses’ experience and treatment
of Jethro as a benign gure, allowing Moses not only to dene, but to
reintegrate, his own self? After all, in just a few verses a great deal has
happened to Moses, all of it thanks to Jethro. Safely settled, protected
from a threat to his life, married and now a father, Moses has found
Midian to be a land in which he can ourish. It is a place in which Moses
can be transformed.

14. Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion, p. 275.

15. Not only does Moses consent, but the verb denotes a willingness, even perhaps
delight, in the offer. See Greifenhagen, Egypt on the Pentateuch’s Ideological Map, p. 67
n. 82, on this point.
16. For an insightful reading of the preposition and its interpretative possibilities in
Gen. 4.1, see Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1992), pp. 40-47.

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402 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

Indeed, Moses’ statement suggests that he does not feel like a stranger
here, in Midian, but only there, in Egypt. Thus, location and territory—
Midian vs. Egypt—plays an increasingly important role in reinforcing
and inuencing his perspective on otherness, a perspective that is
situational. That Moses remains in Midian for a long time is conrmed in
the very next verse, Exod. 2.23, which announces that many days later
(the JPS translation captures the passage of time: ‘A long time after
that…’) the Egyptian king who had threatened Moses has died.
Exodus 3 opens with Moses’ tending the ock of Jethro, designated as
‘his father-in-law, the priest of Midian’. But Moses must leave Jethro
behind as he goes on to encounter God at the burning bush, outside the
geographic sphere of the Midianite. As soon as that encounter ends,
however, Jethro is again mentioned since Moses returns to the tents of
Jethro (Jether) in Exod. 4.18 to seek his permission to return to Egypt.
Moses does not divulge his encounter with God or God’s instructions.
Nor does the narrator offer the reader an explanation for Moses’ reti-
cence. Yet in a striking contrast to that omission, a few verses later
Moses will meet and tell Aaron ‘all the words of God’ (4.28). This
narrative detail serves to highlight Moses’ reserve with Jethro. The
narrator appears to be establishing a distinction or boundary between the
kind of inclusive relationship that Moses will develop both with YHWH
and with Aaron (who will later become the high priest of Israel) and the
more distant relationship he maintains with Jethro, the priest of Midian
(though, as we shall see, that distance is not permanent). In spite of his
earlier intimacy with Jethro, a boundary has now been established
between them. The episode at the burning bush and its report illustrates
that religious identity—God versus gods—may create a clear distinction
between Israelite and Midianite. As a result, Moses exits the tent of
Jethro, never to return.
Jethro’s response to Moses’ departure introduces a word that is
associated with Jethro twice more in Exodus 18. He simply tells Moses
to go in ‘peace’. Does the narrator want this word to shape our view of
Jethro since it is mentioned in connection to Jethro three times? Only
later will the religious distinctions that have emerged in the early
chapters of Exodus become violent.
In the meantime, Moses exchanges the safety of Midian for that of a
dangerous land, Egypt, in order to take his people to a yet another land,
this one owing with milk and honey. Moses will lead his people to the
land of his fathers (Exod. 3.16-17), not to the land of his father-in-law.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 403

Notice how pronounced is physical territory as a background canvas for

experiences and shifting afliations in the life of Moses. Egypt is a land
he must escape, Midian a land that shelters him, but only temporarily,
while Israel is a land of the past and of the future but ultimately, of
course, a land that Moses himself will never reach. The major portion of
Moses’ life, as well as God’s repeated revelations to him, occur in none
of those lands, but rather in the wilderness.
God inexplicably attacks Moses as he travels to Egypt. He is only
saved thanks to the quickness of his wife Zipporah. Thus, a Midianite
continues to protect Moses from the dangers that he encounters. Only
after Zipporah rescues Moses can the story of Israel’s liberation from
slavery and oppression unfold. It is striking that the act she performs—
circumcision—is of great ritual signicance since it serves as a sign of
the covenant between God and Abraham.17 It is also striking that the
divine attack, ‘along the way’, occurs outside the arena of safety pro-
vided by the tent of Jethro. Yet through her quick intervention, Zipporah
has transformed a threatening spot in the wilderness into a safe place for
Moses. Note that God’s ‘encounter’ with Moses (Exod. 4.24) is followed,
thanks to Zipporah, by Aaron’s successful ‘encounter’ with Moses the
next day (4.27). The Midianites prove crucial to the very survival of
Moses and his mission.
Let me briey summarize what we have observed thus far. In biblical
narrative the distinctions of self/other or insider/outsider are not neces-
sarily xed, but may be uid and interchangeable categories. Behavior is
a variable that may be a more important criterion for interaction and the
building of trust than ethnic classication. Biblical attitudes toward the
outside are situational rather than automatic, at least in the present
example.
Perhaps surprisingly, considering the rarity of individual introspection
in biblical characters, ‘self’ and ‘other’ also exist as internal states in a
single individual. Moses acknowledges himself to be other than his
previous Egyptian self once he is away from Egypt. He learns to know
who he is through his relationship with Jethro. Physical location and tem-
porality, along with the perspectives they make possible, are important
variables in the process. The distance between Midian and Egypt is
symbolically meaningful, creating both mental space and perspective so

17. For an extended analysis of this enigmatic scene and Zipporah’s role in it, see
Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible, pp. 79-97. See also Camp, Wise, Strange and
Holy, particularly Chapter 6, pp. 227-78.

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404 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

that Moses can reect on events taking place not only elsewhere in
space, but elsewhere in time.18
However, as this period in the life of Moses ends, the reader comes to
see that the intimacy depicted in the text between Jethro and Moses, even
after being strengthened by familial ties, has its limits. Religious
distinctions begin to emerge, most signicantly after Moses encounters
God at the burning bush. The literal land of the fathers vs. the land of the
father-in-law reinforces the gurative boundary being established.

In the Tent of Moses

The reader must wait 14 chapters before encountering Jethro again. In
Exodus 18 the Midianite priest plays a crucial role in the development of
the people of Israel. But before examining his role in detail, the question
of chronology must rst be considered. Based on 18.5, Jethro apparently
meets Moses at the mountain of God. Yet the people of Israel do not
arrive there until the next chapter. The present order of events triggered
an interesting proposal by the medieval Jewish commentator Radak that
happens also to directly address the issue of Israelite and outsider. Radak
proposed that the present story in Exodus 18 is placed where it is in spite
of its contradiction with the arrival at Sinai in ch. 19 because it creates a
purposeful juxtaposition with the chapter that precedes it, Exodus 17, in
which Israel battles the Amalekites.19 Two peoples, Amalekites and
Midianites, encounter the Israelites in the wilderness. Perhaps the people
of Israel must learn the lesson of Abraham who had to distinguish the
threats of the Pharaoh of Egypt from the just protestations of mis-
treatment leveled against him by Abimelech, king of Gerar. Moses also
must learn to distinguish between an Egyptian Pharaoh and a Midianite
priest. So too must the people of Israel learn to make distinctions: not all
outsiders should be viewed the same way. They must distinguish the
making of war against Amalekites from the making of peace with
Midianites. Such a distinction seems a crucial one for the newly formed

18. Spatial distance or closeness can also be quite concrete a variable, referring to
whether the other is located topographically at the center, on the periphery, or entirely
outside of the group. Linguistic closeness or distance is also relevant. See Smith, Relating
Religion, p. 231.
19. For this proposal, as well as other evidence that the episode is out of order
chronologically, see the commentary of Jeffrey H. Tigay on ‘Exodus’, in Adele Berlin
and Marc Brettler (eds.), The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004), p. 143. See also the comments of Sarna, Exodus, p. 97.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 405

children of Israel and their leader. Thus the two chapters create an
‘intentional antithesis between the wicked foreigner Amalek and the
righteous foreigner Jethro’.20
In Exod. 18.1 Jethro is reintroduced as a priest of Midian and father-
in-law of Moses. There are three occasions in the texts concerning Jethro
in which ‘priest of Midian’ introduces the scene (Exod. 2.16; 3.1; 18.1).
Could these three references to Jethro as priest have some signicance?
Each occurs at a particularly important juncture in the life of Moses. In
the rst scene, Moses settles in the tents of Jethro and is protected. In the
second scene, he must leave those tents in order to encounter God at the
burning bush and receive his mission. Now, in Exodus 18, it is Jethro
who will temporarily enter the tent of Moses in order to provide Moses
guidance in his new role as leader. Jethro’s identity as a Midianite priest
is highlighted precisely at the moment in which borders are crossed—at
the time of arrivals and departures—as if to emphasize and reinforce that
it is his status as a gure who comes from elsewhere—that is, the
quintessential outsider—that allows him to contribute to the life of
Moses and even to that of the people of Israel. In the present context, as
an outside priest, Jethro’s favorable evaluation of YHWH has greater
weight. As an outsider he possesses a clarity that allows him to offer
useful advice to Moses, advice that will greatly benet the people of
Israel. In fact, Jethro’s advice gives the Israelite community a structure in
which to implement God’s laws after Mt Sinai. His contribution to the
religious life of Israel is timely, even crucial. It also illustrates the
benets of creative interaction between Israelites and Midianites.
However, at all other times in Exodus 18 the narrator refers to Jethro
not as the ‘priest of Midian’ but as ‘father-in-law’ to Moses. Jethro
seems to exemplify the porousness of boundaries. The use of ‘father-in-
law’ is particularly pronounced in Exodus 18, occurring 13 times, thus
requiring an explanation. That connection, of course, makes him an
insider. Perhaps the biblical writer can accept Jethro’s role as important
advisor to Moses (and by extension assume that the reader will accept it
as well) only after emphasizing Jethro’s familial connection. In fact, we

20. Propp, Exodus 1–18, p. 634, paraphrasing Umberto Cassuto. Propp proposes a
different explanation for the sequencing of Exod. 17 and 18, suggesting that the former
chapter represents the establishment of a military administration and the latter a civil
administration. While this is undoubtedly true, the two chapters also communicate an
important distinction between different outside groups, a distinction that the burgeoning
people of Israel must quickly grasp.

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406 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

will momentarily observe how the narrator relies on both epithets for
Jethro.
Of course, by bringing Zipporah and Moses’ sons on the journey with
him, Jethro reminds Moses of the family connection: ‘And Jethro, father-
in-law of Moses took Zipporah, wife of Moses after she had been sent’
(Exod. 18.2). Only now do we learn that Zipporah had been sent back
to her father. ‘Taking’ and ‘sending’ capture the ways in which the
Israelite and the Midianite must negotiate both their closer and more
distant interactions. In reuniting Moses and Zipporah Jethro acts as a
father and father-in-law, not as a priest. In listing the sons and their
names (including a word-for-word repetition of the phrase ‘I was a
stranger in a foreign land’), the next two verses not only remind us that
Moses is still a father, but recapitulate key events in Moses’ biography,
including his earlier realization of his alienation from himself. Does
Jethro seek to reintegrate Moses’ past in Egypt and his life in the tents of
Jethro with the present moment? If so, what better way to do so than
seeking Moses at the place where he is now camped, the Mountain of
God. Jethro reminds Moses of his familial tie: ‘I, your father-in-law
Jethro…and your wife and her two sons with her’ (Exod. 18.6). Jethro
not only reaches out to Moses, but also asserts a claim, reminding Moses
that he has bonds of kin that obligate him to Jethro.21 Genealogy becomes
a means through which insider status is re-established. Might not family
connections resolve the tensions between insider/outsider?
Yet the present example is equivocal in this regard. Moses appears
welcoming and attentive to his father-in-law but strikingly detached from
his wife and children. Perhaps this reects the conventions of the period
concerning the interactions of a father-in-law and son-in-law. The cru-
cial connections and negotiations are often those that occur between
men. But the passage also serves to remind us of the extent to which
Moses is depicted as a character who stands alone. As pointed out by
William Propp, while Moses is portrayed as ‘superior to sentiment and

21. In his study of the Israelite family Leo G. Perdue reminds us that Israelite
families were patrilocal. A woman would leave the home of her father and join that of her
husband. For elaboration, see Perdue’s ‘The Israelite and Early Jewish Family: Summary
and Conclusions’, in Leo Perdue, Joseph Blenkinsopp, John Collins, Carol Meyers (eds.),
Families in Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), pp.
163-222 (175). Thus, one of Jethro’s motives for seeking Moses could include his desire
to see his daughter properly situated in her husband’s tent. Jethro’s visit does not
accomplish that particular goal.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 407

domesticity…the Torah is almost entirely indifferent to Moses’ role as

procreator… His ofce isolates him not only from his people but even
from his own family.’22 Nonetheless, as the present case signals, Moses’
connection to Jethro survives that isolation and conrms that Moses’
relationship with Jethro continues over time. The earlier intimacy
between father-in-law and son-in-law provides the basis for Jethro’s
contribution to Moses’ development as a leader. Yet that intimacy does
not ensure the continuation of Moses’s intimacy with the rest of his
immediate family. In sum, a familial tie may have some inuence in
negotiating closeness and distance between insider and outsider, though
its extent varies signicantly, even within the same family. Ultimately, as
we will later see, Moses remains a singular gure. Jethro returns to his
own tent and land.
Moving back and forth between taking and sending, coming and
going, Moses goes out to greet his father-in-law and show him proper
respect. He overcomes the distance created between them both in space
and in time by kissing his father-in-law (Exod. 18.7). They speak in
‘peace’ to one another, certainly the idiom of encounter, but also as an
echo of Jethro’s earlier wish that Moses go in peace (Exod. 4.18). Jethro
remains a safe gure to Moses, a gure of peace. The home and land in
which Moses resided with Jethro was a safe haven. As a result, Moses
can and does bring Jethro into his tent.
Now that the events of the Exodus and his role in them are behind
Moses, he drops his earlier reticence with Jethro. He quickly informs his
father-in-law of everything that God did to Pharaoh and the Egyptians on
behalf of Israel. Moses calls God YHWH in his recounting of the events
of the Exodus. He also describes the ‘hardships’ encountered so far on
their journey (Exod. 18.8). That additional phrase hints at the intimate
nature of the relationship between the two men. The conversation is not
just a chronicle of God’s glorious actions, but a chronicle of the reality of
Moses’ life as he took this people out of Egypt. Moses’ disclosure
suggests that he sees Jethro at the very least as a condant and perhaps
even as a mentor.
Jethro’s response to Moses’ description of the journey provides a
possible explanation for the highly positive way in which he will
momentarily be viewed and treated in the camp not just by Moses, or by
Aaron and the elders, but by the writer. It would seem that just as Jethro

22. Propp, Exodus 1–18, p. 635.

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408 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

initially judged the Egyptian Moses favorably because of his actions

without regard to ethnic identity, now the positive Israelite appraisal of
Jethro is due to the actions he is about to take regardless of his being a
Midianite. In fact, an even more nuanced appraisal takes place. Jethro is
appreciated precisely because he is a Midianite who comes to praise
God.
After listening to Moses, Jethro immediately recognizes the essential
point: God has delivered Israel from Egypt. The text states:
And Jethro rejoiced at all the good that YHWH did for Israel when He rescued
them from the hand of Egypt. And Jethro said ‘Blessed is YHWH who rescued
you from the hand of Egypt and from the hand of Pharaoh, who saved the
people from under the hand of Egypt’. (Exod. 18.9-10)

Jethro draws the implication of what he has realized in a clear and highly
public manner: ‘Now I know that YHWH is greater than all the gods…’
(Exod. 18.11). This type of public acknowledgment of God’s superior
might is precisely what God sought in inicting the ten plagues on
Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Yet Pharaoh was disastrously slow in
grasping the power of this Israelite God. In contrast, upon hearing the
news, Jethro immediately recognizes and acknowledges God’s superi-
ority. In spite of the repeated use of ‘father-in-law’, this is, after all, a
Midianite priest who proclaims God’s superiority over the gods. Since
God cares about God’s reputation among the nations of the world, I
would argue that it is Jethro’s status as a Midianite that makes his praise
and acknowledgment of God so noteworthy and signicant.23
Perhaps ironically, as a Midianite, Jethro’s praise of God is also
contrasted to that of the insiders, the Israelites themselves, in a way that
throws a negative light on the Israelite behavior since their departure
from Egypt. Jethro celebrates God’s liberation of Israel from Egypt in
pointed contrast to the Israelite desires to return to Egypt, as noted
already in Exod. 16.3 (‘if only we had died in Egypt’) and Exod. 17.3
(‘Why did you bring us up from Egypt…?’). Jethro sees clearly what
Israel can only glimpse in eeting moments punctuated by hunger, thirst,
and complaint. Thus, as an outsider, a Midianite, Jethro stands in contrast
with that other outsider, the Pharaoh, in acknowledging God. But it is

23. Based on Exod. 3.1 and 18.10-12, Propp (Exodus 1–18, p. 171) suggests that
biblical authors probably considered Jethro to be a Yahweh-worshiper. For the present
purposes, it is the placement and function of Jethro’s public proclamation, coming as it
does before his suggestion for a new organizational structure, that is noteworthy. It paves
the way for his counsel to be accepted by Moses.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 409

also as an outsider that Jethro creates a shocking contrast with the Israel-
ites. The contrast between his praise and their grumbling constitutes a
withering critique of their complaints and preoccupations. This passage
suggests a possible use of the gure of the outsider as one who
heightens, by contrast, the failures of the Israelites.
Not only does Jethro recognize the superior power of the God of
Israel, calling God by name, YHWH, but he also pays homage to God
ritually through sacrice and a shared meal with Aaron and the Elders of
Israel.24 By taking these actions, Jethro becomes more ‘like us’ than ‘not
like us’.25 On the other hand, it is important that he be different enough
from the Israelites for his praise and acknowledgment of God to matter.

The Outsider as Advisor

Having successfully established Jethro’s legitimacy as one who admires
YHWH, the narrator observes him observing Moses. Jethro’s gaze sug-
gests his usefulness as an outsider who can analyze a situation because
he is not part of the community. He has no stake in it and therefore can
be objective. What Jethro sees dismays him. He realizes that Moses does
not know how to govern the tribes effectively. Jethro expostulates with
Moses: ‘What is this thing that you are doing to the people?’ (Exod.
18.14) and ‘This thing is not good that you are doing’ (18.17). The
outsider is challenging the very assumptions under which the camp has
been run until this point.
Jethro launches into an astonishingly long speech when compared
with the usually laconic speeches of biblical narrative. His monologue
lasts seven verses. He proposes a more efcient organization of the
process of adjudication, suggesting that Moses share his responsibilities
with other Israelites. The order of events in Exodus 18 suggests that
Jethro can only make such a speech because he rst established himself
and gained credentials as one who recognized and praised the God of
Israel.

24. Sarna suggests that in fact the ‘ceremonial most likely possessed a juridical
function’ (Exodus, p. 99 n. 12).
25. Smith, Relating Religion, p. 27. Smith proposes a directional or relational struc-
ture in which to consider the other that includes: ‘four specications of the We/They
duality… (1) They are LIKE-US, (2) They are NOT-LIKE-US, (3) They are TOO-
MUCH-LIKE-US…or (4) We are NOT-LIKE-THEM…’ These options are not
necessarily mutually exclusive.

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410 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

In offering his advice, Jethro is careful to make repeated references to

Elohim, doing so at least ve times (Exod. 18.19, 21, 23). He also shows
himself to be a sensitive and shrewd counselor, careful to distinguish
between major and minor matters. He instructs, and perhaps reassures,
Moses that he should continue to listen to major matters while appointing
others to deal with more minor affairs. Jethro also exhibits wisdom in the
criteria he sets out for Moses in picking his assistants. Moses is to
discern among the Israelites men who fear God, men of truth, who hate
ill-gotten gain. At the same time Jethro gives Moses good reasons for
listening to him, having to do with the preservation of Moses’ strength
over the long term. Jethro concludes his counsel in 18.23 with the
assurance that if his instructions are followed, the people will return to
their places in peace. Note that this word ‘peace’ has now been uttered at
least three times in connection to Jethro’s presence in the narrative
(Exod. 4.18; 18.7, 23). In fact, it is the last word uttered by Jethro. As the
last word on Jethro, it afrms his gure in wholly positive terms.
Jethro is a master of effective rhetoric. Note that later in the narrative
it will be Moses who will hold this same reputation as a master of
rhetoric due to his powers of persuasion in convincing God to rescind
various punishments against the Israelites. In the present case, Moses
does exactly as Jethro counsels: ‘And Moses heard the voice of his
father-in-law and did all that he said’ (Exod. 18.24). The next two verses
basically repeat Jethro’s suggestions as Moses immediately implements
them. Quite remarkably, Moses has listened to the ‘voice’ of his father-
in-law—the precise language that anticipates God’s revelation and
Israel’s response in Exodus 19 (in vv. 5 and 19). The placement of
Jethro’s advice to Moses in ch. 18, just prior to God’s revelation in
Exodus 19, suggests that the building of a nation requires both human
and divine wisdom. The necessary human wisdom, so our example
indicates, includes that of a Midianite priest. The placement of these two
chapters offers an obvious and clear-cut valorization of the outsider
Jethro.26

26. See Waldemar Janzen, ‘Jethro in the Structure of the Book of Exodus’, in Jon
Isaak (ed.), The Old Testament in the Life of God’s People (Winona Lake, Indiana:
Eisenbrauns, 2009), pp. 159-72, for an alternative reading of Exod. 18’s placement before
that of Exod. 19. He argues that Jethro’s counsel has little to do with the creation of the
necessary judiciary in preparation for the giving of the law in Exod. 19–24 and points out
that: ‘The measures for administering the covenant law that are later introduced at Sinai
will take a very different form. They will revolve around Aaron and his priesthood…’ (p.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 411

In spite of his importance, Jethro does not have a permanent position

in the camp of Moses. Just as he came from elsewhere and was then led
into the camp by Moses, in the very last verse of the chapter he is sent
away: ‘And Moses sent his father-in-law and he went to his land’ (Exod.
18.27). ‘Send’ strikes an ominous tone, reminding us of how Moses
‘sent’ away his wife Zipporah. Just as Moses discarded his Egyptian
past, he now disengages from this signicant gure from his Midianite
past. In the present and in the future that stretches ahead of him, Moses
must remain the unquestioned leader of the Israelite community, advised
ultimately by God, not by Jethro. To do so, he must re-establish a clear
distance from his father-in-law. Just as we observed a frame around the
story of Moses’ life in Midian, so too here we observe another frame that
contains Jethro’s life in the camp of Israel. These frames function to limit
the contact between Jethro and Moses.27

Israelites and Midianites

The intimate portrait of a Midianite priest and Moses at the very begin-
ning of Israel’s life as a people is not the last we hear of the Midianites.

169). In fact, according to Janzen, Jethro’s counsel is actually disrupted and upset by
God’s theophany in Exod. 19. Instead, Janzen nds the explanation for Jethro’s presence
in Exod. 18 earlier in Exodus, in chs. 2–4. Janzen identies a narrative parallelism
between Moses’ early experience and that of Israel’s that consists of: ‘ight, welcome by
Jethro, settling down in Jethro’s world, unexpected theophany, election and commission,
and setting out under God’s orders toward an unanticipated task’ (p. 169). The future that
Jethro rst offered Moses and now offers the people of Israel is disrupted by that of God.
That disruption results in a ‘change of masters’ (p. 170). I nd this latter idea to be
persuasive since it explains the reticence displayed by Moses with Jethro upon his return
from encountering God at the burning bush, as noted in my argument above. On the other
hand, contra Janzen, Jethro’s counsel in Exod. 18 is also absolutely crucial in preserving
Moses’ strength for the future challenges that he will face as leader during the long
journey through the wilderness, starting immediately in Exod. 19. In fact, Jethro is
correct in warning Moses against marshalling too much authority in his own hands (see
Num. 11–17 for the many political revolts that rocked the Israelite camp and threatened
Moses’ leadership). Janzen’s reading strangely diminishes the importance of Jethro’s role
in the life of the people. Jethro becomes a tool of God’s machinations, a character whose
inuence is upended and ignored, rather than a visionary outsider who clearly sees not
only the needs of Moses and his people, but the accomplishments of YHWH, a clarity
sorely lacking in Israel.
27. Kaminsky (Yet I Loved Jacob, p. 109) argues that ‘non-elect peoples were always
considered fully part of the divine economy, and in a very real sense, Israel was to work
out her destiny in relation to them, even if in separation from them’.

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412 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

While the story we have just examined depicts a close, creative, and
peaceful relationship between individuals, the violent story in the book
of Numbers that we are about to discuss depicts its opposite—open
hostility and warfare—between two peoples.28 The opposing views found
in Exodus and Numbers conrm that within the Torah there is a
‘dialectic of sharing and distancing, of inclusion and estrangement’.29 Of
course, in its violence, the Israelite treatment of the Midianites in
Numbers leads to far more severe consequences than estrangement.
Ideas of what it means to be an Israelite insider and a Midianite out-
sider have obviously changed in a radical way by the time we reach the
book of Numbers. Regardless of the actual dating of the texts in
Numbers, their placement sequentially at a later date in the wilderness
journey turns the broader conict between the Israelites and the Midian-
ites into a de facto response to the close relationship of Jethro and Moses
at the outset of the journey. In other words, the violent exchanges in
Numbers function in the Torah’s nal form as a commentary on the
earlier stories. The Midianites are now presented as seductive and
threatening idolators. Reading the story of Jethro alongside the later
conicts illustrates that the outsider is ‘available as an all-purpose topos;
it little matters what they are “really” like’.30

28. According to Kaminsky, the violent rejection of the Midianites in Numbers

suggests the type of treatment that is usually reserved for the ‘anti-elect’. Israel executes
God’s vengeance against them in Num. 31.3 and practices policies that will later be
implemented against the Canaanites. However, the positive portrayal of Jethro both
complicates the category and challenges the treatment of the Midianites as the ‘anti-
elect’. See Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob, p. 112.
29. Ronald Hendel, ‘Israel Among the Nations’, in David Biale (ed.), Cultures of the
Jews (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), pp. 43-76 (46).
30. Jonathan Boyarin, ‘The Other Within and the Other Without’, in Laurence J.
Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn (eds.), The Other in Jewish Thought and History (New
York: New York University Press, 1994), pp. 424-52 (438). It was not even clear if the
offending party was Moabite or Midianite since a conation between Moabite and
Midianite occurs at this juncture within Numbers (see Num. 25.1 vs. 25.6). Baruch
Levine (Numbers 21–36 [AB, 4A; New York: Doubleday, 2000], p. 445) accounts for the
mention of the Midianites in Numbers by priestly editors who sought to ‘lay a foundation
in the Pentateuchal prehistory of Israel for the actual battles fought between Israelites and
Midianites during the premonarchic period of settlement’. It is, of course, possible that
the priestly editors were also creating a pre-history of Israelite problems with foreign
women to account for the tensions present in the early Second Temple period, a time
frame in which the book of Numbers was most likely edited into its nal form.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 413

At the outset in Numbers 25, Israelite men are interested in Moabite

women: ‘The people began to whore with the daughters of Moab’ (Num.
25.1). In an earlier episode, in Num. 22.7, Moabites are closely paired
with Midianites; and as we shall see, the real target in Numbers 25
appears to be the Midianities rather than the Moabites. Such a blurring of
labels conrms the notion of the outsider not as a particular individual
but as an ‘all-purpose topos’. In the immediate continuation of the story
in Num. 25.2, the daughters of Moab ‘call’ the people of Israel to their
sacrices. The Israelites now eat and bow low to the Moabite gods. The
narrator then announces in v. 3 that Israel has ‘attached itself’ to Baal-
peor. They have ed the God of Israel for the gods of the Moabites/
Midianites, paradoxically reversing Jethro’s celebration and worship of
YHWH and overturning the good will engendered by his acts. Within a
mere three verses the people of Israel appear to have adopted the worship
of Moab. These verses argue that sexual encounters with outsiders will
immediately lead to religious promiscuity and idolatry. Those who
engage in such behavior are targeted for death.
Immediately after this episode, another crisis follows. The new threat
is identied and extinguished by Phinehas, grandson of Aaron. It too
relates to a sexual encounter between an Israelite and an outsider. In
Num. 25.7, spear in hand, Phinehas marks out a clear boundary, provid-
ing a deterrent against such future encounters by graphically slaying an
Israelite man and Midianite woman who dare, together, to be seen in
intimate contact by the children of Israel as they come into their midst:
‘And behold a man from the children of Israel came and brought close to
his brothers a Midianite woman, [in sight of]…the eyes of Moses and the
eyes of all the assembly of the children of Israel and they were crying
at the opening of the tent of assembly’ (Num. 25.6). Note the sacred
space suggested by the tent of assembly. Again, according to the logic of
these two episodes, sex with an outsider threatens religious boundaries.
Phinehas, grandson of Aaron, follows the Israelite man and Midianite
woman and kills them. In stark contrast to Jethro, who was welcomed
into the wilderness camp, the Israelite man and the Midianite woman he
has brought into the camp are now ‘kept out’ through death.
Phinehas’s connection as grandson of Aaron is a crucial dimension of
the story. He is given an eternal covenant of priesthood by God. The
story suggests that the priests of Israel will not tolerate the intermingling
of Israel and Midian even if Moses had a Midianite wife and a wise
priestly father-in-law who freely entered the tents of Israel, and even if
Aaron himself shared a meal with Jethro. In fact we are reminded of

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414 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

Moses’ rst marriage to Zipporah in Exodus by the fact of his second,

mentioned in Numbers 12.31 The story in Numbers 25 offers an unmis-
takable critique of both of Moses’ marriages by establishing a clear
boundary against foreign (Midianite/Cushite) women in the next genera-
tion, turning them into forbidden partners. The later texts in Numbers
violently renounce the close relations not only between Moses and
Zipporah, but, by implication, also between Moses and Jethro, in no
uncertain terms. That Midian was once a safe haven for Moses is now
ignored. The peace of Jethro and Moses is replaced by a covenant of
peace between God and Phinehas (Num. 25.12).
Phinehas certainly has God on his side, as the end of the chapter
testies. God announces: ‘Assail the Midianites and strike a blow against
them’ (Num. 25.17). The word for ‘assail’, CHC4, also means ‘to show
hostility, harass, and treat with enmity’. The same verb is used in the
next verse, 25.18, to describe what the Midianites did to the Israelites.
According to this verse, the Midianites, not the Moabites, induced Israel
to go astray in the affair of Peor. The two verses capture the cycle of
recrimination that seems to take over so often in violent conict. The
same verb, ‘assail’, is also used two other times in Numbers. In Num.
10.9 it refers to an attack by an unnamed aggressor against Israel once
the people are settled in the land. In Num. 33.55 the verb refers to those
inhabitants of the land whom the Israelites fail to dispossess. Remaining
in the land, the inhabitants will ‘harass’ the Israelites. Taken together, the
events in Numbers suggest that outsiders present ongoing sexual,
religious, and military threats.

31. Greifenhagen (Egypt on the Pentateuch’s Ideological Map, p. 12) lists several
markers of an ethnic boundary that include ‘blood, bed, territory and culture…[concern]
over endogamy and mixed marriages…’ Camp highlights the important role of Num. 12
in Wise, Strange and Holy, pp. 241-42, 274. She also examines the role of Phinehas in
extinguishing the threat presented by Moses’ relationships to Jethro and Zipporah and in
resolving the competition between the line of Aaron and the Levites (pp. 215, 225, 267).
Karina Hogan rst drew my attention to Num. 12 as a reintroduction of the issue of
Moses’ marriage partners. Propp (Exodus 1–18, p. 174) reminds us that Zipporah’s
marriage to Moses led to the reunion of ‘two sundered branches of the house of
Abraham: Midian is descended from Keturah (Gen. 25.1-4) and Israel from Sarah’. On
this point, see also Janzen, The Old Testament in the Life of God’s People, p 165. On one
hand, those shared genealogical origins further cement the possibilities for closeness
between Jethro and Moses as portrayed in Exodus. From that perspective, father-in-law
and shared ancestor serve the same function, making Jethro more of an insider. On the
other hand, in the narratives concerning Jethro and Moses, a shared genealogical origin in
the distant biblical past is not mentioned or used in any explicit way.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 415

In fact, Numbers 31 takes up the military threat by depicting an

Israelite battle against the Midianites. God announces to Moses that he
shall ‘avenge’ the children of Israel against the Midianites (omitting the
stated reason of Num. 25).32 In 31.7-8, the Israelites slay every Midianite
male, including ve Midianite kings. Moses announces that this is not
good enough. They must also slay male Midianite children and sexually
active women. I suggest that this excessive brutality, in a text considered
to originate in priestly circles (P), has its source in the pronounced
concern of the Israelite priests with issues of genealogical purity. The
priestly writers could not tolerate the invitation to the mingling of
Israelite and Midianite provided by the example of Moses taking a
Midianite wife, Zipporah and his close connection to her father. There-
fore, in the present passage, the priestly writer pointedly depicts Moses
himself as demanding the massive slaughter.33 This passage seems to
reveal ‘Israelite fears of seduction by the Other, of the horror of
exogamy, and of the cracking of those internal codes and secrets that
keep Israel distinct’.34 The example provides much more than a mere
reversal of past closeness to the other. The violent act just described
would create a considerable amount of enmity between Israelite and
Midianite in the future, preventing any further collaboration. Resorting to
such an extreme measure suggests the extent of the threat. The Midian-
ites, once ‘like us’, are now decisively ‘not like us’.35 The movement

32. Jacob Milgrom (Numbers: The JPS Torah Commentary [Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society of America, 1990], p. 255) suggests that God is referring to the
events of Num. 25 as justication.
33. Propp (Exodus 1–18, p. 176) succinctly summarizes the priestly outrage in
Numbers at the positive assessment of Midianites in non-priestly texts. Note also that the
brutal treatment of the Midianites parallels a growing autocratic and authoritative style of
leadership in Moses.
34. Excerpted from a description of Israelite attitudes toward Philistines by Trude
Dothan and Robert l. Cohn, ‘The Philistine as Other: Biblical Rhetoric and Archaeo-
logical Reality’, in Silberstein and Cohn (eds.), The Other in Jewish Thought and
History, pp. 61-73 (63-64).
35. Presumably a perception that the outsider is ‘like us’ leads to a positive portrayal,
while ‘too much like us’ might lead to ambivalence. ‘We are not like them’ might moti-
vate acts of violent separation and/or be used to justify such acts. As we have seen,
within the biblical materials these contradictory specications and the reactions they
engender may all be aimed at a single group such as the Midianites. Thus the observer
may perceive complex attitudes at one and the same time, as well as hints of the
interconnections between such differing perspectives. In the present case, tracing these
attitudes reveals that there is not a unied biblical view of the Midianites.

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416 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.4 (2010)

from a valorization of Jethro to the murder of Midianite idolators

exemplies the dangerous volatility of the conict that raged between
different biblical attitudes toward the other and the high stakes in how
they were resolved.

Conclusion
From the perspective of the writer(s) who gave us the tale of Jethro and
Moses, the early Israelite community, and Moses himself, could not have
succeeded without the assistance of an outsider. Their story is a ‘narra-
tive of connection…focused not on boundaries…but on the intertwined
patterns of descent that muddy boundaries…and create shared narrative
spaces’.36
Yet we can not ignore the presence of counter-voices that emerge to
denounce and attack such interactions and models of collaboration.
Jethro’s fellow Midianites are treated in violent fashion. Can we take
comfort in the idea that the ‘more sharply they [biblical texts] afrm the
boundary, the more we can be certain that the reality was muddier and
more fragile…the sharpness was there precisely to make sense of the
reality—to afrm an “us” whose existence its members…felt was
threatened’?37 I think not. A biblical portrait that reects a conception of
the outsider as an idolator and sexual seductress leads to horrifyingly
violent consequences.38
What do these different tales of self and other communicate about
biblical understandings of the outsider? From the outset there is
dependency and complexity. Even a gure such as Moses, who towers
over all other biblical characters in the fullness of his characterization,

36. Stephen Cornell, ‘That’s the Story of Our Life: Ethnicity and Narrative, Rupture
and Power’, in Paul R. Spickard and W. Jeffrey Burroughs (eds.), We Are a People:
Narrative and Multiplicity in the Construction of Ethnic Identity (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2000), pp. 41-53 (50).
37. Peter Machinist, ‘Outsiders or Insiders: The Biblical View of Emergent Israel and
its Contexts’, in Silberstein and Cohn (eds.), The Other in Jewish Thought and History,
pp. 35-60 (51).
38. Joel Kaminsky (Yet I Loved Jacob, p. 17) argues against such a reproach,
suggesting it originates in a modern sensibility far removed from the ancient culture that
produced these texts. Nonetheless, I am willing to raise misgivings about the biblical
depiction of violence in Num. 31 in my conclusion in order to acknowledge the
continuing and signicant inuence of such biblical conceptions on contemporary
readers.

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 LEVEEN Inside Out 417

depends on an interaction with a non-Israelite ‘other’ in order to con-

ceive of, and dene, a self. But views of the other can also shift over
time and are clearly not consistent. As Israel continues on its journey, the
people, as depicted by a narrator and later editor, discover that an
individual is far less threatening than outsiders as a group, especially if
they once shared a great deal. According to Numbers, the Midianites as a
group present sexual attractions that seem to lead inexorably to religious
violations. Collaboration and creativity are replaced with destruction.
Why does such an analysis of the biblical outsider matter? The story
of Jethro and Moses offers the reader a biblical tradition that can
generate a creative and constructive view of the outsider. Such a perspec-
tive can and must counter the many negative uses made of the outsider in
other biblical passages, including the way in which fear and suspicion of
the outsider can be manipulated to create an enemy. A problematic
model is not inevitable or intrinsic. Violence does not need to be the
inexorable outcome of difference. After all, the Torah—most likely a
redacted text in the hands of those very priests who are so scrupulous
about boundaries—dramatically preserves both stories of Midianites
encountered in the Wilderness. As noted by Ron Hendel, ‘moral and
philosophical issues are debated in this book, and often they are not
settled. Cultural identities are constructed in one part, only to be
deconstructed in another.’39 By preserving both ends of the continuum,
the nal redactors of the Bible have left behind a positive portrait of
Jethro the Midianite which challenges the rage-inducing stereotyped
version of the Midianites. Jethro exemplies a biblical conception of the
other ‘in which the “other” or the “them” do not represent the contrary of
“us” but rather form, in a more positive sense, the ground of possibility
or the complement…of “us” ’.40 Such a reimagining of the possibilities
can nd no better text from which to begin than the fruitful interactions
of Jethro, priest of Midian, and his son-in-law Moses.

39. Hendel, ‘Israel Among the Nations’, p. 69.

40. Greifenhagen, Egypt on the Pentateuch’s Ideological Map, p. 270.

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