Jethro

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Theodor Grosse: Moses Protecting the Daughters of Jethro (1829, Dresden)

Jethro (Hebrew: יתרו), who is called Reguel or Reuel in other passages (Ex 2:18), was, according to the account from the 2nd Book of Moses, a priest or priest-king from Midian to whom Moses fled after the Egyptian Pharaoh sought his life because Moses, in anger over the oppression of his people, had slain an overseer. Jethro lived near the Holy Mount Horeb, where YHWH later revealed himself as the I Am to Moses from the burning bush. Jethro had seven daughters, the eldest of whom, Zipporah, he gave in marriage to Moses and thus became his father-in-law. Reguel's son Hobab is mentioned as Moses' brother-in-law (Judges 4:11; Num 10:29). The tomb of Jethro is venerated - especially by the Druze - in Hittin, which lies about 8 km north of today's Tiberias in Galilee.

„15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well. 16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them, and watered their flock. 18 When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?” 19 They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20 He said to his daughters, “Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” 21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. 22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”“

Jethro was, as Rudolf Steiner reports, a high initiate who initiated Moses, who himself still had strong clairvoyant powers, but which were still rooted entirely in the sentient soul, which was just maturing in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, into the secrets of the mind soul and thereby enabled him to hear the voice of the I Am through inspiration from the imaginative image of the burning bush. The aforementioned biblical passage describes this initiatory journey of Moses in brief words. The well where Moses meets the seven daughters of Jethro is an image of the etheric forces that spring forth alive. The seven virgins symbolise the seven soul forces, as they are still represented in the Middle Ages by the seven virgins, who are associated with the seven liberal arts. By marrying Zipporah, Moses unites himself with the oldest and most mature of these soul forces, which unites all the others into a unified I-soul.

„I myself once pointed out that in the seven daughters of the Midianite priest Jethro, whom Moses meets at the well of his father-in-law, but also in the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages, we are essentially dealing with the same thing.“ (Lit.:GA 286, p. 28)

„What we read in the Bible about the fate of Moses and about all the pain he experiences because of the bondage of his people in Egypt can be seen as a description of external circumstances. But then the description - one must say unnoticed - changes into a description of Moses' inner soul experiences. This happens when Moses takes flight and is led to a priest, the Midianite priest Jethro or Reguel. Anyone who can recognise such a depiction from the custom of ancient spiritual depictions will find, right down to the names, that here the description turns into a description of Moses' soul experiences. This is not meant as if Moses had not really set out on such a journey to a temple site, a priestly place of learning, but the depiction is artfully given in such a way that the external is interwoven with the experiences that Moses' soul is going through. So the outer experiences that are given to us in this passage are everywhere hints of what Moses is struggling to achieve in order to reach a higher position of the soul. What is hinted at in Jethro? It is easy to see from the Bible that it is one of the individualities to whom we are led again and again when we go through the development of humanity, who have to a high degree attained a comprehensive knowledge, a knowledge that can only be gained if one slowly and gradually and through inner struggles of the soul settles into that which can only give understanding to those spiritual heights on which such people walk. Moses was to be inspired to his mission by the fact that he became, so to speak, the disciple of such a mysterious figure, who withdrew with their senses for the rest of humanity and are only the teachers of the leaders of humanity. I am well aware that something is being said here which is offensive to many people today. But it is something that should strike every profound observer of the historical development of humanity that there are such mysteries and mysterious personalities.

What Moses was to experience as a disciple of this great priestly sage is depicted to us in such a way that he first meets the seven daughters of the priestly sage at a well - again a symbol, a symbol for the source of wisdom - at the place where he visits the priest. If you want to understand what lies deeper in such a description, you must remember above all that in all mythical representations, at all times, what the soul can develop in terms of higher knowledge and soul powers is represented by the symbol of female figures - right down to Goethe in his words at the end of "Faust" about the "eternal feminine". Thus we recognise in the "seven daughters" of the priest Jethro the seven human soul forces which the wisdom of the priestly wise man had at his disposal. It must be borne in mind that in those ancient times, which were still animated by the consciousness of the old clairvoyance, other views prevailed as to what the human soul is with its individual powers. We can only form an idea about this consciousness if we start from concepts which we ourselves have today. Today we speak of the human soul and its powers, of thinking, feeling and willing, in such a way - and it is right to speak in this way from the standpoint of intellectualist consciousness - that we have its powers within us, that they form, as it were, inclusions of the soul. The old man thought differently under the influence of the clairvoyant gift. First of all, he did not feel in his soul such a unified being and in his thinking, feeling and willing such forces that work from the centre of the I and organise the soul in a unified way. Instead, the old man felt as if he were devoted to the macrocosm and the individual forces, and he felt the individual soul forces as if they were connected with special divine-spiritual entities. Just as we can imagine - but do not - that our thinking is fertilised, that it is carried by another spiritual world-power than our feeling and our willing, so that different currents, different spiritual powers from the macrocosm pour into our thinking, feeling and willing, and that we stand in relationship with these - so the old man did not feel the soul as a unity, but man said to himself: What is in me is only the mental scene, and there are spiritual-divine forces from the universe that live themselves out on this scene.

There were seven such soul-forces that were given to Moses, which had an effect on the scene of the soul's life. If we want to see how, in general, for the development of human consciousness, the whole conceptions became more abstract and more abstract, more intellectual and more intellectual, we can look, for example, to Plato, whose ideas are living beings that lead an existence as only substances do for man today. And the individual soul-power has something which has an effect on the scene of the whole soul. But more and more the faculties of the soul become abstract concepts, and the unity of the I comes more and more into its own. Strange as it may sound, we can still recognise in an abstract form what the seven daughters of the Midianite priestly sages are supposed to symbolise for us, as the seven living spiritual forces which are supposed to work on the scene of the soul, in the medieval seven liberal arts; how the seven liberal arts live themselves out of the human soul is the last abstract echo of the consciousness that seven faculties live themselves out in the soul, that these seven faculties have the soul as their scene.

If we take this into account, we are led to the fact that Moses stood with his soul before the total aspect of the seven human soul forces, but that he had the preferential task of inculcating one of them completely as an impulse of human development. He was able to do this because it was given to the special blood system and temperament of his people to take a special interest in this soul force, which in its effects reaches down to us. This was the soul force which unites the other soul forces, previously thought to be separate, into a unified inner soul life, into an I-life. That is why the story is told: One of the daughters of Jethro married Moses. That is to say, one of the soul forces in particular became effective in his soul, became so effective that under his impulse it became the leading soul force for a long time in the development of humanity, uniting the others into a unified I-soul.“ (Lit.:GA 60, p. 421ff)

At this initiation by Jethro, Moses, who in a previous incarnation had been together with Hermes a disciple of Zarathustra and carried his etheric body within himself, was also initiated into the secrets of the other peoples.

„We know that Moses not only had the etheric body of Zarathustra within him, through which he also carries within himself the wisdom of Zarathustra, which can then come to light in him, but we know that Moses is also initiated in a certain way into the secrets of the other peoples. We see a special initiation scene in the encounter with the Midianite priest Jethro. We have also discussed it. It is found in the Old Testament (Exodus 2:16-21). It clearly indicates how Moses comes to this lonely priest and learns not only the initiatory secrets of Judaism, but also of the other peoples, and how he brings them into his being, which has also been strengthened by the etheric body of Zarathustra. Thus through Moses the initiatory secrets of the whole surrounding world entered into the Jewish people, so that he prepared, as it were, on a subordinate level, what was to happen through the Christ Jesus. This was the one current which was to lead to the Mystery of Golgotha.“ (Lit.:GA 139, p. 153)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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