A Cacophony of Names
A Cacophony of Names: Moses’ Father-in-Law, Who Was This Man? Have you ever started reading a passage of Scripture and suddenly stopped because you thought, “Wait a minute... who are we talking about now?” Moses’ father-in-law is one of those moments. He appears in Scripture with several names, and if we are not careful, we can feel like we are trying to keep track of characters in a very large family reunion where everyone has more than one name tag. Was he Reuel ? Was he Jethro ? Was he Hobab ? Was someone in the family changing names every time Moses picked up a scroll? Probably not. The confusion comes more from our modern way of thinking about names than from the ancient Hebrew world. So, let’s grab our coffee and sit down with the Scriptures and sort through this “cacophony of names.” The First Name We Meet: Reuel When Moses fled from Egypt after killing the Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave, he arrived in the land of Midian. There he helped the daughters of a Midianit...