Yitro: From Prophetic Inspiration to Legal Empowerment

Re-examining The Biblical Origins of Managerial Bureaucracy

But when Moses’ father-in-law saw how much he had to do for the people, he said, “What is this thing that you are doing to the people? Why do you act alone, while all the people stand about you from morning until evening?” Moses replied to his father-in-law, “It is because the people come to me to inquire (lidrosh) of God. כִּֽי־יָבֹ֥א אֵלַ֛י הָעָ֖ם לִדְרֹ֥שׁ אֱלֹהִֽים׃ (Exodus 18:14-15)

But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, “If so, why do I exist?” She went to inquire (lidrosh) of the Lord. (Genesis 25:22)

I set my mind to enquire (lidrosh) and to probe with wisdom all that happens under the sun.—An unhappy business, that, which God gave men to be concerned with! (Ecclesiastes 1:13)

To enquire of God…to seek instruction from the mouth of the Almighty. - Rashi

I responded to those who did not ask (nidrashti l’lo sha’alu),
I was at hand to those who did not seek Me;
I said, “Here I am, here I am,”
To a nation that did not invoke My name. (Isaiah 65:1)

Parashat Yitro provides us with one of the oldest examples of bureaucratic governance. Overwhelmed by work from morning until night, Moses is forced to create a layered system of arbiters to protect his time and energy. Moses is so burdened by everyday demands that he can’t even think like a strategist—the counsel to work smart, and not just hard, has to come from without. We take it as a given that Moses had more demands for his time than time he could supply. And so we take it as a given that the solution to Moses’s pain is to scale himself. By creating a system that represents Moses without him actually having to be present—by creating a kind of digital form of Moses, if you will, not unlike telecommunications, or writing—Moses exceeds his corporal limits. He transcends the brutal fact that there is only one Moses in body. Moses himself, after all, is but a cipher of God, or so it would seem. So what is the big deal once we are talking about a copy of God vs. a copy of a copy? Is not the prophet to God what the trustworthy chieftains are to Moses?

I do not believe Yito’s counsel is merely about the need for scaled governance, as though our problem were simply formal, merely organizational. To understand why we need to appreciate that the word lidrosh (to enquire) is relatively rare in the Torah, appearing only twice in the Five Books of Moses. The people come all day long to enquire of Moses. This is an unusual thing to be doing. In other words, it’s not just that they enquire all day, but that they enquire all day. The first time and only other time in Chumash that we find this verb in this form is when Rebecca asks God why she is in agony during childbirth. She, in turn, receives a kind of oracular response from God. The nature of the enquiry Moses is fielding is analogous to Rebecca’s enquiry of God. It’s not that he’s simply being asked to adjudicate, but that he’s being charged with anguish and asked to provide a kind of divine response to it. If Moses could avoid the burn-out that comes from facing endless pain and hardship, he could not avoid the burn-out that comes from having to be wise and gracious and inspired all day long. If he were just an algorithm, if the cases simply needed a right answer, he could do it. It might take him awhile, but it’s the nature of the enquiry itself that is the tax on Moses, not the number of cases.

You don’t enquire about an easy issue. You don't enquire about something whose answer is a matter of simply applying the principle. Enquiry means seeking a Godly point of view. When Moses sets up courts, he doesn’t set up a system by which enquiries will be resolved, but one in which they will be redirected, broken down into something more practical. Instead of asking “If so, why is this me,” supplicants will seek decisions and rulings—they will settle for the practical wisdom of the law, not the metaphysical wisdom of heaven. To successfully scale, Moses needs more than good chieftains, he needs a change in mindset. He needs both leaders and supplicants to change their expectations—the purpose of the law is not to express truth as such, but to be workable, prudent, fit. We can’t know why we suffer. We can’t know why we are cruel. We can’t know what the true account is in a story that has multiple, credible sides. But that’s ok. Because the system advised by Yitro is one whose responsibility is mishpat, discernment and procedure, not prophecy. There is still only one prophet, still only one divine mouth, so to speak. But to say it in an extreme way, the law is not the forum for asking about what God wills. And remember, the story of Yitro’s organizational jiu-jitsu directly precedes the giving of the Torah at Sinai.

Moses has created a kind of system of “Oral law” before the Written Law has been given. The Oral Law is the law as human beings interpret it, not the law in its ideal form (of which the Written Law is a symbol). For the Torah that perfectly reflects the divine will needs a divine mind reader and a long line of people to wait their turn to “enquire” of him. But a Torah that acknowledges its own humanity can be interpreted and applied by a variety of human beings, and not just the prophet. The message of Rashi now, in context, seems bold: The seeking of instruction directly from the mouth of God clogs the social and legal system. Oral Torah exists, SO to speak, because God, like Moses, does not want to be burdened by a constant barrage of requests, pings, DMs, notifications. It will never take “just a minute.”

Probing enquiry into the nature of things can be a downer, as in Ecclesiastes. King Solomon despairs that too much contemplation, too much gazing into the abyss, leads to unhappiness. Yet it is this very probing that people are asking Moses to do all day. With this intertext in mind, we can appreciate Jethro’s counsel: Don’t try to explain the way of things, just find a way to enable decent outcomes.

Ironically, the God of Isaiah tells us that when we don’t enquire, God responds anyways. Although the tone is somewhat rebuking—“I am reliable, even when you are not aware of it”—another (Midrashic) way to read the verse is that God’s truth is visited not upon those who seek it directly, throwing practicality to the winds, but upon those who know to live without it. Don’t call God (for answers to life’s vexing questions), God will call you. When you have given up on truth, truth has not given upon you. Of course, Isaiah isn’t saying “Don’t call,” but rather “Even though you don’t call…” There’s a difference.

The anti-metaphysical reading of the law is strikingly placed on the cusp of the loftiest discussions of Revelation to caution against fetishizing the law. Law is necessary, but the orientation needed to achieve a well-ordered, high-functioning society is different than the orientation needed to understand the depths of the universe or to petition God face to face. Jewish history—a dialectical swing between the energies of jurisprudence on the one hand and mystical boundary-crossing on the other—testifies to this fact. Sinai is needed to mediate the fact that we all want and need to “seek instruction from the mouth of the Almighty” and the social reality that this would end in long lines around the block.

In what amounts to a modern sensibility, Yitro teaches us that the ability to empower others rather than the ability to solve their problems for them is the greatest gift. In Heideggerian terms, Moses must not take away the care of others, but give their care back to them, elevate their care, enable them to see it and face it themselves. The prophet cannot just be a contributor (the one who speaks the divine word), but must become an executive (the one who enables others to manage those in search of it). The skillset needed to be good at prophecy is not the same as the one needed to be good at social empowerment. And thus before we can even receive the Revelation of Sinai, the great and already inspired prophet must grow.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh