¹⁸ When they returned to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come back so soon today?”^(A)

Moses at the Burning Bush

3 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb,^[a] the mountain of God.^(A)

²⁹ Moses said to Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’s father-in-law, “We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, ‘I will give it to you’; come with us, and we will treat you well, for the Lord has promised good to Israel.”^(A)

Moses Returns to Egypt

¹⁸ Moses went back to his father-in-law Jethro and said to him, “Please let me go back to my own people in Egypt and see whether they are still living.” And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.”

Jethro’s Advice

18 Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’s father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for his people Israel, how the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt.^{(A) 2} After Moses had sent away his wife Zipporah, his father-in-law Jethro took her back,^{(B) 3} along with her two sons. The name of the one was Gershom^[a] (for he had said, “I have been an alien in a foreign land”),^{(C) 4} and the name of the other was Eliezer^[b] (for he had said, “The God of my father was my help and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh”). ⁵ Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, along with Moses’s sons and wife, came into the wilderness where Moses was encamped at the mountain of God.^{(D) 6} He sent word to Moses, “I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you, with your wife and her two sons.” ⁷ So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law; he bowed down and kissed him; each asked after the other’s welfare, and they went into the tent.^{(E) 8} Then Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, all the hardship that had found them on the way, and how the Lord had delivered them.^{(F) 9} Jethro rejoiced for all the good that the Lord had done to Israel, in delivering them from the Egyptians.

¹⁰ Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord, who has delivered you from the Egyptians and from Pharaoh.^{(G) 11} Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because he delivered the people from the Egyptians,^[c] when they dealt arrogantly with them.”^{(H) 12} And Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’s father-in-law in the presence of God.

²⁰ Any who are unclean but do not purify themselves, those persons shall be cut off from the assembly, for they have defiled the sanctuary of the Lord. Since the water for cleansing has not been dashed on them, they are unclean.^(A)