1. When the Israelites were about to leave Sinai, Moses invited Hobab, the son of Reuel, the Midianite, to become their guide: “As thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou shalt be to us instead of eyes. And it shall be, if thou go with us, yea, it shall be, that what good soever the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee.” In this way the permanent alliance between Israel and the Kenites was made.
2. The Kenites, an Arab tribe belonging to the region of Midian, and sometimes called Midianites, sometimes Amalekites, were already in close and friendly relation with Israel. Moses, when he went first to Midian, had married a daughter of their chief, Jethro; and, as we learn from Exo_18:1-27, this patriarch, with his daughter Zipporah, and the two sons she had borne to Moses, came to the camp of Israel at the mount of God. The meeting was an occasion of great rejoicing; and Jethro, as priest of his tribe, having congratulated the Hebrews on the deliverance Jehovah had wrought for them, “took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God,” and was joined by Moses, Aaron, and all the elders of Israel in the sacrificial feast. A union was thus established between Kenites and Israelites of the most solemn and binding kind. The peoples were sworn to continual friendship. While Jethro remained in the camp his counsel was given in regard to the manner of administering justice. In accordance with it, rulers of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens were chosen, “able men, such as feared God, men of truth, hating covetousness”; and to them matters of minor importance were referred for judgment, only the hard causes being brought before Moses. The sagacity of one long experienced in the details of government came in to supplement the intellectual power and the inspiration of the Hebrew leader. It does not appear that any attempt was made to attach Jethro and the whole of his tribe to the fortunes of Israel. The small company of the Kenites could travel far more swiftly than a great host, and, if they desired, could easily overtake the march. Moses, we are told, let his father-in-law depart, and he went to his own place. But now that the long stay of the Israelites at Sinai is over, and they are about to advance to Canaan, the visit of a portion of the Kenite tribe is made the occasion of an appeal to their leader to cast in his lot with the people of God.
3. There is some confusion in regard to the relationship of Hobab. The word translated “father in law” (Num_10:29) means a relative by marriage. Whatever was the tie between Hobab and Moses, it was at all events so close, and the Kenite had so much sympathy with Israel, that it was natural to make the appeal to him: “Come thou with us, and we will do thee good.” Himself assured of the result of the enterprise, anticipating with enthusiasm the high destiny of the tribes of Israel, Moses endeavours to persuade these children of the desert to take the way to Canaan.
In (Exo_3:1; Exo_4:18; Exo_18:1-2) the father-in-law of Moses is uniformly named Jethro. But Num_10:29 (J) speaks of “Hobab, the son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses' father in law” (hōthēn). It is uncertain how this should be punctuated, and whether Hobab or Reuel was Moses' father-in-law. The former view is found in Jdg_4:11 (cf. Jdg_1:16), the latter in Exo_2:18. The R.V. in Jdg_1:16; Jdg_4:11 attempts to harmonize the two by rendering hōthēn “brother-in-law.” But this harmonization is doubtful, for (1) though it is true that in Aramaic and Arabic the cognate word can be used rather loosely to describe a wife's relations, there is no evidence that it is ever so used in Hebrew; and it would be strange to find the father and the brother of the same man's wife described by the same term; (2) Exo_2:16 appears to imply that the priest of Midian had no sons. It is probable that the name Reuel was added in Exo_5:18 by one who misunderstood Num_10:29. The suggestion that “Hobab the son of” has accidentally dropped out before Reuel is very improbable. Thus Jethro (E) and Hobab (J) are the names of Moses' father-in-law, and Reuel is Hobab's father. A Mohammedan tradition identifies Sho'aib (perhaps a corruption of Hobab), a prophet sent to the Midianites, with Moses' father-in-law.1 [Note: A. H. McNeile, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (Single-volume), 355.]
4. The narrative of the incident is only fragmentary, for the account of Hobab's arrival at Sinai is omitted, and also the answer which he made to Moses' entreaty. It may be gathered, however, from Jdg_1:16; Jdg_4:11, that he yielded and went with them. For there we find traces of the presence of Hobab's descendants as incorporated among the people of Israel. One of them came to be somebody-the Jael who struck the tent-peg through the temples of the sleeping Sisera, for she is called “the wife of Heber the Kenite.” Probably, then, in some sense Hobab must have become a worshipper of Jehovah, and have cast in his lot with his son-in-law and his people.
5. Maclaren finds three things taught by this “long-forgotten and unimportant life.”
(1) It was a venture of faith. Hobab had nothing in the world to trust to except Moses' word and Moses' report of God's word. “We will do you good: God has said that He will do good to us, and you shall have your share in it.” It was a grave thing, and, in many circumstances, would have been a supremely foolish thing, credulous to the verge of insanity, to risk all upon the mere promise of one in Moses' position, who had so little in his own power with which to fulfil the promise, and who referred him to an unseen Divinity, somewhere or other, and so drew bills upon heaven and futurity, and did not feel himself at all bound to pay them when they fell due, unless God should give him the cash to do it with. But Hobab took the plunge, he ventured all upon these two promises-Moses' word, and God's word that underlay it.
Be content good Neighbours, and go along with me.
What! said Obstinate, and leave our Friends and our comforts behind us!
Yes, said Christian (for that was his name), because, that all, which you shall forsake, is not worthy to be compared with a little of that that I am seeking to enjoy; and if you will go along with me, and hold it, you shall fare as I my self; for there where I go, is enough and to spare; come away, and prove my words.
Obs. What are the things you seek, since you leave all the world to find them?
Chr. I seek an “inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away”; and it is laid up in Heaven, and safe there, to be bestowed, at the time appointed, on them that diligently seek it.1 [Note: Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress (Cambridge edition, 145).]
(2) Because he was stirred by the impulse of reliance on Moses and his promise, and perhaps by some germ of reliance on Moses' God, Hobab finally said, “The die is cast. I choose my side. I will break with the past. I turn my back on kindred and home. Here I draw a broad line across the page, and begin over again in an altogether new kind of life. I identify myself with these wanderers; sharing their fortunes, hoping to share their prosperity, and taking their God for my God.” He had perhaps not been a nomad before, for there are still permanent settlements as well as nomad encampments in Arabia, as there were in those days, and he and his relatives, from the few facts that we know of them, seem to have had a fixed home, with a very narrow zone of wandering round it. So Hobab makes up his mind to begin a new career.
“I remember well,” says Mrs. Booth, “when the General decided finally to give up the evangelistic life and to devote himself to the salvation of the East-Enders. He had come home from the meeting one night, tired out as usual. It was between eleven and twelve o'clock. Flinging himself into an easy-chair, he said to me, ‘Oh! Kate, as I passed by the doors of the flaming gin-palaces to-night, I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears, Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for your labours? And I felt as though I ought at every cost to stop and preach to these East End multitudes.'
“I remember the emotion that this produced in my soul. I sat gazing into the fire, and the devil whispered to me, ‘This means another new departure-another start in life.'
“The question of our support constituted a serious difficulty. Hitherto we had been able to meet our expenses by the collections which we had made from our more respectable audiences. But it was impossible to suppose that we could do so among the poverty-stricken East-Enders. We had not then the measure of light upon this subject which subsequent events afforded, and we were afraid even to ask for a collection in such a locality.
“Nevertheless, I did not answer discouragingly. After a momentary pause for thought and prayer, I replied, ‘Well, if you feel you ought to stay, stay. We have trusted the Lord once for our support, and we can trust Him again!' There was not in our minds, at the time we came to this decision, the remotest idea of the marvellous work which has since sprung into existence.”1 [Note: Life of Catherine Booth, i. 400.]
(3) “Come with us,” says Moses; “we are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you: come thou with us, and we will do thee good.… What goodness the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee.” He went; and neither he nor Moses ever saw the land, or at least ever set their feet on it. Moses saw it from Pisgah, but probably Hobab did not get even so much as that. So he had all his tramping through the wilderness, and all his work for nothing, had he? Had he not better have gone back to Midian, and made use of the present reality, than followed a will-o'-the-wisp that led him into a bog, if he got none of the good that he set out expecting to get? Did he make a mistake, then? Would he have been a wiser man if he had stuck to his first refusal? Surely not. The very fact of this great promise being given to this old-dare I call Hobab a “saint”?-to this old saint, and never being fulfilled at all in this world, compels us to believe that there was some gleam of hope, and of certainty, of a future life, even in these earliest days of dim and partial Rev_1:1-20 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
Life is a very complicated engagement, and among the many motives to noble deeds, that of reward plays no mean part. Since good conduct, and still more good character, is so very difficult to achieve, we cannot afford to discard any of its incentives; and it were wiser to take our stand on the simple human ground of Shakespeare's Cymbeline:
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Yet those who are least inclined to agree with Stevenson in his view of reward may still appreciate and admire the spirit of which it is the outcome. It can do none of us any harm to have our attention recalled at times from the future to the present, and to be told emphatically that energetic living is good enough in itself without a bribe. As for immortality, while there are passages in which his objection to serving for hire leads him to discount it, there are many other passages in which it is presupposed and accepted as that to which life leads on its travellers. His general attitude to the whole question is summed up in one memorable sentence of his Memories and Portraits, “To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life.”2 [Note: John Kelman, The Faith of Robert Louis Stevenson, 163.]
Lord of the howling wastes of life,
Where evils watch for prey,
And many a sacred gleam of good
In shadow dies away,
Borne on by Thee in paths unknown,
Well may we trust Thy hand alone,
And suffer angels of Thy own
To shield us as they may.
Revealer of a heaven encamped
Where'er Thy servants go,
By ministries of love to each,
That none beside may know,-
By wings at many a pass outspread,
By winning joy and warning dread,
We learn the word which Thou hast said,
The truth which Thou wilt show.1 [Note: A. L. Waring.]
