Bible Synapse
Was Moses’ father-in-law called Reuel, Jethro or Hobab?
Hard question · Genealogies · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
The daughters of the priest of Midian come home to “Reuel their father”, who invites Moses in and gives him “Zipporah his daughter”.
And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day? And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock. And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread. And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.
“Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian”.
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
Moses asks “Hobab, the son of Raguel the Midianite, Moses’ father in law” to travel with Israel.
And Moses said unto Hobab, the son of Raguel the Midianite, Moses’ father in law, 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: for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel.
Heber the Kenite “was of the children of Hobab the father in law of Moses”.
Now Heber the Kenite, which was of the children of Hobab the father in law of Moses, had severed himself from the Kenites, and pitched his tent unto the plain of Zaanaim, which is by Kedesh.
The objection
In Exodus 2 Moses marries the daughter of Reuel, the priest of Midian. From Exodus 3 on, his father-in-law is called Jethro. Judges 4:11 speaks of “Hobab the father in law of Moses”, and Numbers 10:29 can be read the same way. Critics ask how one man can have three names, or Moses three fathers-in-law.
The answer
Reuel and Jethro are one man. Exodus 2 calls the priest of Midian Reuel, and the next chapter calls Moses’ father-in-law, again “the priest of Midian”, Jethro (3:1; 18:1). Many people in the Bible have two names, as Gideon is also Jerubbaal (“Jerubbaal, who is Gideon”, Judges 7:1). Jethro may even be more a title than a name: the Hebrew Yitro comes from yeter, ‘abundance’ or ‘excellence’. Haley takes it as a title of honour meaning ‘excellency’, much like the Arabic ‘Imam’, and Keil and Delitzsch as either a title or a surname showing his rank in the tribe. Exodus 4:18 uses two forms of it, Yeter and Yitro, in a single verse. Raguel, in the King James Version of Numbers 10:29, is simply another English spelling of the Hebrew Reuel.
Hobab was Reuel’s son: Numbers 10:29 calls him “Hobab, the son of Raguel the Midianite”. That makes him Moses’ brother-in-law. The word translated ‘father in law’ is hothen, from a verb meaning ‘to become related by marriage’. It usually means a wife’s father, but Keil and Delitzsch compare it with the Greek gambros, which can mean either a father-in-law or a brother-in-law, and Haley notes that it means properly ‘a relative by marriage’. In Numbers 10:29 the Hebrew may in any case go with Reuel rather than Hobab, as the BSB translates it. The story fits a younger man: Jethro had already gone home (Exodus 18:27), and Moses asked Hobab, who knew the desert, to stay and guide Israel. Hobab’s descendants, the Kenites, later lived among Israel (Judges 1:16; 4:11).
Other answers Christians give
Reuel as grandfather
The Aramaic paraphrases, the Targums, and others took Reuel to be the grandfather of Zipporah and the head of the household, so that ‘father’ and ‘daughter’ in Exodus 2:18–21 mean ‘grandfather’ and ‘granddaughter’. Then Jethro and Hobab may be two names of one man, Reuel’s son and Moses’ father-in-law in the strict sense. Haley mentions this view as well.
Two sons of Reuel
Some, such as the German scholar Ranke, made Jethro and Hobab both sons of Reuel and brothers-in-law of Moses. Keil and Delitzsch reject this: if Jethro were Reuel’s son, Exodus 3:1 would call him so, as Numbers 10:29 calls Hobab ‘the son of Raguel’.
Still open
Christian scholars differ on whether Hobab was Moses’ brother-in-law or his father-in-law, and on whether Reuel was Zipporah’s father or her grandfather. On each view the three names belong to one family, and the passages can all be true.
From the classic commentators
Hobab was the son of Raguel, and hence the brother-in-law of Moses. He appears to have remained with the Israelites when his father Jethro returned to his own land, and to have settled among them.J. W. Haley, Alleged Discrepancies (1874), p. 355