על שינוי השמות י״זOn the Change of Names 17
א׳
1[103] Again, the chief prophet’s father-in-law is sometimes called in the oracles Jethro and sometimes Raguel. He is Jethro when vanity is flourishing, for Jethro is by interpretation “superfluous,” and vanity is to the verities of life a superfluity deriding as it does equalities and the mere necessaries of life and glorifying surplusage and inequality.
ב׳
2[104] Jethro values the human above the divine, custom above laws, profane above sacred, mortal above immortal, and in general seeming above being. And he ventures to come self-bidden and take the position of an adviser and suggests to the sage that he should not teach the only thing worth learning, the ordinances of God and the law, but the contracts which men make with each other, which as a rule produce dealings where the partners have no real partnership. And the great ones of the earth accept all he says, and think that it is right to give great justice to the great and little justice to the little.
ג׳
3[105] Yet often this wiseacre changes round and leaves the flock which had him in his blindness for their leader: he seeks the herd of God and becomes therein a member without reproach, so much does he admire the nature of its herdsman and reverence the skill in governing which he shews in the charge of his flock. For the meaning of Raguel (Ex. 2:18) is “the shepherding of God.”