These two old men have a great deal to share. Moses begins to rehearse to him all of the things that God had done on behalf of the people. Moses told of traveling to Egypt, meeting with the elders, and encountering Pharaoh, who rejected God’s demands. Moses told of the plagues and their significance. And then there was the night of the Passover, as the angel of death came through the land and killed all the firstborn of Egypt. After that, Moses recounted how Israel left in a hurry, and God saw them across the Red Sea and protected them in the desert, including delivering them from the Amalekites in that first great battle. In response, Jethro begins to praise God (vv. 10-11).

Following this battle, Moses erected an altar. The name he gave to it introduces another name for God: Jehovah Nissi, which means “the LORD is my banner.” The Lord is the banner around which we rally, and who gives the victory.

God had provided food for the Israelites. We are told that they were to gather the manna each morning, just enough for each individual. They couldn’t keep it until the next day because it would spoil. On the sixth day they were to gather a double portion because it wouldn’t be provided on the Sabbath, when they were to rest. There is one other interesting thing about this and it does give us an idea on how we’re to interpret the manna. They were to take an omer of it, put it in a jar, and then put it before the ark of the covenant. Now at this point that is an anachronistic reference because they didn’t yet have the ark or the tabernacle. But later, when these had been constructed, they were to take some and lay it up in the holy place of the tabernacle as a remembrance of what the Lord had done (see Deut. 8:2-3). At the end of this passage from Deuteronomy 8 we see that “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”

As Christians read these stories in Exodus, they see parallels to the Christian life. We think of Canaan, the land to which they’re headed, as being a picture of heaven, and the passage through the wilderness representing the pilgrimage of this life. The parallels are not always exact, but certainly they are in this respect: the people were not mature; they had to learn to trust the Lord and see His provision for them. And seeing how God provided for them during those years of wandering is very instructive for us as we go through life as Christians.

In our own day, the requirement of faith seems absurd to those who are unbelievers. You talk about salvation through faith in the work of Jesus Christ, something that a man did two thousand years ago, and people think you’re foolish. But this is what God says. He tells us that salvation is in Him and by Him alone. If we believe in Him we are spared, and the judgment passes over us; and if we don’t, we perish.