To understand this account, the Reader should consult Numbers 10:29. It is probable that Jethro and Hobab mean one and the same person. If not, perhaps Hobab was the son of Jethro whom his father left with Moses, when he himself; as this verse relates, returned to his home. And that Hobab, as the passage in the book of Numbers records, meant to do the same. But this is uncertain; for the word father-in-law will equally suit brother-in-law. But spiritually considered, all will go back who are not called by divine grace. Reader! may your language and mine be like the apostle's: John 6:68-69
REFLECTIONS
While so much is said in this Chapter of the Lord's watching over his people, may neither the writer nor the reader of this Commentary, want grace to watch over the Lord's dealings towards us. Doubtless there is enough in every man's life, who with an eye of faith is enabled to trace the wonderful history, to look back and see the path we have come thickly strewed with mercies: in which God hath not left himself without witness of his faithfulness and truth.
In all our enjoyments of friendly intercourse with one another, like those of Moses with his father-in-law, let us be very careful to see to it, that it be a friendship formed in Jesus; cemented by his blood, and kept up by his grace. Then we shall find it indeed to be a sanctified friendship, there will be no going back from one another, or at least, if absent in body we shall be present in spirit. And being knit together in the sweet fellowship of the saints, it will outlive all the short and dying connections of this world, and form an everlasting union which cannot be broken in the realms of endless life.
Reader! may you and I learn from the conversation between Moses and his father-in-law, how sweet and edifying that converse is, which hath the Lord and his mercies for the chief topic of discourse! And surely, if the heart of a Midianite could find subject of holy joy in the relation of God's goodness to Israel, well may we find cause to bless a God in Christ for what he hath done for our souls.