And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening.
On the morrow ... Moses ... We are here presented with a specimen of his daily morning occupations; and among the multifarious duties his divine legation imposed, it must be considered only a small portion of his official employments He appears in this attitude as a type of Christ in his legislative and judicial characters.
People stood ... - governors in the East seat themselves at the most public gate of their palace or the city, and there, amid a crowd of applicants, hear causes, receive petitions, redress grievances, and adjust the claims of contending parties. In Egypt the Hebrews had been governed by the patriarchal rule of their elders. But the divine legation of Moses having invested him with the character and authority of a sovereign, the jurisdiction of the elders had become virtually superseded, and the judgment of Moses was looked up to as supreme; so that an overwhelming accumulation of secular business was thrown upon his hands. Verse 17. Moses' father-in-law ... The thing ... is not good - not good either for Moses himself, for the maintenance of justice, or for the satisfaction and interests of the people. Jethro gave a prudent counsel as to the division of labour, and universal experience in the Church and State has attested the soundness and advantage of the principle.
Verse 21. Thou shalt provide ... able men ... to be rulers. The arrangement was an admirable one, and it was founded upon a division of the people which was adopted not only in civil but in military affairs; so that the same persons who were officers in war were magistrates in peace. In both cases the people were divided into thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens; and the chiefs of these numbers are in this passage, as well as in Numbers 31:14, distinguished by the same term х saareey (H8269); Septuagint, chiliarchous, kai hekatontarchous, kai pentikontareechous, kai dekadarchous].
Care was thus taken by the minute subdivision to which the judicial system was carried, that, in suits and proceedings at law, every man should have what was just and equal, without going far to seek it, without waiting long to obtain it, and without paying an exorbitant price for it. Certainly, with a judiciary constituted in this manner, justice could be administered promptly, while provision was made against the evils of hasty decisions, in the right of appeal to higher courts-in important cases-even to the venerable council of the Seventy, composed of the gravest, the ablest, the most upright, and trustworthy men of the nation' (Deuteronomy 7:8-9) (Wines' 'Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews').
The institution of those civil officers, however, as suggested by Jethro, would suit the state of the people only in their associated capacity as tribes in the wilderness. When they obtained possession of the promised land, and were settled in towns, a different arrangement became necessary (Deuteronomy 16:18). 'This constitution of the tribes, with the subordinate degrees of shiekhs, recommended to Moses by Jethro, is the very same which still exists among those who are possibly his lineal descendants, the gentle race of the Towara (Stanley, 'Sinai and Palestine').
Verse 23. If thou shalt ... Jethro's counsel was given merely in the form of a suggestion-it was not to be adopted without the express sanction and approval of a better and higher Counsellor; and although we are not informed of it, there can be no doubt that Moses, before appointing subordinate magistrates, would ask the mind of God, as it is the duty and privilege of every Christian in like manner to supplicate the divine direction in all his ways.