[September 30, 2024] Recall from the Old Testament the story of Moses as he wanders in the desert with his Israelites, who are recently freed from slavery. The desert is not such a good place to be, and we read that the Israelites were squabbling, and they went to Moses to adjudicate on their behalf. At this point, they don’t have the capacity to self-govern.
Since the Israelites had been only recently freed from slavery, they had not yet developed the organizational ability or social fortitude to govern among themselves. By going to Moses and setting him up to handle all their unresolved disputes and problems, they are making him pharaoh-like, all-powerful.
Moses’ father-in-law arrives on the scene, Jethro, and he is a good man and tells Moses that he has to stop judging all these disputes among his people. The advice is good because by continuing, Moses will wear himself out and become a new pharaoh and have all the problems of the previous Egyptian Pharaoh.
By adjudicating the Israelite’s disputes, Moses is depriving them of the necessity of adulthood, thus infantilizing them and treating them as slaves. What Jethro tells Moses to do is to divide up his people into groups of ten, elect a leader, and create a hierarchy of these groups with elected leaders from among those lower leaders.
Then, at the lowest level, they begin to sit in judgment of their disputes. Those that cannot be resolved at the lower levels will work their way up the leader hierarchy, and only then would Moses sit in judgment.
This hierarchy is built upon responsibilities and identities. What is so amazing about this, and indeed it is a miracle of thought, is this becomes the alternative to the slave and the tyrant dyad that existed for so long in the world. For those unfamiliar with the Bible, this comes about in the earliest parts of it, written long before there were judicial organizations in any society before the most recent times.
The fact that this is established as a means to avoid the slave-tyrant suppressive dyad is beyond belief. And it was there for two thousand years and only recently, in the history of humans, have we thought about creating such an organization.
Today, we take this for granted, but at the time, organizing these structures of judgment was radical and obviously unheard of. And it works.
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NOTE: Much of this article is taken from an interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson, titled “Moses, Here We Go Again” link here: (435) MOSES, Here We Go Again – Jordan Peterson – YouTube
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Gen. Satterfield, excellent article. I missed it when it came out so I’m commenting today. I would suggest, if I may, that you start a series on interpretations of the Bible. There wisdom contained in the Bible is immense and sometimes those stories that carry the message of wisdom is not always easy to understand. Just an idea for you, sir. Thanks.
Gen. Satterfield, thank you for another way to look at these great stories from the Bible and Christianity.
Gibbie, you got that right. 😎
Another excellent example of Gen. Satterfield seeing the Bible as a true brilliant document that can help us in our lives if we only pay attention to the meanings and advice contained therein.
Gen. Satterfield, I do think you are on to something here. These ideas go to the core of us as humans and I guess that I should not be surprised that the most fundamental of them are all found in the Bible. I dedicated myself to the Almighty long ago and yet I’m still learning some of the most simple of meanings. I have a lifetime to figure it out and I hope to figure out and happy to figure out even a small part.
You and me both, Pastor John.
Pastor John
Excellent comments
To all those who were asking my friend Doug about me. I been busy with my devotional reading seeking God for things prepare my teaches Sunday school and preaching on my 6am morning prayer group. Preaching on my friend 830pm svc on the 3rd Sunday of the month. A time to reload is healthy for the mind
Welcome back Eddie. We’ve been praying for your return. 🙏
This is the kind of thing we should have studied in “Organizational Theory” but was not there.
“Since the Israelites had been only recently freed from slavery, they had not yet developed the organizational ability or social fortitude to govern among themselves. By going to Moses and setting him up to handle all their unresolved disputes and problems, they are making him pharaoh-like, all-powerful.” – Gen. Doug Satterfield paraphrasing Dr. Jordan Peterson. Well done! This is exactly why I keep coming back to Gen. S’s website and reading all his articles. For those new to this website, do yourself a favor by getting a copy of Gen. S’s latest book “55 Rules for a Good Life” and you will see what I mean. Here is an Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/55-Rules-Good-Life-Responsibility/dp/1737915529/ His book comes highly recommended. 👍👍👍👍👍 5 thumbs up!
Hi Gen. Satterfield, I watched the YouTube video with dr. Jordan Peterson and I want to thank you for giving us the heart of his interview. JP is a great man and I’m glad the world has him. But there are many who stand against him. Why? Because he says we must be responsible for our own lives and those of our families. The leftists (and I do mean political leftists) can’t stand anyone who says we actually have to work hard, be a good person, and believe in God. That is antithetical to them.
Welllington, you’re right about the radical leftists in our country and they call themselves “progressives” and yet they are just sinners.
Thank you, Gen. Satterfield for this article.
Nice interpretation and while there are many interpretations of Moses and the Israelites, we all know that we are programmed to struggle against the world in order to survive. If we look at today, there is no need for a person to struggle becuase of the “safety nets” we put up to catch them. As soon as those who are given a helping hand figure out that no matter what they don’t need to struggle, then they go off the mental cliff. This explains why today we have such an abundance of material goods but our youth are falling apart mentally and they are lost in the world.
Excellent point, Jerome. Just look at the newspapers any day and see our children failing all around us.
I think it’s more attention seeking. They want something to believe in and we have rejected God. Now all they have to believe in is materialism or some dumb, made-up religion like climate change and yes that is a made up religion. 😎
You don’t even need to read the “newspapers” which are trash anyway. Just watch any television commercial and you will start to see it. Read anything online and you will see it too. It’s everywhere and done purposefully.
I’m too loving this website by Gen. Satterfield more and more.
This article shows us that the Bible is far great and has more wisdom in any single story than any book of modern times. And those that pooh pooh the Bible are simply afraid of its secrets and its directives. They fear they are on the wrong path and will fail as a human but our society says they are good but they know they are bad. Ha Ha Ha.