Now listen to me, I will give you advice, and may God be with you: You be a representative for the people to God, and you bring their disputes to God;

And because the midwives feared God, he made households for them.

Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods, for in the thing in which they dealt proudly against them he has destroyed them.”

Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their place at the foot of the mountain.

The people kept their distance, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.

But he did not lay a hand on the leaders of the Israelites, so they saw God, and they ate and they drank.

So Moses set out with Joshua his attendant, and Moses went up the mountain of God.

But the midwives feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live.

He added, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, or that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Then Moses took his wife and sons and put them on a donkey and headed back to the land of Egypt, and Moses took the staff of God in his hand.

The Lord said to Aaron, “Go to the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him at the mountain of God and greeted him with a kiss.

The angel of God, who was going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them.

Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, together with Moses’ sons and his wife, came to Moses in the desert where he was camping by the mountain of God.

When they have a dispute, it comes to me and I decide between a man and his neighbor, and I make known the decrees of God and his laws.”

Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, “Thus you will tell the house of Jacob, and declare to the people of Israel:

then his master must bring him to the judges, and he will bring him to the door or the doorposts, and his master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.

If the thief is not caught, then the owner of the house will be brought before the judges to see whether he has laid his hand on his neighbor’s goods.

During that long period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God.

Now Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb.