Exodus 4:18

"And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren that are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace."

"Jethro his father-in-law ..." The Hebrew word here rendered father-in-law actually means any close kin by marriage; and brother-in-law would probably be a better rendition here. It is possible that Reuel was deceased and that his son Jethro had succeeded him as tribal leader. (See more on this under Exodus 3:1, above.) "Through marriage to Zipporah, Moses had become a member of her clan, of which Jethro was head. Tribal law in such a case required permission to leave."[22] Not only this, there would have, of necessity, been the matter of the transfer of the task of looking after the sheep, which Moses had evidently left in the care of another or had driven back to the vicinity of Jethro. Many details are necessarily left out of such a narrative as this.

"Return unto my brethren ..." We should understand this to mean, "not merely the near relatives of Moses, the family of Amram, but the Israelites generally."[23] In view of the hostility of Pharaoh and the rigorous service required of them, there was indeed a question of who had survived such hardships. Therefore, he gave as his purpose: "to see whether they be yet alive." We need not be surprised that there is no record here of Moses' telling Jethro of the divine revelation that he had received. As a matter of fact, he might have done so, but no account of each action was needed here. If he did not do so, the omission of it could have been due to the spiritual state of Jethro, or from the necessity of Moses' secrecy this early in his mission.