I would like to refine what I have said about Jethro being God’s jutting over abundance, blessings, and excellence. All that is true, but I have learned that Jethro (from the Hebrew yathar, Strong's 3498) has to do with that which remains AFTER a process of elimination. Like gold which has been refined, Jethro is the refined REMAINDER, the purified excellence, the remnant essence, the good stuff that is left.
Moses, the germ of the Gospel in a person, had questions. He (or she) struggled with questions of what life is all about: what does it all boil down to? where is all this going? what is it all for? what is to remain after everything has been worked out? In the parched, dry atmosphere of Moses' mind, the thoughts followed one another like sheep looking for pasture. In his meditation, the image of Ashur, the principle deity of the Assyrians, came to mind.
That image of depicts the Son working in the power of the Father, the Sun, and the work of that power being manifested all around, like an endlessly burning bush. You do not need to tell me that the "Son" in the pictograph is Nimrod, and the powerful "Father/Sun" is Cush. I know. But we are talking about what this meant to Moses. Moses realized that Ashur represented the Ineffable's imagination as the Creative Force of the universe. The Ineffable Source imagines Itself to be a thing, says, "I am . . . THAT!," and the intelligence of that thought is power to BECOME that thing. Truly, everything IS the Ineffable, and the Ineffable is the One which says, "I am," and has become everything.
Then God, the Ineffable in Moses' mind, spoke to him. "You have got right to it, Moses, right to the Holiest, mano y mano."
"Who are you?" Moses asked. That is, "What exactly is your nature?"
"I am (what Ashur depicts), that 'I am.'" I.e., our imaginations - the Spirit within us - are the Ineffable's imagination, which is It saying, "I am." We are the ever becoming creative force of Its intelligence. (This is “Ahiyeh Ashur hiyeh” in Alexander's translation of Exodus 3:14 from the Aramaic.) Thus was the Bible born.
So, what is the jutting-over abundant blessing excellence of God which is left after the process of refining out our ignorance? "Me," says the Ineffable. "Nothing but Me."
