16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock.
Here is a man with a big problem. He has seven daughters! That means seven dowries, seven weddings, seven courtships, seven sets of hands that don’t do men’s work, and seven women in front of the mirror in the morning while he is trying to shave! Well, maybe not the last one. In his culture, he has many responsibilities for his daughters. But as far as we know, he has no male heir to whom he can pass on his property. Without a male, his name will end. His property will be inherited by his daughter’s husbands. It will pass out of his family forever. This doesn’t sound like much to our western ears, but land was everything. If you had land, you had something. If you didn’t have land, you had nothing. Women in that culture were very vulnerable. They often had no voice. They are doing a traditionally male job in that culture, watering a flock of sheep. Their father probably had to keep his flocks close to home because it would not be safe to allow his daughters to stay overnight with the sheep alone. This would have affected him economically. Flocks need to be moved to fresh pasture in order to get the benefit of the new growth. His sheep would have been less well nourished, producing less milk, less wool and less meat. And he still had to feed his seven daughters. Over time his wealth would have slowly diminished through this process. This man’s family needed some outside help. He was a religious figure of some type. We don’t know his belief’s at this point, so we don’t know if being a priest brought him any benefit economically. But we do know his heart was open toward people and their needs. So his generous heart, and the needs of others, probably drained his resources even further. I can imagine him receiving a gift and then using it to help someone in even greater need than himself. How do you deal with your wealth? Is it all focused on your family, or is there room for reaching out?
The Arnold Journey 