Jordan Peterson Got Moses Completely Wrong – Here’s Why That Matters
In his book “We Who Wrestle With God,” Jordan Peterson presents an intriguing interpretation of the biblical story of Jethro’s advice to Moses. According to Peterson, when Moses sat as judge from morning to night, he was at risk of becoming a tyrant, and Jethro’s suggestion to create a hierarchical system of judges was the antidote to this potential tyranny. This reading, while compelling on the surface, fundamentally misunderstands both Moses’s intentions and the Torah’s revolutionary approach to law and education.
Peterson sees Moses’s original system — where he personally adjudicated all cases — as evidence of a dangerous “inflation of ego” that could have led him down “the terrible path of religious hypocrites.” He suggests that the Jewish people, fresh from Egyptian bondage and still bearing a slave mentality, were all too willing to foist responsibility onto Moses, creating conditions ripe for tyranny.
This interpretation mischaracterizes Moses, who repeatedly tried to decline God’s initial appointment, wished that “all God’s people were prophets,” and proactively initiated the transfer of power to Joshua. Moses’s ready acceptance of Jethro’s suggestion hardly suggests tyrannical tendencies. If anything, Moses let go of his vision too easily in deference to Jethro’s critique.
More fundamentally, Peterson misunderstands what it means for people to bring their cases before Moses for adjudication. Far from being a slavish abdication of responsibility, seeking legal guidance is the hallmark of a society committed to the rule of law. Even when everyone is “upwardly aiming,” as Peterson might put it, we still need adjudication. Just as a baseball game between teams of perfect sportsmen still needs an umpire, a law-based society needs authoritative interpretations of its rules.
The revolution in Moses’s original system wasn’t about consolidating power — it was about democratizing knowledge. When Moses sat to judge, the entire nation gathered to watch and learn. Through case-by-case examples, they were learning not just abstract principles but the practical application of law. This was a radical departure from the Egyptian model, where legal and religious knowledge was the closely guarded preserve of the priestly class.
Jethro’s proposed system of hierarchical courts, which Peterson celebrates as the principle of “subsidiarity,” was actually a step backward toward that Egyptian model. While more efficient, it created exactly what the Torah sought to avoid: a professional class of judges who would become the gatekeepers of legal knowledge. Instead of ten out of ten people being potential judges, as Moses envisioned, Jethro’s system made one in ten the experts, leaving the rest as passive recipients of justice rather than active participants in its administration.
The Jewish vision, as embodied in Jewish law, has parties to a dispute bring it before an ad hoc tribunal composed of people of their choosing. This flexible system assumes that all Jews, as educated followers of the law, are prepared to be its judges. While higher courts existed in each city for capital cases, this represented a geographic distribution rather than a permanent hierarchical structure.
A parallel story in Numbers 11 completely subverts Peterson’s account. When the people complain about their conditions, God responds by sharing Moses’s prophetic ability with seventy others, demonstrating that neither knowledge nor resources are limited when God is involved. This story suggests that as knowledge spreads, so do available resources — the opposite of the conservative approach to subsidiarity expressed by Jethro and Peterson.
Yes, Moses ultimately accepted Jethro’s advice, but we should understand this as a practical concession rather than an ideal. The hierarchical system was implemented not because it was better, but because the full education of an entire nation would take more time and energy than was immediately available.
Moses’s original vision remains the radical ideal: a society where knowledge isn’t hoarded by specialists but shared universally, where every citizen is educated enough to be both follower and leader, both governed and governor. In an age of increasing specialization and institutional gatekeeping, perhaps it’s time to reconsider which approach truly guards against tyranny.
Rabbi David Debow is an international lecturer and educator, formerly principal at Fuchs Mizrachi High School and founder of Midreshet Emunah v’Omanut in Jerusalem. He has worked with Koren Publications, the Steinsaltz Foundation, and various educational programs worldwide.
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