Question I. (marg.) Why did Moses have a minister, and whether more [than one]?

Moses was then passing his eighty-first year. For when, concerning the liberation of his Israelites, he began to deal with Pharaoh, he was eighty years old (Exodus 7:7). A year was consumed in that business and in inflicting the plagues — as [I] was showing [may be] gathered from what follows, in that very book of Exodus. “To one so old, then, a minister was necessary,” someone will say. But at that age — and for the whole thirty-nine years afterward too — Moses was of such good and firm strength that neither did his eye grow dim, nor his foot totter (Deuteronomy, last [ch.], v. 7). To what end, then, a minister for him? For he was not soft and delicate, [such] that without necessity he would wish to use others’ hands or feet. And indeed the same Moses had two sons, older than Joshua himself (as is had from ch. 2 of Exodus, v. 22, and from what [was said] above, ch. 3, q. 6); by their service, had any weakness of strength required attendance, he could have used [them]. There is therefore rather another cause — [namely] that, as Philo says in [his] book on Moses, Moses himself “was king, lawgiver, high priest, and prophet.” Nay, he is expressly called “king of Israel” (Genesis 36, v. 31) — as there Ibn Ezra contends, deriding those who think Saul is there signified [as] king — and [in] Deuteronomy 33, v. 5. And therefore, both for necessity and for dignity, it behooved him to have several ministers. Many things must be seen to by those who preside with authority over a multitude; many [people are] to be heard, many [things] known, commanded, signified, ordained. The eyes, ears, tongue, hands, and feet of one man cannot suffice for so many and so great affairs: he needs another’s labor, that what he cannot [do] through himself, he may do through others. The very abundance of ministry has, too, among men, something of dignity and majesty — just as [it does] if, for managing certain matters well and fitly, there be at hand a supply of suitable instruments. Yet, just as an artisan would be inept and ridiculous who, when he could do his tasks best and most conveniently with two or three instruments, should use twenty or thirty — nay, should not [even] use [them], but carry them about with great burden and expense, display them, and boast himself of them — so also [is] the laughable folly of those who, at great cost and with no profit, feed troops of servants that are neither necessary nor useful, but rather encumbrances, and drag them this way and that with them. For “a minister,” says Aristotle (Politics, ch. [4]), “holds the place of an instrument among the arts, and is an animate instrument.” Moses therefore, because he himself [was] so great, and was occupied with such various and useful affairs, had some ministers — but only necessary and useful [ones], who did not throng about him on every side for empty pomp, but attended him at home and abroad for his need and for the measured honor of the [many] persons he bore. For he was not “king” in the manner in which we see kings today, but only because he ruled the people with divine power and authority; and the rest of his offices are wont ever to pursue all modesty and frugality. But how many ministers of this kind Moses had, I cannot indeed determine. Scripture names only one — our Joshua, namely. Yet it hints at others (Numbers 11, v. 28), where in Hebrew they are called bechurau, that is, “his young men”; and expressly there, question 68; and again afterward, while explaining these words, it says he had “many” ministers — likewise Oleaster there, and Masius in the second preface on Joshua. But of those words [more] again below.