Moses’ Revolutionary Approach to Parenting

After a long separation, Moses finally stood face to face with his family. He had left them behind in Midian while he descended into Egypt, confronted Pharaoh, and led an entire nation through the Red Sea. Now, in the wilderness at Mount Sinai, his father-in-law Jethro brought Tzipporah and their two sons to reunite with him. Yet the Bible’s description of Moses’ sons contains a linguistic puzzle that reveals something Moses understood about family dynamics that his ancestors had catastrophically failed to grasp.

The text introduces Moses’ sons with peculiar language:

These verses literally mean “The name of the one was Gershom” and then, a few words later, “and the name of the one was Eliezer.” Both sons are described as “the one”—echad in Hebrew. This phrasing should strike anyone familiar with biblical Hebrew as jarringly wrong. When the Bible lists multiple items, it uses echad for the first and sheini for the second. The text should have said, “The name of the first was Gershom and the name of the second was Eliezer.”

Why does the Bible break its own grammatical pattern when introducing Moses’ sons?

The answer lies in the wreckage of family relationships that litters the entire book of Genesis. Rabbi Efraim Mirvis points out that Genesis could be subtitled “The Book of the Dysfunctional Family.” Every major family in that book tears itself apart over the same issue: seniority, favoritism, and hierarchy among siblings. Cain murdered Abel in the fields. Isaac and Ishmael were separated. Jacob deceived his father to steal Esau’s blessing, and Esau vowed to kill him for it. Rachel and Leah competed for their husband’s affection through their children. And Joseph’s brothers threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery because their father loved him more than the rest.

The common thread running through all these disasters? The designation of one child as the chosen one, the primary heir, or the one who mattered most. In each generation, parents created hierarchies among their children, elevating one above the others. The results were predictable and devastating: resentment, violence, exile, and fractured families. The Bible itself describes these families through a relentless pattern of favoritism and its consequences.

Moses heard these stories. He knew the cost of ranking children, of creating favorites, and of establishing hierarchies within families. As the leader who would establish the law for an entire nation, he understood, according to Rabbi Mirvis, something that escaped his ancestors: peace within families requires treating each child as irreplaceable, as uniquely valuable, as echad—the one and only.

Both sons receive the designation echad. Gershom was not the firstborn who mattered more. Eliezer was not the second son relegated to a lesser status. Each boy was “the one”—unique, irreplaceable, valued for who he was rather than where he ranked. They were not first and second. They were one and one.

Moses understood that the designation of “first” and “second” creates competition where there should be cooperation and hierarchy where there should be partnership. When parents treat one child as the primary heir and others as secondary, they plant the seeds of the very conflicts that destroyed his ancestors’ families.

Moses refused to repeat this pattern. His sons would each be echad—the one and only Gershom, the one and only Eliezer. No competition. No hierarchy. No favoritism that would breed resentment and violence. Each child was valued for his own identity.

The lesson reaches across millennia to every parent. The world outside our homes creates enough competition, enough ranking, and enough hierarchy. Children face constant comparison in schools, sports, and social circles. They are measured, ranked, and sorted from their earliest years. If they come home to find the same dynamics—where one sibling is the favorite, the star, or the one who matters most—the family becomes another arena of competition rather than a refuge from it.

The Torah’s linguistic choice offers a different path. Parents can choose to see each child as echad—irreplaceable, uniquely valuable, worthy of being called “the one and only.” This is not about pretending all children are identical or ignoring their different strengths and challenges. Gershom and Eliezer were different people with different meanings attached to their names. But both were echad. Both mattered fully. Neither was relegated to second place.

This is the foundation of everything else—before laws, before nation-building, before crossing into the Promised Land. First comes the family, and in the family, each child must know they are not competing for a limited supply of love or value. Each one is echad. Each one is the one and only.