| Hierarchical structures are a rational and effective tool for communications and authority. How those structures are implemented is the issue. The Lord uses families and man uses organizations. We can see the transition from families to organizations in the Old Testament. We can also see the Lord’s warning about organizational hierarchies when the people of Israel asked for a king. The warning was not heeded and the price was and is being paid. |
| The Lord’s commands are by family. When Moses was instructed on how to manage the movement of Israel in the dessert it was by tribes, which are families, not regional or other types of groups. When the tasks were distributed to the Levites for ministering at the Tent of Meeting, it was by families within the Levite tribe. |
| Jethro’s suggestion, which does not have the weight of “Thus saith the LORD”, has merit in the sense that a hierarchical structure would reduce the burden on Moses. However, by intruding the numerical concept of “commanders of thousand, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens” the door is opened to move from families to organizations. |
| At the time of Jethro’s visit, Moses had already used the family hierarchy in managing Israel. However he was micromanaging when it came to acting as judge. Moses could have solely used the family hierarchy that was already in place, but instead added Jethro’s numerical structure. |
| The numerical structure does even things up in the sense that a commander of a thousand has about a thousand people under his command, as does his peers. However, a family may be large or small as we can see from any of the censuses taken of Israel, and a particular family head may have a different number of people under his command than his peers. |
| Moses may have kept the hierarchy close to a family structure, but in time it shifted to numerical as the suggestion of Jethro became the command of Moses. Samuel later warned of this numerical structure becoming part of a king’s rule. King Saul then uses this organizational hierarchy to secure his power. |
