MDDM Ch. 7 Jethro's tent

[Dave Monroe]

"... the residence of Cornelius Vroom and his wife,
Johanna, and what seems like seven, and is probably
closer to three, blond, nubile Daughters." (M&D, Ch.
7, p. 60)

"Blood, clearly rushing throughout Dixon, is
detectable as well in faces and at bosoms and throats
in this Jethro's Tent they've had the luck to stumble
into." (ibid.)

Okay, without worrying all too much about what anybody
has posted on this so far, and without commenting
immediately on the possibly interesting deployment of
that antique to early modern medical doctrine of
"bodily humours" (here, Dixon's sanguinity vs. Mason's
phlegmatism), first off, on that "what seems like
seven," cf. Exodus 2: 11-21 ...

11 On one occasion, after Moses had grown up, when he
visited his kinsmen and witnessed their forced labor,
he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his own
kinsmen.
12 Looking about and seeing no one, he slew the
Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 
13 The next day he went out again, and now two Hebrews
were fighting! So he asked the culprit, "Why are you
striking your fellow Hebrew?"
14 But he replied, "Who has appointed you ruler and
judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you
killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses became afraid and
thought, "The affair must certainly be known." 
15 Pharaoh, too, heard of the affair and sought to put
him to death. But Moses fled from him and stayed in
the land of Midian. As he was seated there by a well,
16 seven daughters of a priest of Midian came to draw
water and fill the troughs to water their father's
flock.
17 But some shepherds came and drove them away. Then
Moses got up and defended them and watered their
flock. 
18 When they returned to their father Reuel, he said
to them, "How is it you have returned so soon today?"
19 They answered, "An Egyptian saved us from the
interference of the shepherds. He even drew water for
us and watered the flock!"
20 "Where is the man?" he asked his daughters. "Why
did you leave him there? Invite him to have something
to eat."
21 Moses agreed to live with him, and the man gave him
his daughter Zipporah in marriage.

[and in a hyperlinked footnote, "Reuel: he was also
called Jethro. Cf Exodus 3:1; 4:18; 18:1."]

http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/exodus/exodus2.htm

"What seems like seven" as in "seven daughters of a
priest of Midian."  And leaving aside as well for the
time being resonances with (both the historical and
the fictionalized) Dixon's own intervention in the
beating of a slave (M&D, Ch. 72, p. 695), point is,
available daughters.  And how (e.g., pp. 62-4) ...

Of course, in the Biblical account here, everything
seems on the up-and-up, insofar as "giving" some
drifter on the lam for murder (of Vincent Price, in
the '56 DeMille movie (!)) your daughter "in marriage"
was legitimate at the time, but ...

But in the narrative expansion required to make the
better part of an hour or so of film from the passage
above in that second Cecil B. DeMille Ten Commandments
(1956), Chuck "Moses" Heston was actually offered his
choice of daughters by the grateful Jethro ...

http://www.granavenida.com/moises1/dm57.jpg

http://www.granavenida.com/moises1/dm59.jpg

It seems to be presented as to Moses' credit, not to
mention to Jethro's surprise and the other daughters'
chagrin, that he chooses (here) Sephora (Yvonne
DeCarlo, later teevee's Lily Munster), the "quiet" one
...

http://www.granavenida.com/moises1/moisejet.jpg

http://www.granavenida.com/moises1/dm58.htm

Again, the point is, womenfolk made available, and to
a stranger, a traveler, at that.  Jethro pimping his
daughters to Moses.  Probably as much of an aside as
anything can be in those Pynchonian texts, but, as
always, a learned and clever one nontheless ...

But do note that, Biblically, Jethro's tent itself
only really comes up at Exodus 18:7 ...

http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/exodus/exodus18.htm

And I'll leave y'all to ponder what significance that
may have here ...

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