Мидраш к Шмот 15:14

Now Jethro heard (Exod. 18:1). Some hear and lose (their reward), while others hear and are rewarded. Joash heard and lost (his reward), just as it is said: Then the king hearkened unto him (II Chron. 24:17), but after that is written: So they executed judgment upon Joash (ibid., v. 24). Similarly, the peoples have heard and they tremble (Exod. 15:14). However, Jethro heard and was rewarded. Though he had been an idolatrous priest, he joined Moses, and entered under the wings of the Shekhinah. For that he became worthy of adding the portion dealing with judges to the Torah of Israel, when he told Moses: The thing that thou doest is not good (ibid. 18:18).

Another explanation of It hath been already (Eccles. 1:10). It is written: The Lord by wisdom founded the earth (Prov. 3:19) and also: I have filled him with the spirit of wisdom (Exod. 31:3). This teaches us that the Tabernacle was equal both to all the world and to a human embryo, which is a world in miniature.⁷Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews 5:75, n. 20. How is that so? When the Holy One, blessed be He, created His world, He did so just as a child is born to a woman. A child starts to grow at the navel and then develops in all directions, and the Holy One, blessed be He, began the creation of His world at the foundation stone, and built the world upon it. Why was it called a foundation stone? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, began the creation of His world upon it. Then He created the celestial Temple, as it is said: The place, O Lord, which Thou hast made to dwell in (Exod. 15:14). Do not read the word as makom (“foundation”), but as mekuvan (“exactly opposite”). Your dwelling place above is directly opposite Your dwelling place below. The formation of the embryo is like the formation of the world, for just as the embryo is formed in the womb of its mother, so too the world was formed at the foundation stone.

Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Simon began: “He said: I will hide My face from them” (Deuteronomy 32:20). [It is analogous] to a king’s son who went out to the marketplace and struck but was not hit, demeaned but was not demeaned, and he went running up to his father. He [his father] said to him: ‘What do you think, that you are honored because your own honor? You are honored only because of my honor.’ What did his father do? He repudiated him, and no one paid any attention to him [the son]. So, when Israel departed from Egypt, dread of them fell over all the nations, as it is stated: “Peoples heard, they were agitated; terror gripped the dwellers of Philistia. Then the chieftains of Edom were confounded, trembling gripped the powers of Moav, all the dwellers of Canaan dissolved. Dread and fear fall upon them” (Exodus 15:14–16). When they began transgressing and performing evil deeds, the Holy One blessed be He said to them: What do you think, that you are honored due to your own honor? You are honored only due to My honor. What did the Holy One blessed be He do? He repudiated them a bit, and the Amalekites came and confronted Israel, as it is stated: “Amalek came and waged war with Israel in Refidim” (Exodus 17:8). In addition, the Canaanites came and confronted Israel, as it is stated: “The Canaanites heard […and waged war with Israel]” (Numbers 21:1).
The Holy One blessed be He said: You have no faithfulness, you are not true to your word, you are erratic, as it is stated; “As they are an erratic generation, children in whom there is no trust [emun]” (Deuteronomy 32:20). It is written amen. When the prophets would bless them, not one of them began to say amen until Jeremiah said it, as it is stated: “I responded, saying: Amen, Lord” (Jeremiah 11:5). At that time, the Holy One blessed be He said: You are erratic, you are bothersome, you are recalcitrant; to eliminate them is impossible, to return them to Egypt is impossible, to exchange them with another nation is impossible…