Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 29-30.

We think of Jacob as the trickster, but it was his mother, Rebekah, who plotted out how he would steal Esau’s blessing and it was Laban, Rebekah’s brother, who twice violated the spirit of the agreements which he made with Jacob.  Yes, Jacob carried out his mother’s deception, but the deception was not his idea.  Even the case where he got Esau to trade his birthright for a bowl of stew was not deceptive.  The other thing I find interesting is that Laban deceptively dealt with Jacob, even though he begged Jacob to stay because God had blessed him because of Jacob.  The thing is that Jacob did not get down when Laban essentially cheated him after agreeing to his idea for his wages.  Jacob just went to work to maximize his profits.  I want to look at what the agreement was.  Jacob proposed, and Laban agreed, that all of the speckled, spotted sheep, the black lambs, and the speckled and spotted goats in the flocks which Jacob was tending would be Jacob’s.  Laban promptly went out and removed all of those animals from the flocks which Jacob would be tending and sent them to the flocks being tended by Laban’s sons.   Jacob did not complain because Laban had cheated him.  He did not descend into depression because ‘the deck was stacked against him’.  He just went to work to make the most of the hand he was dealt.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 29-30.

Rachel followed in the footsteps of Jacob’s grandmother Sarah by giving her maid to her husband, hoping he would have sons by her.  It worked out better for Rachel than it did for Sarah, and better for Jacob than it did for Abraham.  However, the whole situation shows us why polygamy is a bad idea.  Of all of the accounts in the Bible where it tells us something about the relationships where a man had more than one wife, Jacob’s circumstances worked out the best, and it is clear that both Leah and Rachel would have been happier if their husband had not been married to another woman.

The first thing I want to note about the deal which Jacob entered into with Laban for his pay after he had worked off his debt for marrying Laban’s daughters was for the less valuable members of the flock.  Sheep and goats with solid color coats would have been more valuable than those with varicolored coats.  Even so, Laban took steps to try to cheat Jacob out of the wages to which he had agreed.  I was struggling to find a real lesson in today’s passage until I wrote that last sentence.  Then it struck me, Laban had made a deal to keep Jacob working for him because he had learned through divination that God had blessed him because Jacob was working for him.  Even knowing that, Laban tried to cheat Jacob.  That is such a human thing to do.  We know that that God has blessed us because of how someone benefited from our actions, but rather than accept whatever blessings God will give us for dealing with them honestly and aboveboard, we try to greedily game the system to benefit ourselves more than it benefits them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 29-30.

There ae multiple places in the Bible where it tells us of a man with more than one wife at a time, most of the time that man serves God.  Consistently, the home life of the man involved is unhappy.  The example of Jacob with Leah and Rachel is no exception.  However what I want to primarily cover today is the way in which Leah named her first four sons.  When Reuben was born, Leah said (paraphrasing),  “The Lord has seen my misery, now Jacob will have to love me.”  When Simeon was born, she said, “Because I am not loved, God gave me a second son.”  When Levi was born, she said, “I have given Jacob three sons, now he will finally love me.”  Then when Judah was born, Leah said, “I will praise the Lord.”  With each of the first three, they were a means to an end.  With each, she saw them as a means to gain love from her husband.  When Judah was born, Leah praised God for him.  Not for what he would bring her, or how it would improve her relationship with her husband: she praised God for giving her another son.  You might think that this suggests that she loved Judah more than the first three, but that is not how I read it.  When Reuben, Simeon, and Levi were born, she thought they were blessings because of how they would change her relationship with Jacob. By the time Judah was born, Leah realized that each of her sons was a blessing to her, in and of themselves.   In the same way, we often see God’s blessings to us in terms of how they will change our place in the world.  In actuality, most of God’s blessings to us have value without changing anything else.  Initially, Leah saw the tasks she needed to do to take care of her babies as the price she had to pay to receive the blessings which they would bring.  By the time Judah was born she realized those tasks were part of the blessing.  In the same way, we should view the work which goes along with whatever blessing God gives us as part of that blessing, because it is.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 29-30.

I find it interesting that Rachel was herding her father’s sheep, apparently by herself.  We know from tomorrow’s passage that Laban had sons, why was Rachel with the sheep and not one of her brothers?  Perhaps Laban’s sons were younger than Rachel and not yet old enough to be herding the sheep.  Of course, then one must wonder why Leah was not with Rachel herding the sheep? Or, perhaps Leah was herding a different flock.  I am going to guess that Laban’s sons were still too young to be tending the flocks when Jacob arrived (or, that older sons had died), and that the comment made later that Leah had weak eyes (or delicate eyes, whatever that meant) explains why she was not tending the flocks.  This leads me to suspect that Laban was in a relatively weak position locally when Jacob arrived.  Which led me to another thought.  It seems likely that the other shepherds present when Jacob arrived were young.  The passage tells us that it was early in the day for the flocks to be gathered, but that they needed to be there when someone arrived who could roll the stone off of the well.  Since none of them objected to Jacob rolling the stone aside, it seems like they were waiting for someone who could do so.  So, Jacob’s arrival seems to have immediately strengthened Laban’s position.  Laban was no longer dependent upon others in order for his sheep to access water.  Now that I have noticed how odd it was for Rachel to be tending Laban’s flock, it surprises me that I have never heard anyone comment on it before.  I did find one commentator who noted that the way Jacob addressed the other shepherds about having their flocks gather so early suggests that those other shepherds were young.

The significance of the Rachel tending the sheep indicating that Laban was relatively weak and not wealthy comes from the contrast to where he was more than fourteen years later when Jacob first considers leaving. By the latter time, Laban’s sons have grown and are able to tend his flocks for him, but Laban appears to be unsure if they can manage them as well as Jacob has done.  If I am correct in my interpretation, at this point Laban’s sons would have been young men, not grown men established in their knowledge of life as Jacob would have been when he arrived.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 29-30.

We have here a second example of polygamy.  And once again it does not go well.  There is clearly jealousy and rivalry between Leah and Rachel.  Which is all I am going to write about that today.  Over a period of time which is not clearly laid out, eleven sons are born to Jacob.  After the birth of Joseph, Jacob talks to Laban about leaving and returning to his homeland*.  Some people believe that Joseph was born seven years after Jacob married Rachel and that Jacob was just opening negotiations for his pay going forward.  It seems unlikely to me that the drama described as going on between Jacob’s wives could have taken place in just seven years.  In any case, Laban did not want Jacob to leave and asked him what it would take for him to stay and continue to manage Laban’s flocks (or a portion of them).  They reach an agreement which Laban promptly violates, just as he had the agreement about Jacob marrying Rachel after working for him for seven years.  Jacob  did not fuss about the fact that Laban had removed every speckled, spotted, or dark colored lamb from the herd, despite the fact that Laban had just agreed that those would be Jacob’s (Laban would certainly have argued that he had only agreed that those born going forward with those characteristics were to be Jacob’s).  Jacob had a breeding plan.  We know from modern study of breeding that looking at striped bits of wood as described would not increase the incidence of speckled, spotted, and dark colored lambs.  I think there are three possible explanations for what happened.  First, perhaps there was a chemical of some kind in the types of wood which Jacob chose which caused the flocks to give birth to offspring with the characteristics which Jacob desired.  Second. perhaps Jacob knew the flocks well enough to know which rams and ewes would be most likely to mate to produce offspring with the characteristics Jacob desired and he placed the wood there as misdirection.  Third,  God just chose to bless Jacob and caused his scheme to work even though there is no scientific explanation as to why it actually would work.  Personally, I think what happened was a combination of the second and third explanation.   I would like to point out that Jacob clearly successful at more than herding and breeding sheep and goats as the donkeys and camels he acquired would not have come from his deal with Laban.

*As a side note I want to point out that Jacob did not view Haran as his homeland even though his grandfather had come from there and most of his grandfather’s relatives lived there.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 29-30.

Reading this passage today, I wanted to look at part of it that I have often wondered about, but never really thought through.  When Jacob suggested that the shepherds should water the sheep and take them back to the pasture, they told him that they needed to wait for all of the sheep to be gathered and the stone to be rolled away.  Yet, as soon as Rachel arrived with Laban’s sheep, Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Laban’s sheep.  So, was Rachel the last of the shepherds to arrive with their flocks?  In which case, why didn’t someone other than Jacob roll the stone away from the well?  Or, did Jacob roll the stone away in order to water Laban’s sheep in violation of protocol?   In either case, we can conclude that Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Laban’s sheep in order to impress his cute cousin.  Another thing which is unstated, but apparent, is that Jacob and Rachel spent the time it took to water the sheep to talk, and probably to flirt.

It is really worth the time to look at the relationship between Jacob, Leah, Rachel, and their two handmaids which they sent to Jacob’s bed, but I will leave that to you.  I want to talk about how old Jacob and Rachel (and by inference Leah) were in this passage.  We do not really know how old they were.  What we do know is that Laban was Rebekah’s brother and was more or less running the household when Abraham’s servant showed up looking for a wife for Isaac. So, Laban was probably younger than Isaac, but older than Rebekah.  I wrote all of that and realized it does not really lead us to any firm conclusions, except that Rachel was almost certainly not a young girl any longer by the time she married Jacob.  Actually, when combined with the fact that Rachel was herding some of Laban’s sheep when Jacob arrived, it leads me to believe that Jacob was not exaggerating when he told Laban that Laban had little when Jacob first arrived.  Now, about Jacob’s age, we do not know how old he was either, but we have a little more information on that.  There are those who conclude that Jacob was 84 when he married Rachel.  This is based on working back from when Jacob went to Egypt, but I believe that involves making assumptions which those who wrote this would question.  What we do know is that Jacob went to Laban’s some significant number of years after Esau got married.  Esau was 40 years old when he got married, and, since Jacob was his twin brother, Jacob would also have been 40 at that point.  Personally, I would guess that Jacob was about 60 when he went to Laban’s.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 29-30.

Laban did his daughter Leah no favors by tricking Jacob into marrying her.  Perhaps things would have gone better if he had negotiated with Jacob from the beginning for Jacob to marry both of his daughters, but I get the impression that Laban was one of those people who always try to get one over on others.  We see the same sort of behavior on Laban’s part when he negotiated for Jacob to get the speckled, spotted sheep and goats, and black goats as his own.  As soon as they had struck this deal, Laban had all of the sheep that met the criteria removed from the flocks managed by Jacob.  However, Jacob knew a trick to increase the likelihood of sheep and goats being born which met the criteria to be his.  We know that the trick described would not have the results described, at least not for the original herd which had no speckled or spotted sheep.  But the people who passed this story down were shepherds, so they would have know that as well.  Perhaps there was a little more to Jacob’s trick then described here.  Or perhaps, in the course of time as the normal distribution resulted in a limited number of speckled and spotted animals it increased the likelihood of other animals breeding with them.  In any case, Laban cheated Jacob in both of the deals they made.  I like to think that Jacob’s experience with Laban  caused him to be less of a cheater going forward.  Jacob’s trick with the animals, assuming it was not just the hand of God which enlarged his flock, was underhanded, but did not go against that to which he had agreed.  In both the case of giving Leah to Jacob to be his wife and in removing certain animals from the flocks Jacob tended, Laban broke the agreement he had made.