Genesis 29:15-28 Commentary

Fitting this Story into the Whole

At the beginning of chapter 29, Jacob arrives in Paddan-aram.  In this text, we see all the ways Laban lords it over Jacob. At the end of chapter 30, Jacob gains the upper hand over Laban and in chapter 31, we see Jacob, along with all his accumulated household and wealth, traveling back to his family in Canaan.  The hinge point, then, in this chiastic structure, is the birth of Jacob’s children.  His turn of fortune comes about by what God has promised to do and what only God can provide.

Tricking the Trickster

Last week we saw how the theme of chosenness and favoritism play out in these Genesis family dramas.  This week we see another thread of similarity through the narrative.  Jacob tricked his brother and, later, tricks his father. His name, Jacob, tells us everything. A Hebrew play-on-words, Jacob can mean “he takes advantage” or “he deceives.” But now, in this story, the trickster is tricked.

Laban — possibly remembering the last time one of his relatives came to visit looking for a wife, traveling with camels, jewelry and gifts — eagerly rushes out to greet his nephew.  This time, however, his relative does not have a weighty reverse-dowry. Instead, he very clearly and specifically asks to be allowed to work for Rachel’s hand in marriage.  Robert Alter calls out the specificity.  “True to legalistic form, Jacob carefully stipulates the duration of the labor (in lieu of a bride-price that he does not possess), the name of the daughter, and the fact that she is the younger daughter.” The premise that this could all be a big misunderstanding is shot from the start.  So when he wakes up the morning after his wedding next to Leah rather than Rachel, he storms out of the tent denouncing Laban. Specifically he accuses Laban, “Why have you deceived me?” Which echoes Isaac’s wail of despair to Esau, “Your brother has come in deceit and has taken your blessing”

Laban’s excuse is that they would never supplant the birth order. In this way, Robert Alter observes, “Laban is an instrument of dramatic irony: his perfect natural reference to ‘our place’ has the effect of touching a nerve of guilty consciousness in Jacob, who in his place acted to put the younger before the firstborn.”  Far from an unusual interpretation, “It has been clearly recognized since late antiquity that the whole story of the switched brides is a meting out of poetic justice to Jacob—the deceiver deceived, deprived by darkness of the sense of sight as his father is by blindness, replying like his father, on the misleading sense of touch.”

There is another level of Laban’s manipulation that is disguised for those readers so far removed— in culture and centuries —from that time period. When Laban first greets Jacob, he affirms “You are my own flesh and blood.” This is a common element in literature of the day, called a “kinsman formula” which Bill Arnold tells us entails stressing “an existing blood relationship, the suitability of that relationship, and the responsibilities implied by it.”  All well and good until Arnold hits a minor key with the observation that despite their professed delight in this connection, is observation, “Laban will shortly attempt to take advantage of it.”  How does he do this?

Perhaps disappointed that Jacob hasn’t shown up with a bride price in hand, Laban offers to *hire* his nephew.  Robert Alter points specifically to verse 15 as “a neat deployment of delayed revelation, a device of which the biblical writers were fond, we now learn that this ‘bone and flesh’ of Laban’s has already been put to work by his gracious host for a month’s time.” Arnold insists, “Laban’s offer is not harmless or innocent.”  Rather than enfolding him into the family household, Laban exploits the familiar relationship by treating his nephew like a hired hand.

Collateral Damage

Here is a strange story that will likely bump up against our contemporary Western sensibilities.  The women in this story are given very little agency and are, frankly, used as pawns in a larger story being told by the menfolk.  Maybe Leah had a visual disability.  Maybe she was the less attractive of the sisters.  But she is certainly and painfully unwanted (the names she gives her children attest to this.) Rachel, though wanted and beloved, struggles with infertility later in this saga.  Her sense of vocation and purpose, meaning and belonging are challenged by this. The sisters struggle to find themselves in this story, estranged from one another and bearing the consequences of Laban and Jacob’s scrapping. It is a significant trouble in the text that mirrors our own life experiences: those who cause the brokenness rarely feel the greatest consequences of their actions.

And yet, as we will see here and elsewhere, God picks up the cause of the marginalized. By giving Leah children, even allowing her to serve as the grandmother (many generations removed) to the Messiah, God gives her meaning and purpose.  Eventually, too, God opens Rachel’s womb and allows her to belong in her own life and lineage again. God can use the messiness of this story … and all of our messy stories. But take care to differentiate this from God’s blessing or desire for messy stories in which vulnerable people are sinned against and uniquely harmed.

Illustration

Stay in Your Lane!

My almost-four-year-old believes all of life as a race.  A race every block to pre-school, which usually ends with “I win! You eliminated!” The alternate ending is tears so I’m (mostly) ok with my elimination. In addition to foot races and bike races, he loves to create, narrate and watch matchbox car races.  From this, he has learned the strategy of swerving lanes, which—unfortunately—he has also attempted in our foot and bike races.  I am worried of getting tripped up but my far greater fear is wiping him out with me when he trips me up. So I find myself shouting, “Stay in your lane, buddy!” Thankfully, a rather minor encounter of this sort has disabused him of this approach.

When I read this story, I feel like I’m dodging all kinds of dangerous lane swerving:

• Jacob swooped into Esau’s lane. That’s where it all starts.
• Laban finds multiple ways of cutting Jacob off.
• Rachel and Leah, the sisters, have to share a lane and constantly merging in and out without signaling and dinging each others’ fenders, if not actually causing a spin out.

It is a story of near misses and, seems to me, only by the grace of God that this doesn’t end in a multi-car pile up.