May Your She-goats Never Miscarry
The narrative of Genesis and Exodus is sweeping. Covering many lives and even more years, it is a strange and fascinating journey of the origin of the Israelites and their interaction with the Divine. You never know what you will encounter.
One particular moment is that of Jacob and his uncle Laban. Laban was also Jacob’s father-in-law. After Jacob tricked his father Isaac and his brother Esau out of the blessing and birth rite, Jacob flees for fear of his life.
He meets up with Laban and falls in love with his daughter, Rachel. Jacob wants to marry Rachel and agrees to work for Laban for seven years. Jacob does so and when the time comes for the marriage, Laban pulls the old switcheroo that Jacob himself was so good at and marries off Rachel’s sister, Leah.(The odd thing is that Jacob did not notice until the next morning that it was Leah which he had been with that night. That must have been some party, uh, ceremony.)
So one week later, Jacob marries Rachel and agrees to work another seven years for her.
Another 13 years pass and God says to Jacob to gather his things and go. So he does. Rachel looks around and takes her father’s idols. Why? The scriptures don’t say.
Laban is out sheering sheep when he finds out that everyone has left and chases after them. He catches up with them and asks them why they left so fast and why did they take his idols.
Jacob, not knowing Rachel did that tells Laban they didn’t take his idols and offers a curse of death on anyone that might have them. Laban begins looking through all the tents for them.
Rachel hid them in the camel cushion on which she sat. She did not get up when he came by saying that she cannot rise because “the period of women is upon” her.
In the purity system of the Torah, anything on which one who was menstruating sat was considered unclean. It is a total slap in the face of Laban and his idols.
Jacob becomes upset with Laban for looking through everything and asks what crime he has committed. He recounts all the hard work and prosperity he has brought to Laban.
That is probably a claim, few could ever make.
I’m diggin’ these post titles!
I have to go read this myself now. It’s like a soap opera. Why did she take the idols? There must be something between the lines.
Soap Opera is right. I even left out some of the good parts!
As an anthropology and history buff, I just find these glimpses into the culture and lives of ancient peoples just fascinating. There are so many socio-cultural dynamics at work in a story like this that we 21st century Westerners are just totally oblivious to. It’d be interesting to run this story past a modern day Bedouin and see if it resonates with them in a way that it could not for us.