Category Archives: Old Testament

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Reuben defiles his father’s bed—Genesis 35:22

What’s the moral of THAT story?

Immediately after mentioning Reuben’s immoral act (35:22), the narrator reminds us that Reuben was Jacob’s firstborn through Leah (35:23). This helps explain how Joseph, Rachel’s firstborn who does act more virtuously, later supplants him (49:4). Reuben was undoubtedly quite young at this point and sexual partners outside the camp may have been limited; perhaps exposure to and the assumption of discretion within the household also limited other options within the camp. Bilhah may have also been more available because she was alone in her tent if she could have someone else caring for Benjamin. Bilhah was Rachel’s servant (29:29; 35:25) and Rachel, who had had her own tent separate from Leah’s (31:33), had recently died.

Nevertheless, word leaked out. Reuben may have expected, as firstborn, to inherit Bilhah, his father’s concubine, after his father’s death. Aside from his offense of implicitly presuming upon his father’s decease, however, hearers of this narrative would view lying with one of one’s father’s bed partners as incestuous (Lev 18:8). Perhaps Jacob could have viewed such an action even as dishonoring the memory of his beloved and recently deceased Rachel (cf. 35:25), desecrating her tent if this action occurred there.

We might think the moral of the story is the severe punishment due sexual immorality, except that the punishment here is not so severe after all. Under the not-yet-given law of Moses, the penalty for sleeping with the sexual partner of one’s father was death (Lev 18:8, 29; 20:11); Reuben receives mercy and goes on to play a further role in Genesis, including keeping Joseph from being killed (Gen 37:21-22). Most hearers of the story would not need to be further informed that sleeping with a father’s bed partner was terrible; they would already envision Reuben’s behavior as horrific.

The point then may be more about human depravity and God’s benevolence. The very ancestors of Genesis’s audience, patriarchs of many tribes of Israel, participated in incestuous adultery (Reuben), mass murder (Simeon and Levi), and planned the murder of their brother Joseph, whom God planned as their very deliverer. God did not choose his people because of their great merit or virtue; that remained true in Moses’s time as well (Deut 9:4-8).

The God who made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is gracious and merciful (Exod 34:6-7). He is the God who chooses people like Isaiah or Simon Peter, who acknowledge their sinfulness when confronted with absolute holiness (Isa 6:5; Luke 5:8). He chooses people like Saul of Tarsus, who had been persecuting his own people (Acts 9:4-5). He saves sinners like myself, who boasted against his existence before my conversion. How can someone read the narratives of Genesis and not recognize that this is the God of our Lord Jesus? This is the God who calls and saves not because of our merit, not because we are good, but because he is good, because he is gracious. Sometimes we idealize biblical characters such as the patriarchs as great heroes; but God, and not the humans he used then or the humans uses today, is the real hero.

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God reaffirms his promise to Jacob—Genesis 35:9-12

Fulfilling God’s promise

Sometimes in roundabout ways that I could not have imagined, God has brought my life around to fulfill a specific calling he gave me years ago. We know in part, but beyond our own ability to make anything happen, God often frames periods or events in our lives with a divine inclusio. Often when God is in the process of fulfilling what he has already spoken to us, he brings us back to face it. For one biblical example, God had already called Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:15-16; 22:14-15, 21; 26:16-18), but when it is time for him to be sent out on his mission more fully the Spirit speaks again (13:2-4).

Another biblical example happens with God’s message to Jacob both when he was leaving the promised land and shortly after his return, at the place Jacob called Beth-El, “House of God.” Indeed, God echoes messages he had also spoken to chosen predecessors of Jacob.

Once Jacob returns to Bethel, where he first met the Lord, God appears to him again and reaffirms the name “Israel” given to him in 32:28 (35:10). God then identifies himself as “El Shaddai” (35:11; cf. 48:3), just as he revealed himself to Abraham (17:1). When Jacob departed for Paddan Aram, Isaac invoked this name to bless him: “May El Shaddai bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you so you become an assembly of peoples” (28:3). Now El Shaddai blesses Jacob directly (35:9) and declares, “Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and an assembly of nations will come from you, and kings will emerge from your loins” (35:11). (For the promise of subsequent kings, which ultimately belong to the promise, cf. 17:6, 16.)

Moreover, God also affirms that Jacob will carry on the promise: he is commissioned to be fruitful and multiply (35:11), as humanity was originally intended to be fruitful and multiply (1:28), a mission/blessing that Noah’s progeny must continue (9:1, 7, framing the blessing), as well as Abraham (17:2, 6; 22:17) and Isaac (26:4, 24). (This particular part of the commission is not unique to the mission of Jacob’s line. In 1:22 and 8:17, God also wanted animals to do this, and such a blessing applied also to Ishmael in 17:20.)

Jacob reframes this commission as a promise in 48:4, suggesting the equivalence of both. God’s call is also his promise, insofar as it implies enablement to fulfill that call. Ultimately, Jacob’s family is indeed fruitful and multiplies in 47:27 and Exod 1:7.

As God also did with Abraham and Isaac (Gen 12:1; 13:15; 15:18; 17:8; 26:3), so God also affirms to Jacob the promise of the land (35:12; cf. 28:13; 48:4), just as in Isaac’s blessing to Jacob (28:4). (Incidentally, for what it’s worth, I personally think the repeated reaffirmations of the land reveal a tradition valued particularly before the conquest of Canaan rather than afterward, although the material Genesis continued to be edited later, as verses such as 36:31 could suggest.)

That a company of “nations” (plural) will come from Jacob (35:11) fits the promise to Abraham (17:4-6), Sarah (17:16), and Isaac (28:3). But whereas Abraham (father of Ishmael, Midian and others) and Isaac (father of Edomites as well as Israelites; cf. 25:23) did beget literal nations, the same can hardly be said of Jacob, unless we count the tribes separately (cf. 48:19, though cf. more crucially 49:10). Thus perhaps this promise refers ultimately to nations being blessed in this chosen line (12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14). If so, the fulfillment came long after the completion of Genesis, but it began long ago and continues as Gentiles from many nations turn to the God of Israel through Jesus the Messiah (cf. 49:10). While we often see the beginning of God’s promises, sometimes an even greater, ultimate fulfillment goes even far beyond our own lifetimes.

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God’s purposes, our grief—Genesis 35

God's call and our commitment do not exempt us from hardships

Having recently escaped Esau’s wrath after wrestling with the angel of the LORD, Jacob encounters afresh the God who met him at Bethel (“House of God”) when he first fled from Esau. God tells him to return to Bethel (Gen 35:1). In preparing to return to where he first met God, he also makes things right with God in his household again, for he had vowed at that first encounter that if God brought him back safely to the house of his father, YHWH would be his God (28:21). Although he worshiped God already, his vow left no room for other gods, and he commands his household and the others who were living with him to get rid of their other gods (35:2).

The strange gods (35:2) that Jacob urges them to remove may include the teraphim that Rachel had stolen from her father (31:19), about which Jacob by now presumably knows. (Some of the “others with him” in 35:2, whom he presumably acquired in Paddan Aram, may have also had such deities; the language suggests that these gods were not, or were not any longer, in only one person’s possession.) Changing their clothes (35:2) might be to remove the contamination of idolatry or to make themselves more presentable (cf. changing clothes in 41:14) to the Lord.

Despite the slaughter of the Shechemites, surrounding peoples did not pursue Jacob, because the Lord’s terror was on them (35:5). Why would God have protected his household despite his sons’ savage acts of treachery and violence? God’s promise to Abraham was through Jacob’s line; the hope of humanity’s restoration in the future depended on this line. In the short run this included Joseph preserving the entire region (45:7; 50:20); in the somewhat longer run it included Levi’s descendants Moses, Aaron and Miriam. Ultimately, of course, it includes salvation to the ends of the earth through Jesus the Messiah.

The divine terror on surrounding peoples was part of God’s way of preserving Jacob’s family. God had promised Noah that the fear of humans would fall on other creatures (9:2). Now fear of Jacob fell on the cities around Shechem (35:5). Later God brought terror on Egypt (Deut 26:8) and promised terror against all of Israel’s enemies (Exod 23:27). Sometimes today Christians are afraid of our wider culture, afraid to articulate our convictions or share our faith; when this is so, it more resembles the curse that Israel faced when they were disobeying God’s Word (Lev 26:16; Deut 28:25). Of course, Christians simply digesting demagogues’ misinformation and then spouting bold folly is even worse (Prov 15:2, 14; 18:6-7)!

That Rebekah’s nurse is buried beneath an oak at Bethel (35:8) in the same literary context as strange gods being buried beneath an oak at Shechem, before going to Bethel (35:4) ties the narratives together. Chronology helps explain their proximity, but the explicit mention of burial beneath an oak in both cases is probably more than coincidence. The oak near Shechem could be the oak of Moreh mentioned in 12:6, but there are no other mentions of burial beneath an oak here or anywhere else in Scripture except 1 Chron 10:12 (the burial of the bones of Saul and his sons under the oak in Jabesh; a tamarisk tree in 1 Sam 31:13). Perhaps the logical connection is a leaving behind the things of Paddan Aram (if the strange gods are Laban’s teraphim), but Deborah (though first mentioned here) had now lived most of her life in Canaan. (Moreover, though mourning was customary in all normal cases, explicitly naming the site for “weeping” in Gen 35:8 suggests that Deborah was well-loved.)

But Deborah’s death may also portend another one; as her burial place is named the Oak of Weeping (35:8), the dying Rachel will name her new son, “Child of Affliction” (Jacob renames him with a more favorable omen, so to speak, 35:18).

These two devastating deaths frame God’s promise to Jacob (35:9-15), reminding us that God’s call is often surrounded by tragedy and obstacles, yet it goes to the heart of our purpose and mission in the world. Rachel, who had preferred death to childlessness (30:1), dies in childbirth (35:18-19), breaking the heart of Jacob (48:7) and bringing to an end the love story around which his life had centered from his first day in Paddan Aram years earlier. His enduring love for Rachel, revealed in his special favor for Joseph and Benjamin in the rest of Genesis, may ironically emerge as a factor in the preservation of the entire family (cf. 37:4; 45:5-8; 50:20-21).

Like Jacob, we must commit ourselves to serve God alone. Also like Jacob, we may find ourselves overwhelmed with grief and losses in this world. This grief, however, should not obscure for us that God has a larger plan and purpose that he is bringing about. Just as reality looks different from a galactic perspective than from a subatomic one, so we often cannot see the larger picture of God’s purposes for the world; yet they are already there, woven into the fabric of history and our lives.

Once Jacob reaches Bethel, he will hear from God again, and God will remind Jacob of God’s purposes for him (35:10-12). Perhaps this is one reason why, after after Rachel’s devastating death that followed God’s promise, Jacob renames their son not “child of affliction” but “child of the right hand” (35:18). Faith often musters courage for hope.

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Were Simeon and Levi right to slaughter the Shechemites?—Genesis 34

Was it right for Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi to massacre the Shechemites because the prince of Shechem had raped their sister? Or was their act of vengeance massive overkill? When, in my early days as a professor I taught both Old and New Testament, I asked my students what they thought. Their answers were divided, and for understandable reasons. Rape is a serious offense, and when nobody else punished it, a brother sometimes took matters into his hands (2 Sam 13:32-33).

But to kill all the males in Shechem (34:25)? Naturally, Simeon and Levi risked retaliation from Shechemites if they slew only the guilty prince; their strategy protected them. Their strong hand may have helped strike fear into their enemies (cf. 35:5). Yet the people they slew were people who welcomed them, and Genesis’s ultimate verdict on their rash anger is a curse (49:5-7).

Jacob’s people would be welcome in the land God had promised if they intermarried with the local people (34:9-10). Clearly this was not God’s plan for them in the land, lest they go after other gods (Deut 7:3-4). But what if the others were willing to join Israel? Later, the Torah welcomed foreigners who were willing to be circumcised and so join God’s people (Exod 12:48-49); this tradition was consistent with what Jacob’s grandfather Abraham had heard from God (Gen 17:12, 27).

Jacob’s sons, however, cite custom and deceitfully invite the Shechemites to be circumcised as a condition to becoming one people (Gen 34:14-16). (Even today, at least some women in cultures that practice male circumcision report as revolting the thought of intercourse with an uncircumcised man.) Circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham’s descendants. Ironically, as already noted, God did welcome foreigners into his covenant who would be circumcised (Gen 17:12; Exod 12:48-49). There is no mention here of theological conversion, and Israel’s prosperity alone was sufficient to invite the Shechemites’ economic interest (34:23). Nevertheless, the willingness of the Shechemite men to endure the pain of adult circumcision raises the possibility that they would have been open to making Israel’s God their own chief deity. This action might have eliminated the primary divine objection to intermarriage, and some subsequent history might have gone differently.

Joseph marrying the daughter of the priest of On (41:45; arranged by Pharaoh, but emphasized again in 41:50), Moses’s ties with the household of Jethro/Reuel (Exod 2:21; 3:1; 18:10-12; Num 10:29), and Abram’s relationship with Melchizedek (Gen 14:18-20) all reveal a different way of relating to Gentiles. These examples offer positive models for relating to other peoples, as well as for relating to those who are initially outsiders to our faith. These models are quite different from the behavior of Simeon and Levi.

Unfortunately, the chief concern of Simeon and Levi was not these Hivites’ conversion, but their destruction. At this point, it is questionable whether Simeon and Levi were “converted” (or, more accurately, serving the God of Israel) themselves. Some of Jacob’s family members themselves were serving foreign gods, something that Jacob may have addressed fully only after matters had gone so far (35:2).

The narrator does not envision their slaughter of male Shechemites as holy war prefiguring Israel’s later invasion of Canaan. Jacob later restricts the blessings of Simeon and Levi because of their cruel anger and killing in 49:5-7, where he describes their behavior as killing “a man,” perhaps an allusion to Lamech’s words in 4:23, and/or perhaps alluding to the prohibition of shedding a “man’s” blood in 9:6. The violence is not a precursor of later Israel conquering Canaan (see http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-i-limiting-factors/; http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-ii-switching-sides/; http://www.craigkeenerhttp://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-iii-gods-ideal/.com/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-iii-gods-ideal/). It is the equivalent instead of slaughtering converts who came to the side of Israel, such as the family of Rahab, something later Israel knew better than to do. (When Saul slaughters Gibeonites, who merely had a treaty with Israel, God was angry; see 2 Sam 21:1-2. Similarly, the slaughter of Benjamites in Judges 20—21 expressed the sorry moral state of Israel at that time; see http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-benjamites-i-benjamins-depravity-judges-191-2028/; http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-benjamites-ii-merciless-anarchy-judges-2029-2125/.)

Whereas the Hivites hoped to share Israel’s prosperity (34:23), Jacob’s sons plunder all that belonged to these Hivites (34:28), including their wives and children (34:29), presumably for slaves. Simeon and Levi undoubtedly had help in carrying out their genocide. (Jacob’s household also included many men in addition to his sons [30:43; 32:5, 7], although Genesis naturally spotlights mainly his sons [e.g., 42:3], and it is possible that hired workers later returned to northern Syria during the famine of Gen 43:1.) Nevertheless, Simeon and Levi organized the attack and were most responsible for it (34:25, 30; 49:5-7). Jacob’s sons, probably more than just these two, plundered the city (34:27).

On reason that Jacob complains about their action is because of fear (34:30-31). Even after that fear is resolved (35:5), Jacob condemns their violence in his inspired blessings (49:5-7). They had made him stink to the residents of the land (34:30), an expression that, when used figuratively, was sometimes used of someone making their entire group detestable to someone more powerful (Exod 5:21; 1 Sam 13:4; though one could also make oneself detestable, as in 1 Sam 27:12; 2 Sam 10:6; 16:21).

Abraham’s descendants were to be a blessing to the nations, but Simeon and Levi proved to be instead a curse. Jacob’s son Joseph, however, would soon become a blessing to Egypt, Canaan, and many others (Gen 45:5, 7; 50:20). More of the promised blessing to the nations was on the way.

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Facing the past: preparing for Esau’s wrath—Genesis 32-33

Part 2: God’s protection

Jacob’s departure from (Gen 28:12) and return to (32:1) the promised land is framed by angelic revelations. The angelic camps (32:2) will prove particularly important because, having just escaped Laban, Jacob must now face Esau—who is coming with 400 men (32:7). Before Jacob can face Esau, he needs spiritual help; he reminds God of his promise (32:12).

A desperate prayer

Reminding God of the promise to make Jacob’s descendants innumerable, like sand on the seashore (32:12), invokes the promise to Abraham via Isaac’s line (22:17), to which he is heir (27:29; 28:4). But it also evokes God’s promise to him years earlier at Bethel, when God said that his descendants would be like the dust of the earth (28:14), again evoking the promise to Abram (13:16).

Although God had not forgotten, Jacob’s desperate prayer is right to note that Jacob has returned at the Lord’s command and in light of the Lord’s promise (Gen 32:9, 12). God’s words provide the basis for our faith. He also reminds God that God has been the God of his father Abraham and Isaac (32:9). (Analogously but far more fully, we depend on the God who is the God of our elder brother and Lord, Jesus Christ. Thus we pray in the name of Jesus, on the basis of being his.)

A divine encounter

Jacob understands that the spiritual battle must come first; he cannot face Esau, whom he cheated from a blessing, without being sure of God’s blessing. Jacob struggles with a figure all night; Jacob needs blessing, and tenaciously perseveres in seeking it (32:26); whereas he used his physical prowess in 29:10 to impress Rachel, he uses it here to prevail with God (32:24-26).

Many features of this narrative appear obscure today. Why does this figure have to leave when dawn comes (32:24-26)? Perhaps some angels were sent mainly as messengers in dreams (cf. 28:12), active only when people would not see them in daylight? Further, why does the figure disable Jacob’s thigh only when he needs to depart (32:25), since he presumably had the power to do it earlier? Possibly the disabling of Jacob’s thigh in 32:25 demonstrates the greater power the figure had all along; possibly it also might imply the certainty of the promise to Jacob (cf. this custom for swearing oaths in 24:2, 9; 47:29).

Somewhat less obscure is the identity of his fellow wrestler. Given the context of angelic camps, this is undoubtedly an angel (so Hos 12:4). In this case, however, it is not merely any angel but the angel of the Lord (Gen 32:28-30). That is why the angel can speak of him as having persisted with God (32:28; the term means not that he defeated God but that he exerted himself and did not give up). That the angel will not give his name (32:29) convinces Jacob that he has seen God (32:30).

When Jacob had gotten the blessing that his father intended for Esau, he lied about his name (27:18-19, 24). Here, when asked his name, he tells the truth, and the angel of the Lord gives him a new name and a new blessing (32:27-28). Often God makes us face our past before we can be ready for our future, and that was also the case for Jacob.

Jacob names the place “Peniel,” he says, “because I saw God face to face” (32:30). Elohim, the term translated here as “God,” sometimes could apply to angels, but Jacob means more than that, referring to the angel who represents the divine presence (cf. Judg 6:21-23; 13:21-23). Jacob has seen the Lord face to face and lived, just as Moses will in Exod 33:11; Deut 34:10.

The outcome

Jacob sees Esau’s face like the face of God (33:10); Jacob had just seen God’s face in some sense (32:30), and now he experiences the result of that encounter in seeing Esau’s favor (cf. 1 Sam 29:9; 2 Sam 19:27; Gal 4:14).

Esau runs to meet Jacob (33:4), an action that often connotes eagerness (18:2; 24:28-29; 29:12-13). He also falls on Jacob’s neck and weeps (33:4), behavior that also could signal special affection (46:29; cf. 50:1), as at a reunion after many years (45:14; cf. also kissing and weeping in 45:15; 48:10).

Jacob wants Esau to take his gift (33:8-11). This may be partly because he has taken something more important from Esau and wants to make some restitution for reconciliation. It may also be partly because Esau cannot receive a gift from him and afterward mistreat him; giving and receiving gifts, like eating together, could presumably establish covenant relations. What Jacob gives Esau is a significant portion of his wealth (32:14-15), but the Lord who had prospered him despite Laban cheating him (31:6-9) would supply for him again.

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Facing the past: preparing for Esau’s wrath—Genesis 32

Part 1: Strategizing

Rebekah had promised to call Jacob when his brother’s anger subsided (27:45), but he had never received such word from her. (Whether she has passed away in the meantime is not clear; some time after Jacob returns to the land, her nurse Deborah apparently is with Jacob’s family and passes away in 35:8.) Again, although Jacob strategizes as best as he can, ultimately he can trust only God’s call and promise of protection (31:3).

Jacob has reason to fear; Esau is coming with four hundred men (32:6), which is no ordinary welcoming party. This was larger than cities in the region often fielded as armies; it appears larger than Abram’s army that defeated hostile kings (14:14). (Abram did have other allies with him besides his 318 servants, so possibly Abram’s total force was larger, but if so, probably it was not much larger.) (Indeed, Esau’s army may even include descendants of Abram’s force, who were members of his household. Perhaps Esau, learning that Jacob had a great company with him (32:5), wanted to be prepared; they had not parted on ideal terms.

Strategizing

Jacob strategizes as best as he can to salvage as much as possible if things go badly (32:7-8; 33:1-2), as well as doing his best to ensure a happier outcome (32:13-21; 33:3). Preparing as well as praying is not unbelief; it is common sense. One may compare David taking five smooth stones (1 Sam 17:40); he knew that God would give Goliath into his hands (17:46), but he did not know if he would fell him on the first shot. Likewise David sent gifts to the elders of Judah in 1 Sam 30:26, while also waiting for God to exalt him (Prov 18:16; 21:14). Likewise, the apostles replaced Judas while waiting for the Spirit to come (Acts 1:15-26).

Jacob arranges his wives and children in the hope that if trouble does come, some, especially Rachel and Joseph, can escape (Gen 32:7-8, 22-23). Does Jacob have good reason to fear harm to his wives and children? Conquerors more often enslaved than killed women and children; slaves were considered part of the plunder. It seems likelier, therefore, that his wives and daughters would at most be enslaved, though in a worst case scenario slaughter was possible. Because Esau’s wives had been an issue with his parents, and a reason for Jacob being sent abroad, he might prefer to kill Jacob and seize his wives. As for Jacob and his sons, Jacob’s birthright would not outlive him if both he and his sons were dead.

The gifts Jacob plans to offer Esau are huge, and far more than what most people had. In the long run they were not worth as much as the blessing, but on a merely earthly level—what Esau seems to value—they might appear to be more than what Jacob had taken from Esau. Esau would not be likely to harm the gift-bearers in front, even if he was angry with Jacob; and the gifts were calculated to assuage his anger (Prov 21:14). The four hundred men could well be servants in Esau’s household. After twenty years (Gen 31:41), Esau probably de facto controls much of Isaac’s wealth at this point, something that Isaac himself might approve and that Jacob would not contest. But if the men are allies, they would want plunder from the expedition; the gifts would satisfy any obligations on Esau’s part, allowing him to repay, at no cost to himself, any who had joined him.

But Jacob knows that strategy alone is not enough; he must have the help of God. This is the subject of the next installment.

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Laban catches up with fleeing Jacob—Genesis 31

Jacob takes his family and flees toward Canaan without informing his father-in-law. Why does Jacob leave Laban secretly? Although Laban claims that he would have sent Jacob away with a celebration (31:27), clearly Laban has not been willing to let Jacob go. Jacob expects that Laban would send him away empty (31:42) and even forcibly take back his daughters (31:31). The language of “fleeing” (31:20-22, 27) normally connotes at least strongly perceived danger, such as when Jacob fled to Haran from Esau (27:43; 35:1, 7).

Even now Laban would have harmed him had God not spoken on Jacob’s behalf (31:29)—though this may be partly because of the alleged theft of his gods, since Jacob can appeal to the kin’s recognition that this pursuit was not justifiable otherwise (31:36-37). (Could Laban’s relatives be expected to side with Jacob here? My wife Médine tells me of similar situations in Africa, where respectable kin judging an intrafamily case will sometimes evaluate a situation fairly. Their own reputation for wisdom and fairness is at stake in such cases.)

How can Jacob hope to succeed in his escape? Jacob cannot hope, with his flocks and herds with him (cf. later Israel leaving Egypt), to outpace Laban if he pursues. Although Jacob waits until Laban is several days’ journey away with his flocks (31:19, 22), if Laban decides to pursue him there will be little doubt which way Jacob has gone, and no way to keep such a massive caravan secret. Jacob is loaded down with children and flocks; Laban and his relatives can pursue with faster animals.

So why does Jacob even attempt to escape with his flocks? Jacob will lose everything if he goes away on Laban’s terms; nor can he simply wait for Laban’s death, for Laban now has sons who will inherit his property (31:1). Still, Jacob risks violence if he goes, and that risk seems higher than the probability of reaching Canaan safely. So why does he go? God has told him to return home (31:13). Jacob and his wives understand that only God can protect them, and that is in fact what happens (31:24, 42). (That an angry Esau awaits him if he escapes Laban may be another incentive to depend solely on God; see chaps. 32—33, esp. 32:6.)

Laban pursues and “overtakes” Jacob (31:25), the sort of dramatic language used for Joseph’s steward overtaking his brothers (44:4, 6, though the hostility there is feigned) and Pharaoh’s army pursuing Israel (Exod 14:9; 15:9). Catching up with Jacob, he declares openly that he would have harmed him had not God restrained him in a dream (Gen 31:29). Jacob now experiences the same sort of protection through a potential enemy’s dream that his grandparents had experienced with Abimelech (20:3-7)!

Although Jacob returns to Canaan partly because of God’s promise and command (28:13, 15; 31:13), Laban claims that Jacob left because he longed for his father’s household (31:30). This explanation is not completely false, but Laban has a reason for attributing such motives to Jacob: Jacob will accuse Laban of exploiting him (31:38-42), and Laban protects his honor by attributing different motives to Jacob (Jacob’s kin ties, which Jacob had mentioned in a more conciliatory conversation in 30:25). Laban also guards his honor by making sure that he does not appear weak for not attacking Jacob; this was because of God’s voice in 31:29 and because he would not risk harming his daughters and grandchildren in 31:43. So he settles for making sure that Jacob, who is leaving anyway, cannot come back to cause him more trouble (31:52).

Sometimes there are multiple reasons for something. In this case, Jacob could not have hoped to escape apart from God’s promise and call. God proved faithful in fulfilling this promise. But now that Laban would release him and Jacob would return to Canaan, he had another matter to face: Esau. (Next installment.)

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Battle of wits: Laban and Jacob—Genesis 31

Jacob and his father-in-law competed in a culture that valued cunning. While Laban seemed to get the better end of the deal at the beginning, Jacob came out far ahead in the end.

Jacob and his wives believe that God has given Laban’s flocks to them (Gen 31:9, 16); Laban, by contrast, protests that all Jacob’s wealth really is Laban’s (31:43). So should we feel badly for Laban? Not really. Although Laban’s sister Rebekah had instructed her son Jacob in some deception for a good cause of sorts, Jacob had learned treachery especially from Laban himself. I’m not endorsing the treachery, but that was Jacob’s context in Mesopotamia, and he learned to play the game better than his tutor.

Remember that Laban tricked Jacob into working an extra seven years for Rachel. Afterward, Laban eagerly embraced a deal that he expects will keep himself prosperous and Jacob poor (30:32-34)—and some ten times changed Jacob’s wages in an effort to remain prosperous at Jacob’s expense (31:7, 41). Jacob worked hard for him and suffered much hardship (31:6, 38-42). God defended Jacob, specifically recognizing that Laban had been exploitively mistreating him (31:12).

But while the narrative is partly about justice and injustice, it is also about God being with Jacob. He is with Jacob not because Jacob treated Laban nobly, but because of patriarchal blessing (27:28-29; 28:3-4), because God had revealed himself to this descendant of Abraham (28:12-15), and because Jacob had vowed to him (28:16-22). God continues to convert people from unchurched, non-Christian backgrounds, including myself; we embrace a new heritage in Christ. But those who have a Christian heritage should not take this privilege lightly. Sometimes God blesses us for the sake of those who have gone before us. In the same way, we want God to bless our children on account of our prayers; we trust him to care for them because of his love for us as well as his love for them, even before some of them find their own mature walk with him.

We repeatedly learn that the Lord was with Jacob (28:15; 31:3, 5). Even Laban’s now lessened blessings had previously flourished because of Jacob (30:27, 30), just as God later blessed whatever Joseph touched (39:3, 23). Laban had multiple reasons not to want Jacob to leave! From this we may learn that what matters most in life is God’s blessing. As in Jacob’s case, this does not exempt us from hardship or from being mistreated. The blessings take different forms in our different lives. But we can be grateful for the many blessings we do experience in this life and even more fully in the promised world to come.

Meanwhile, those who live by deception also fall by deception; the deceptions that Laban has fostered now come back to haunt him. As Jacob had gotten the birthright deceptively, Rachel steals her father’s teraphim, which may relate to the inheritance rights (which she seizes in place of Laban’s sons; cf. 31:1). Rachel steals the teraphim, but Jacob “steals” (the same Hebrew verb) the heart of Laban (lev Lavan) by fleeing without telling him (31:20). Why Jacob felt the need to flee secretly will be the subject of our next study.

Victory ultimately belongs not to one who outwits others, or to the strong and cunning, though they may have an advantage in the short run. In the long run, victory belongs to those to whom the Lord gives it (1 Sam 17:47; Prov 21:31).