The
characters in this story don’t emerge from a vacuum.  Their story has
been going on for quite a while by the time we get to this part of
Genesis.  Jacob, you may remember, was the second born of a set of
twins who infuriated his brother by stealing both his brother’s
birthright and their father’s final blessing.  In order to avoid
being murdered by his twin brother, and at their mother’s advice, he
went to live with her family.

The
first person he encountered when he arrived was a beautiful woman at
a well (which is Biblical foreshadowing for …. marriage) who
happened to be his cousin Rachel.  Her father Laban was his mother’s
brother.  This is not presented as an issue.  Jacob wants to marry
Rachel, and Laban says he has to work for him for 7 years in order to
pay off her bride-price.  So, besotted, Jacob does.  After seven
years there is a wedding and a wedding night, and when he wakes up in
the morning Jacob discovers that it is Rachel’s sister Leah in his
bed.  He objects – rather strongly.  Laban comes up with some weak
explanation about not being able to marry off the younger sister
first and then suggests that Jacob can marry Rachel too, if he’ll
simply spend one week with Leah first and agree to work for him for
another 7 years.

It
turns out, in case you couldn’t figure this out yourself, that
sisters make super terrible sister wives.  I bet you were able to
figure that out on your own though.  Leah and Rachel spent years
trying to fight with each other for Jacob’s attention, and that
included a fairly elongated “baby war” in which each tried to
outdo the other in producing offspring for Jacob.  If you wanted to
know, Leah won, although Rachel remained Jacob’s favorite.  After the
next 7 years of labor had been completed, Jacob made a deal with
Laban to stay on for a while longer in order to leave with some herds
of his own.  At that point both Laban and Jacob did everything they
could to trick each other into getting the worst possible deal.
Jacob was a trickster, Laban was a trickster, and neither of them
treated each other well.  On the whole, Laban treated Jacob more
roughly than Jacob treated him.  

Finally,
about 21 years after arriving on his uncle’s doorstep – and
apparently while his uncle was as far from home as possible, Jacob
packed up his wives, his children, his herds, and his possessions and
headed back home (uncertain about if his brother still wanted to kill
him).  

So
now we’re caught up – as long as we remember that when they packed
everything up to leave, Rachel took the family idols with them and
Jacob didn’t know about it.   What were the family idols?  Well,
they’re also called the family gods.  They were physical
representations of gods used in some sort of ritual worship, usually
at an at-home altar.  In addition to being items to which one
directed one’s prayers, they were also thought to protect the family
and its good fortune.  That is, if they were lost or stolen, it was
assumed that the LUCK of the family went with them.  While the Bible
suggests that Jacob and Laban prospered because God was with Jacob,
Rachel may not have shared that assumption.

In
the story that precedes this one in Genesis, Leah and Rachel discuss
how their father cheated them by not giving them their portion of
their bride prices, and it is also possible that Rachel just took the
idols to counteract that, or to bother her father, or because she was
scared and wanted their protection, or maybe she was just greedy.  I
do think, on the basis of the stories of Genesis and what they say
and what they don’t say, that Laban was probably an abusive parent
and employer.  Furthermore, by the story Genesis tells, Jacob himself
isn’t really converted to YHWH worship yet.  That will happen on this
journey back into the land, on the night when he is said to have
“wrestled with an angel” and gets renamed Israel.  It thus seems
unlikely that Jacob’s wives would be monotheistic at this point, and
whatever other reasons Rachel had for taking the household idols,
likely she thought they’d be a source of protection for their family.

Laban
was furious when he found out and he brought a war party with him to
go after the family.  It isn’t clear if he would have gone if it were
not for the family idols, but it sort of sounds like he is most upset
about the idols and not the loss of his children and grandchildren.

The
story gives us just enough geography to know that the place Jacob,
Leah, and Rachel were staying was INSIDE the boundaries of what would
one day be ancient Israel. It was just far enough inside that the
place Laban slept the night before he caught up with them was inside
too.  This is significant because it tells us this is both an OLD OLD
story and one that got edited as they years went by.  In the early
development of understanding YHWH, there was a time when it was
assumed that YHWH’s powers only existed within the boundaries of the
Promised Land.  Genesis tells us that Jacob had a dream involving a
message from God on his way out of the land, and Laban has one right
after he crosses into it.  It is as if God is limited by those
boundaries.  The understanding of where the boundaries would BE
however was defined by political boundaries that existed centuries
later, and the clues the text gives us imply those boundaries.  Isn’t
the Bible fun?

OK.
So Laban has a dream in which he is warned not to speak harshly to
Jacob which is most significant because it reminds us that people
used to think that God had boundaries.  Although, let’s be honest.
People still think that.  It is remarkable how people think about
churches and other places of worship as more “holy” or more
“filled with God” than other places.  When he does catch up with
the next generation of his family, Jacob is HORRIFIED as his
accusations and responds with surety that no one has done what he is
accusing them of.  That is, Jacob thinks Laban is falsely accusing
them – with good reason based on their history – and grandiosely
offers a death penalty for the one who has the idols because he is SO
SURE they don’t have them.

This
is a problem for Rachel.  Nothing of her motivation is explained in
the text but it seems clear that she decided she didn’t want to die.
She thinks fast and she comes up with a plan,  she enacts it, and it
works.  She lives, her father goes home, and all is well, except
maybe for the idols.  The plan itself, however, is proof of how
little power she otherwise had.  She used what she had – her
femininity and how it was treated in her culture – to save her own
hide.

The
plan was super simple: she put the idols underneath her and she told
her father she was menstruating.  Was she?  That’s completely unclear
and likely irrelevant.  However, she SAID she was.  By the customs of
the time, no man shouldn’t have been in her tent while she was
menstruating, and he violated that cultural expectation by examining
the rest of her tent.  He wasn’t going to push any further though,
and he left.  By putting the idols underneath her AND coming up with
a valid reason not to get up, Rachel saved her own life and got to
keep the idols she’d wanted to begin with.  She used what she had –
fear of menstruating women and an assurance that no one would check
her on that – to subvert the power of her father.

However,
she also desecrated the idols.  It sort of doesn’t matter if she
actually was menstruating on them or not, the implication is enough.
It may be that this story has multiple intentions and denigrating the
power of idols is one of them.  By the time this story was written
down the people knew the Ten Commandments, including the one about
not making idols.  It was clear that YHWH was not to be represented
in physical form, and Walter Brueggemann says that this is so that
people can’t pick up the idol, move it around, put it where they want
it, and have the sense that they control YHWH.  YHWH is not a God who
is controlled by humans.  This story, which discusses menstruating on
idols seems like a very effective reminder to those who weren’t YHWH
worshippers about the relative weakness of their gods.

The
story also functions as a story about the formation of the national
boundaries.  It claims that the Eastern boundary of Israel was first
created by a covenant between Laban and Jacob, and that as such it is
almost inherent.  

It
is also a good story – it keeps our attention pretty well.  Sadly
though, this is the last interaction that Leah and Rachel have with
their father.  Rachel is left sitting alone in her tent while the
covenant is formed and her father leaves again.  While Jacob and his
family are safe, and while Laban was likely an awful father, there is
some lingering sadness at the end.

The
biggest clue in this story that something is WRONG isn’t that Jacob
decides to leave while Laban is far away, and no one in the household
tells Laban for THREE DAYS.  That would indicate they thought they
were protecting the vulnerable from the one who was doing them harm.
Jacob got Rachel and Leah, as well as his family, out of an unsafe
home for them.

Rachel
tried to take something with her for protection along the way, and it
became the excuse by which her father almost killed them all.  In
that moment Laban sounds like an abusive partner who will kill their
partner rather than let them leave, and Laban’s dream is the only
thing that held him back.  Rachel survived, and likely they ALL
survived, because of her quick thinking and willingness to use what
she had.

Many
women throughout history have been used and abused by powerful men.
Furthermore, many PEOPLE throughout history have been used and abused
by those with more power than they had.  Some, like Rachel, use
everything they have, everything in their power, every subversive
action in the world to get out.  Sometimes they succeed.  May God
continue to guide those who seek safety, and may those who need
safety keep Rachel’s wits about them!  Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 16. 2016