\nThe
\ncharacters in this story don’t emerge from a vacuum. \u00a0Their story has
\nbeen going on for quite a while by the time we get to this part of
\nGenesis. \u00a0Jacob, you may remember, was the second born of a set of
\ntwins who infuriated his brother by stealing both his brother’s
\nbirthright and their father’s final blessing. \u00a0In order to avoid
\nbeing murdered by his twin brother, and at their mother’s advice, he
\nwent to live with her family.<\/p>\n
The
\nfirst person he encountered when he arrived was a beautiful woman at
\na well (which is Biblical foreshadowing for \u2026. marriage) who
\nhappened to be his cousin Rachel. \u00a0Her father Laban was his mother’s
\nbrother. \u00a0This is not presented as an issue. \u00a0Jacob wants to marry
\nRachel, and Laban says he has to work for him for 7 years in order to
\npay off her bride-price. \u00a0So, besotted, Jacob does. \u00a0After seven
\nyears there is a wedding and a wedding night, and when he wakes up in
\nthe morning Jacob discovers that it is Rachel’s sister Leah in his
\nbed. \u00a0He objects \u2013 rather strongly. \u00a0Laban comes up with some weak
\nexplanation about not being able to marry off the younger sister
\nfirst and then suggests that Jacob can marry Rachel too, if he’ll
\nsimply spend one week with Leah first and agree to work for him for
\nanother 7 years.<\/p>\n
It
\nturns out, in case you couldn’t figure this out yourself, that
\nsisters make super terrible sister wives. \u00a0I bet you were able to
\nfigure that out on your own though. \u00a0Leah and Rachel spent years
\ntrying to fight with each other for Jacob’s attention, and that
\nincluded a fairly elongated \u201cbaby war\u201d in which each tried to
\noutdo the other in producing offspring for Jacob. \u00a0If you wanted to
\nknow, Leah won, although Rachel remained Jacob’s favorite. \u00a0After the
\nnext 7 years of labor had been completed, Jacob made a deal with
\nLaban to stay on for a while longer in order to leave with some herds
\nof his own. \u00a0At that point both Laban and Jacob did everything they
\ncould to trick each other into getting the worst possible deal.
\nJacob was a trickster, Laban was a trickster, and neither of them
\ntreated each other well. \u00a0On the whole, Laban treated Jacob more
\nroughly than Jacob treated him. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Finally,
\nabout 21 years after arriving on his uncle’s doorstep \u2013 and
\napparently while his uncle was as far from home as possible, Jacob
\npacked up his wives, his children, his herds, and his possessions and
\nheaded back home (uncertain about if his brother still wanted to kill
\nhim). \u00a0<\/p>\n
So
\nnow we’re caught up \u2013 as long as we remember that when they packed
\neverything up to leave, Rachel took the family idols with them and
\nJacob didn’t know about it. \u00a0 What were the family idols? \u00a0Well,
\nthey’re also called the family gods. \u00a0They were physical
\nrepresentations of gods used in some sort of ritual worship, usually
\nat an at-home altar. \u00a0In addition to being items to which one
\ndirected one’s prayers, they were also thought to protect the family
\nand its good fortune. \u00a0That is, if they were lost or stolen, it was
\nassumed that the LUCK of the family went with them. \u00a0While the Bible
\nsuggests that Jacob and Laban prospered because God was with Jacob,
\nRachel may not have shared that assumption.<\/p>\n
In
\nthe story that precedes this one in Genesis, Leah and Rachel discuss
\nhow their father cheated them by not giving them their portion of
\ntheir bride prices, and it is also possible that Rachel just took the
\nidols to counteract that, or to bother her father, or because she was
\nscared and wanted their protection, or maybe she was just greedy. \u00a0I
\ndo think, on the basis of the stories of Genesis and what they say
\nand what they don’t say, that Laban was probably an abusive parent
\nand employer. \u00a0Furthermore, by the story Genesis tells, Jacob himself
\nisn’t really converted to YHWH worship yet. \u00a0That will happen on this
\njourney back into the land, on the night when he is said to have
\n\u201cwrestled with an angel\u201d and gets renamed Israel. \u00a0It thus seems
\nunlikely that Jacob’s wives would be monotheistic at this point, and
\nwhatever other reasons Rachel had for taking the household idols,
\nlikely she thought they’d be a source of protection for their family.<\/p>\n
Laban
\nwas furious when he found out and he brought a war party with him to
\ngo after the family. \u00a0It isn’t clear if he would have gone if it were
\nnot for the family idols, but it sort of sounds like he is most upset
\nabout the idols and not the loss of his children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n
The
\nstory gives us just enough geography to know that the place Jacob,
\nLeah, and Rachel were staying was INSIDE the boundaries of what would
\none day be ancient Israel. It was just far enough inside that the
\nplace Laban slept the night before he caught up with them was inside
\ntoo. \u00a0This is significant because it tells us this is both an OLD OLD
\nstory and one that got edited as they years went by. \u00a0In the early
\ndevelopment of understanding YHWH, there was a time when it was
\nassumed that YHWH’s powers only existed within the boundaries of the
\nPromised Land. \u00a0Genesis tells us that Jacob had a dream involving a
\nmessage from God on his way out of the land, and Laban has one right
\nafter he crosses into it. \u00a0It is as if God is limited by those
\nboundaries. \u00a0The understanding of where the boundaries would BE
\nhowever was defined by political boundaries that existed centuries
\nlater, and the clues the text gives us imply those boundaries. \u00a0Isn’t
\nthe Bible fun?<\/p>\n
OK.
\n So Laban has a dream in which he is warned not to speak harshly to
\nJacob which is most significant because it reminds us that people
\nused to think that God had boundaries. \u00a0Although, let’s be honest.
\nPeople still think that. \u00a0It is remarkable how people think about
\nchurches and other places of worship as more \u201choly\u201d or more
\n\u201cfilled with God\u201d than other places. \u00a0When he does catch up with
\nthe next generation of his family, Jacob is HORRIFIED as his
\naccusations and responds with surety that no one has done what he is
\naccusing them of. \u00a0That is, Jacob thinks Laban is falsely accusing
\nthem \u2013 with good reason based on their history \u2013 and grandiosely
\noffers a death penalty for the one who has the idols because he is SO
\nSURE they don’t have them.<\/p>\n
This
\nis a problem for Rachel. \u00a0Nothing of her motivation is explained in
\nthe text but it seems clear that she decided she didn’t want to die.
\nShe thinks fast and she comes up with a plan, \u00a0she enacts it, and it
\nworks. \u00a0She lives, her father goes home, and all is well, except
\nmaybe for the idols. \u00a0The plan itself, however, is proof of how
\nlittle power she otherwise had. \u00a0She used what she had \u2013 her
\nfemininity and how it was treated in her culture \u2013 to save her own
\nhide.<\/p>\n
The
\nplan was super simple: she put the idols underneath her and she told
\nher father she was menstruating. \u00a0Was she? \u00a0That’s completely unclear
\nand likely irrelevant. \u00a0However, she SAID she was. \u00a0By the customs of
\nthe time, no man shouldn’t have been in her tent while she was
\nmenstruating, and he violated that cultural expectation by examining
\nthe rest of her tent. \u00a0He wasn’t going to push any further though,
\nand he left. \u00a0By putting the idols underneath her AND coming up with
\na valid reason not to get up, Rachel saved her own life and got to
\nkeep the idols she’d wanted to begin with. \u00a0She used what she had \u2013
\nfear of menstruating women and an assurance that no one would check
\nher on that \u2013 to subvert the power of her father.<\/p>\n
However,
\nshe also desecrated the idols. \u00a0It sort of doesn’t matter if she
\nactually was menstruating on them or not, the implication is enough.
\nIt may be that this story has multiple intentions and denigrating the
\npower of idols is one of them. \u00a0By the time this story was written
\ndown the people knew the Ten Commandments, including the one about
\nnot making idols. \u00a0It was clear that YHWH was not to be represented
\nin physical form, and Walter Brueggemann says that this is so that
\npeople can’t pick up the idol, move it around, put it where they want
\nit, and have the sense that they control YHWH. \u00a0YHWH is not a God who
\nis controlled by humans. \u00a0This story, which discusses menstruating on
\nidols seems like a very effective reminder to those who weren’t YHWH
\nworshippers about the relative weakness of their gods. <\/p>\n
The
\nstory also functions as a story about the formation of the national
\nboundaries. \u00a0It claims that the Eastern boundary of Israel was first
\ncreated by a covenant between Laban and Jacob, and that as such it is
\nalmost inherent. \u00a0<\/p>\n
It
\nis also a good story \u2013 it keeps our attention pretty well. \u00a0Sadly
\nthough, this is the last interaction that Leah and Rachel have with
\ntheir father. \u00a0Rachel is left sitting alone in her tent while the
\ncovenant is formed and her father leaves again. \u00a0While Jacob and his
\nfamily are safe, and while Laban was likely an awful father, there is
\nsome lingering sadness at the end.<\/p>\n
The
\nbiggest clue in this story that something is WRONG isn’t that Jacob
\ndecides to leave while Laban is far away, and no one in the household
\ntells Laban for THREE DAYS. \u00a0That would indicate they thought they
\nwere protecting the vulnerable from the one who was doing them harm.
\nJacob got Rachel and Leah, as well as his family, out of an unsafe
\nhome for them.<\/p>\n
Rachel
\ntried to take something with her for protection along the way, and it
\nbecame the excuse by which her father almost killed them all. \u00a0In
\nthat moment Laban sounds like an abusive partner who will kill their
\npartner rather than let them leave, and Laban’s dream is the only
\nthing that held him back. \u00a0Rachel survived, and likely they ALL
\nsurvived, because of her quick thinking and willingness to use what
\nshe had.<\/p>\n
Many
\nwomen throughout history have been used and abused by powerful men.
\nFurthermore, many PEOPLE throughout history have been used and abused
\nby those with more power than they had. \u00a0Some, like Rachel, use
\neverything they have, everything in their power, every subversive
\naction in the world to get out. \u00a0Sometimes they succeed. \u00a0May God
\ncontinue to guide those who seek safety, and may those who need
\nsafety keep Rachel’s wits about them! \u00a0Amen<\/p>\n
– <\/p>\n
Rev. Sara E. Baron<\/p>\n
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady<\/p>\n
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305<\/p>\n
Pronouns: she\/her\/hershttp:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n