Out of the Frying Pan...

All was not well in Syria. Jacob, after six years of ill-treatment by Laban, realized that it wasn’t going to get any better. Laban wasn’t going to recognize him for all his hard, faithful service. On the contrary, Laban was simply going to continue to try to keep from having to pay Jacob anything, and then grudgingly end up paying him a great deal when God intervened. And after six years of losing at that game, Laban was so far from recognizing and rewarding Jacob that Jacob came to realize that Laban was coming near, or had actually come to, actual hatred of him.

And it wasn’t just coming from Laban, either. Leah and Rachel weren’t Laban’s only children. He had sons as well, and these sons had begun saying that Jacob had taken away their inheritance.

Now, this was not really quite true. It was true that over the past few years Laban’s flock had been dwindling while Jacob’s was expanding exponentially. But Laban, it was pointed out before, had had little before Jacob came, and after Jacob came, his flocks had increased greatly. Sure, Jacob had become rich while working for Laban, but Jacob hadn’t taken anything away from Laban that he hadn’t gotten for Laban in the first place. I imagine that the net value of Laban’s sons’ inheritance had probably not dropped at all.

At any rate, it began to look as though Syria might not be the place for Jacob to be anymore. And Jacob learned next that God Himself agreed with that assessment of the situation. He appeared to Jacob and reminded him of His promise, twenty years before, to get him home safely. It was now time to see that promise come to pass.

But there were two people he didn’t want to be unhappy with his decision: his two wives, Laban’s daughters. He sent for them to come to him while he was in the field and explained to them what had been going on between him and Laban and what God had told him and what he planned to do about it. He even strengthened his argument by telling them of a dream he’d had of seeing rams of the types he was supposed to get mating with ewes, and hearing God’s voice through the dream, telling him that He had seen what Laban was doing to him. He didn’t mention anything about what their brothers were saying.

He didn’t call for the two servant women, his other two wives, either. Jacob was a worshipper of the true God, but he was also a product of his culture, and didn’t even seem to think about the idea that they might have an opinion, or that he ought to talk to them, too, since their whole worlds were about to change as much as Rachel’s and Leah’s. They were servants and if he told them they were breaking up camp, then they’d just better start packing.

I doubt Jacob knew what to expect in answer from his wives. Would they be horrified at the prospect of leaving the only home they’d ever known? Would they argue about it? He had known his wives to disagree vehemently over the past thirteen years. What would happen now, when the stakes were high?

What happened was that they agreed with each other, and both agreed with Jacob. As it turned out, neither of them had ever really forgiven their father for using them as wages. (Go figure!)Somehow they didn’t seem to hold Jacob accountable for it, even though it had been Jacob’s idea in the first place at least in regards to Rachel. But they did blame Laban, and they weren’t at all unhappy with the idea that Jacob would take them away. At least, that's my take on their somewhat cryptic complaint about their father: "He has sold us, and completely used up our money!" There was nothing left for them in their father’s house, and it was absolutely right in their eyes that Jacob have the things he had from their father.

There was no two week notice for Laban. In fact, there was no notice at all. Jacob simply left, right then, without a word. One of the commentaries said that when it comes to nomadic peoples of the East, as Jacob was, an entire encampment could be broken up and it’s people on their way in a matter of hours. But in the short time it took for him to get ready to go, Rachel had time to secretly commit a crime against her father. She stole his household idols, probably not so much to worship them but so as to prove herself a member of Laban’s family should it ever again become advantageous to do so. It didn’t.

Jacob put his wives and children on camels—he was in a hurry, and wives and children walk more slowly than camels—and headed for home, his real home, the one he hadn’t seen for twenty years. He had no idea what Rachel had just done.

It took three days for Laban to find out about that Jacob was gone. And when he did, he was hopping mad. He took off after Jacob like a shot, but it still took him nearly a week before he caught up with his son-in-law/nephew/former employee. And just before he did, he got a message he did not expect.

The message was from God Himself. Laban did not worship God, though he had some knowledge of Him. God told him, “Don’t say anything to Jacob, good or bad!”

None of the commentaries said this, but as long as I have been acquainted with this story I have never thought that Laban actually obeyed this command. After all, when he caught up with Jacob, he had plenty to say. One of the things he said was that God had given him this command, and that this was why he was behaving as he was. In other words, he pretended his disobedience was obedience. However, there might have been a sort of obedience, too, because Laban may have been angry enough, and evil enough, to have killed Jacob otherwise. But I always did wonder what part of “say nothing,” Laban didn’t understand.

“What do you think you’re doing, taking off like this without giving me a chance to say goodbye?” Laban demanded, as if that’s what would have happened had Jacob announced his departure plans. “I could hurt you if I wanted to, but your God appeared to me last night and told me not to say anything to you. But why did you take my gods?”

“Because I thought you wouldn’t let me take Leah and Rachel with me; you’d have taken them away. But if you find anyone with your gods, that person will die.”

At this Laban began a careful and thorough search through everything Jacob had. Rachel had to do some pretty fast thinking, and she did it. She stowed the idols away in her camel saddle, and sat on the saddle. When her father came into her tent to search, she told him politely, “please excuse me for not getting up to greet you. I’m on my period.” I remember reading years ago (I don’t remember where) that Rachel was lying. She was receiving what she’d prophesied with Joseph’s name, and she couldn’t have been experiencing her monthly. Because of her crime, she was unable to tell her father the awesome news: she, Rachel, the barren one, was pregnant again!

Laban did not demand that Rachel get up. Her ploy worked and Laban went out again without having found what he was looking for.

Now Jacob was indignant. “Did you find anything? Bring it out and let’s see it!” Then he launched into a description of the hardships of his work as a shepherd, and as Laban’s hired shepherd particularly. He let Laban know all the times he went above and beyond the call of duty, and all the hard work he had done over the past 20 years. And then he accused Laban of changing his wages ten times to try to avoid having to give him anything, ending with, “God saw, and rebuked you,” referring to the message Laban had received from God the night before.

Laban then proposed a covenant. He wanted a promise from Jacob that he would neither mistreat Leah and Rachel nor take other wives in addition to them. It didn’t matter that Jacob had been married to Leah and Rachel for thirteen years, and Laban had had plenty of opportunity to observe how Jacob treated them. He must have thought that without him there as sort of a guard, Jacob might start treating them differently. But I doubt very seriously that this was a reasonable fear.

The other part of that covenant is really striking to me. They piled up a heap of stones as a memorial and each promised the other that they would never cross that heap to harm the other. That sounds to me more like a promise needed from avowed enemies than from blood relatives.

The commentaries pointed out something here I hadn’t noticed before: When Laban took the oath, he said, “May the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us (Genesis 31:53a).” Though he was an idolater, he was invoking God, possibly because he knew that Jacob would acknowledge no other god. That wasn’t the part that was new to me. What I didn’t realize was the difference between what Laban said here and what Jacob said: “So Jacob took an oath in the name of the Fear of his father Isaac (Genesis 32:53b).” Jacob spoke only of his own father. One of the commentaries suggested that it was because Laban had included Nahor, Abraham’s brother and his own grandfather, whose religion might not have been so pure, as Laban’s was not.

The next morning, Laban kissed his grandchildren goodbye and went home. There is no record, and little possibility, of his ever seeing them again.

Jacob also went on his way, and had another huge surprise: angels, a whole army of them! Now, there might be many armies of angels anywhere, but we wouldn’t know it. Angels, as powerful as they are, are generally simply invisible to the human eye. Or if people do see them, they don’t know they’re seeing them. But apparently for just this moment, God made Jacob able to see a whole regiment of them, and not disguised as humans. And Jacob named the place where he saw them Mahanaim, a word that in his language meant “two camps.” The commentaries were divided on just what Jacob was referring to here. Not that they disagreed; it seemed to be that they just weren’t sure. Two of them put forth both of two theories that are equally possible. Either the two camps referred to Jacob’s camp and the angels’ camp, or the angels were divided into two groups, one guarding in front of Jacob and another behind him.
What is clear is that Jacob was well-guarded. When God told Jacob He was going to get him safely home again, He meant it! And that was a very good thing, because Jacob had come out of the frying pan, but what about the fire?