The ancient Hebrews thought that a wild animal’s offspring would look like whatever the mother was viewing as she was mounted during sex. Therefore, if she had sex at night, her offspring would be black, and if she was viewing something polka-dotted, the offspring would be polka-dotted.
Jacob, tending uncle Laban’s herds, bargains for all of the spotted and speckled goats in the herd as a form of payment. Laban agrees, and then removes all of the spotted and speckled livestock so that Jacob will be empty-handed. Not to be outdone, Jacob places black-and-white striped sticks in front of the mating livestock and creates a herd of spotted and speckled sheep that he can call his own. Having built his wealth, and tired of Laban, he leaves town unannounced.
On their way out the door, Rachel decides to help herself to all of Laban’s “household gods” – figurines used in idol worship, but also as a symbol of family leadership and property. A few days into their journey, a red-hot uncle Laban catches up to Jacob and company in search of his Gods.
Jacob says that he did not steal, and that any man who did deserves death. Rachel, the thief, places the idols in a saddlebag and sits on them. When the search party comes to look for the figurines, she says she cannot stand because she is menstruating. The search party then leaves her tent.
This passage is interesting to me for two reasons: first, the Jacob of the passage is ethical compared to the Jacob who stole from Esau twenty years earlier. Second, oral storytellers must have had a great time talking about the false-God idol figurines being defiled by an unclean woman.
Convinced that Jacob did not steal, Laban forms a truce with him. They build a small stone border, representative of the border between Ancient Israel and Aram, thus creating the legend of how that border came to be. Jacob is now free with his twelve sons, patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Speaking of Israel, Jacob has his name changed to Israel by God, or one of God’s representatives, after a fisticuff.
The twelve tribes of Israel, headed by Jacob’s twelve children, are thought to be a prime example of revisionist history and eponym. J.R. Porter notes in his Illustrated Guide to the Bible that many of these tribes existed long before they were given names through the Genesis legend. This is to say, for example, the tribe of Gad may not have been named after Jacob’s son, Gad. Rather, because there was a tribe of Gad already in existence, biblical authors named one of Jacob’s sons Gad to make an origin legend.
Now that Jacob is working his way home, the only thing in his way is Esau – his brother who, 20 years ago, threatened to kill him. Esau now has an army of 400 men… what will come of this?
Still loving your grasp of these stories, Carter, though not in the same way Rachel grasped the household gods. A Jewish friend of mine when visiting in Jerusalem was cleverly tricked to buying a sweater from a 12-year-old Iranian vendor at a souvenir stand. When my friend said to the boy, “That was very clever; why did you do that?” the boy responded, “Your father do it to my father; now I do it to you!” What the boy had in mind was this particular story between Laban and Jacob, though the boy’s perspective was that Jacob had stolen Laban’s sheep. What is so difficult for us Americans to understand is that modern-day descendants of these warring cultures continue to see these stories as if they happened last week. We haven’t been around long enough to have cultivated that kind of deep-seated hostility thousands of years old. Keep up the fascinating appropriation of these ancient tales, Sir!