And Yaakov walked away from Beirsheva and went toward Charan. (Genesis/Bereishit 28:10)

So begins this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei (“And he went out”, Genesis 28:10-32:3). Yaakov (“Jacob” in English) has to leave home because his twin brother Eisav (“Esau” in English) has been threatening to kill him as soon as their ailing father dies.¹

The family is dysfunctional. Eisav resents Yaakov for cheating him twice.² Their parents, Yitzchak (“Isaac” in English) and Rivkah (“Rebecca” in English), play favorites, as last week’s Torah portion, Toledot, reports:

When the boys grew up, Eisav became a man who knew how to hunt, a man of the outdoors; and Yaakov was a quiet man staying indoors. And Yitzchak loved Eisav, because of [the taste of] game in his mouth; but Rivkah loved Yaakov. (Genesis 25:27-28)

Furthermore, Rivkah and Yitzchak are not frank with one another. Yitzchak does not tell his wife what he plans to do in terms of deathbed blessings for his sons. Rivkah manipulates Yaakov into deceiving his blind father and steal the blessing he plans to give Eisav. (See my post Toledot: Rebecca Gets It Wrong.) Everyone in the family assumes that Yitzchak has the power to pass on the blessing he received from God.

After Eisav threatens to kill Yaakov, Rivkah urges her favorite son to flee to Charan, where her brother lives, until Eisav’s anger has faded. Then she announces to her husband that she could not bear it if Yaakov, like Eisav, took a Canaanite wife. She does not need to say more; Yitzchak himself has never left Canaan, but he knows of one place outside the land: Charan, where his father Avraham and his wife Rivkah came from. So he orders Yitzchak to go there. 

“… and take yourself a wife from there, from the daughters of Lavan, your mother’s brother” (Genesis 28:2).

Yaakov departs at once. He is over 40 years old, and this is the first time in his life he leaves his immediate family, and the land of Canaan.

Erecting a stone

On the way to Charan he encounters God in a transformative dream. (See my post Vayeitzei: The Place.)

And Yaakov woke up from his sleep, and he said: “Truly there is God in this place, and I, I did not know!” And he was awestruck, and he said: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than a house of God, and this is the gate of the heavens!” And Yaakov got up early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had set by his head, and he set it up as a matzeivah, and he poured oil on top of it. (Genesis 28:16-18)

matzeivah(מַצֵּבָה) = a tall upright stone used for a religious purpose, as a grave marker, or as a memorial to an important event.

Erecting a tall stone and anointing it with olive oil was an accepted way of acknowledging a god in the Ancient Near East. Although Yaakov is smaller than his huge twin Eisav, he is strong enough to manhandle a long slab of stone.

Then Yaakov vows that if God takes care of him until he returns,

“… then Y-H-V-H will be my god. And this stone, which I have set up as a matzeivah, will become a house of God, and from everything that you give to me, I will tithe a tenth for you.” (Genesis 28:21-22).

The matzeivah remains at the spot as a witness to Yaakov’s experience and a marker for fulfilling his vow when he returns.

Rolling a stone

And Yaakov picked up his feet and went to the land of the Easterners. And he looked around, and hey! A well was in the field. And hey! There were three flocks of sheep lying down near it, because from that well they watered the flocks. And there was a large stone on the mouth of the well. For when all the flocks were gathered there, then they rolled the stone off from the mouth of the well, and watered the sheep, and brought the stone back to its place over the mouth of the well. (Genesis 28:1-3)

The shepherds could have chosen a lighter covering for their well, something made with wood that anyone could lift. But instead they use a stone that is so heavy, they have to cooperate to roll it off the well. This would prevent strangers or natives from drawing water unless a large group of men is there to enforce fair distribution of a limited resource.³ (Perhaps it takes all day for groundwater to seep in and refill the well.)    

Yaakov greets the shepherds of the three flocks that have arrived so far, finds out they are from Charan, and asks about Lavan, whom they report is doing well. They add:

“And hey! His daughter Racheil is coming with the flock!” (Genesis 29:6) 

As Racheil (“Rachel” in English) leads her flock over, Yaakov tells the men:

“Hey, the day is still long, it’s not time to gather in the livestock [for the night]. Water the sheep and go pasture them!” (Genesis 29:7)

Yaakov was in charge of the sheep in his father’s household, so he knows what should be done. But to me it seems bossy to tell men whom one has just met that they are wasting time. Perhaps Yaakov wants them to water their sheep and leave, so that he will have a moment alone with Racheil while she is watering her flock.

The shepherds tell Yaakov that they always wait until everyone is there to roll the stone off the mouth of the well.

He was still speaking with them when Racheil came with the sheep that were her father’s, for she was a shepherdess. And when Yaakov saw Racheil, a daughter of his mother’s brother Lavan, and the flock of his mother’s brother Lavan, then Yaakob stepped forward and rolled the stone off from the mouth of the well, and he watered the flock of his mother’s brother Lavan. (Genesis 29:10)

How does he have the strength to roll a stone so heavy that normally it can only be budged by many men working together? Tur HaArokh answered: “The new hope he had been given through his dream about the ladder had left its mark also on his body.”⁴

Another answer appears in Or HaChayim: “This teaches us that unless Jacob had had divine assistance he could not have moved that stone.”⁵

He might also have inherited strength and stamina from his mother. About 60 years earlier, when Rivkah was a teenager in Charan, she was at the well when a stranger arrived with a train of camels. She offered him a drink of water. Then she ran back and forth pouring heavy pitchers of water into the watering-trough until all ten of the stranger’s camels had drunk their fill. The stranger ( whom Avraham had sent to find a bride for his son Yitzchak) was awed by her athletic feat. (See my post Chayei Sarah: Seizing the Moment, Part 1.)

Rivkah’s son Yaakov also performs an athletic feat at the well, then waters Racheil’s sheep.

Then Yaakov kissed Racheil, and he lifted up his voice and wept. And he told Racheil that he was her father’s kinsman, and that he was Rivkah’s son. And she ran and told her father. And when Lavan heard tidings of Yaakov, his sister’s son, then he ran to meet him, and he embraced him and kissed him, and brought him into his house. (Genesis 29:11-13)

So far, so good. Yaakov, who never considered marriage while he was in Canaan, is smitten with Racheil. Now marrying into Lavan’s family is no longer just his parents’ idea. But although Lavan probably expects as large a bride-price as Avraham’s steward brought for Rivkah, Yaakov has unaccountably neglected to put any gold, silver, or jewelry in his pack. (See my post Vayeitzei: Guilty Conscience for one explanation.) So Yaakov offers to work for his uncle for seven years as the bride-price for marrying Racheil.

And Yaakov served seven years for Racheil, but they were like a few days in his eyes, because of his love for her. (Genesis 29:20)

Blocked by a stone

Traditional Jewish commentary often takes symbolism to extremes. Many classic commentaries identify the well near Charan with the temple in Jerusalem, and the three flocks of sheep with the three pilgrimage festivals there—even though Jerusalem and its festivals have nothing to do with Yaakov’s story. Others propose that the well represents knowledge of the Torah, and the stone is the evil inclination that blocks people from drinking it in. Compared to these far-fetched analogies, Robert Alter’s comment is refreshing:

“If, as seems entirely likely, the well in the foreign land is associated with fertility and the otherness of the female body to the bridegroom, it is especially fitting that this well should be blocked by a stone, as Rachel’s womb will be ‘shut up’ over long years of marriage.”⁶

But I am intrigued by a Chassidic commentary that identifies the well and the stone in terms that could be applied to Yaakov’s feelings by the end of the month during which he leaves home, encounters God, and falls in love—all for the first time.

Kedushat Levi compares the well to the human heart, which longs to connect with God, but is blocked as if by a stone. “The large stone is the evil urge … preventing the flow of God’s blessing. … He rolled the stone off the mouth of the well means that he removed the stumbling-block from the heart that flows with prophecy.”⁷

Arthur Green added: “… our evil urge, that which causes the human ego to assert its own will, blocks us from that vision. Our strongest force in defeating it is that of joy.  When we open our hearts and rejoice … we overcome that need for self-assertion. Then divine blessing can flow upon us, even opening our hearts to the prophetic witness that is our true natural state of being.”⁸

While Yaakov is in Canaan, his “evil urge” is his jealousy of Eisav. Eisav is slated to get the larger inheritance of the firstborn son because he was born one minute before his twin brother. Furthermore, Eisav’s knack for hunting and cooking game wins their father’s love. So Yaakov cheats Eisav twice. He cannot let go of his jealousy until he is forced to leave Canaan, the inheritance, and Yitzchak. As soon as he is on the road, the heavy stone of Yaakov’s jealousy rolls away, and his heart opens. He has a vision and hears God in a dream, and the stone that lay by his head becomes his matzeivah for God. He falls in love with Racheil, and he rolls the stone off the well. Instead of continuing to dedicate his life to jealousy, Yaakov chooses a life of joy.

I always questioned the popular saying “Wherever you go, there you are”—with all the same problems you had before. It is true that we cannot erase the old experiences that shaped our personalities. Yet a big change in our lives can lead to psychological growth. Some of our old complexes can become healed scars instead of bleeding wounds, and we can move on.

In the portion Vayeitzei, Yaakov begins this process with the liberation of leaving home—leaving behind his manipulative mother, his detached father, and the unfair law of inheritance. Immediately he has stunning new experiences: encountering God, and falling in love. He changes. During the rest of his story in Genesis, he remains weighed down by mistrust and selfishness. But at least his jealousy and rivalry have rolled away, making a good life possible.

I, too, had a manipulative mother and a detached father, and I suffered from other types of unfairness when I was growing up. My liberation began when I escaped to college, and over many years the heavy stone rolled off my well. I still carry scars, but now love and a good life are not only possible for me, but a reality.

1. Genesis 27:41.
2. Genesis 27:34-36, referring to Genesis 25:29-34 and Genesis 27:5-27.
3. According to 19^th-century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the heavy covering means that the people who live there do not trust one another.
4. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (c. 1269 – c. 1343), Tur HaArokh, translated in www.sefaria.org.
5. Rabbi Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, 18^th century, translated in www.sefaria.org.
6. Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2019, p. 103.
7. Levi Yitshak of Berdyczow (1740-1809), Kedushat Levi, translated by Arthur Green,in Speaking Torah, Vol. 1, edited by Arthur Green, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2013, pp. 126-127.
8. Arthur Green, Speaking Torah, Vol. 1, p. 127.

And Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Charan. (Genesis 28:10)

The first verse in this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei (“And he went”, Genesis 28:10-32:3), sounds simple—until you consider the family Jacob is leaving behind in Beersheba.

In last week’s Torah portion, Toledot, Jacob cheated his twin brother, Esau (older by a minute), into trading his firstborn rights for a bowl of lentil stew.¹ Years later their father, Isaac, announced he would give his deathbed blessing to Esau, his favorite. The twins’ mother, Rebecca, talked Jacob, her own favorite, into impersonating his brother and stealing the blessing.²

When Esau found out, he vowed to kill his brother as soon as their father died. Rebecca urged Jacob to flee for his life, then maneuvered her husband into ordering Jacob to go to her old hometown in northern Mesopotamia and get a wife.³ At least Isaac gave Jacob a blessing of his own to send him off.⁴

Jacob turns his back on Isaac

What is Jacob thinking as he hikes north toward Charan? In my post Vayeitzei: Guilty Conscience, I argue that he might feel guilty about his deceptions—guilty enough to leave at once, without waiting for his wealthy father to give him a bride-price, pack animals, and a servant or two for the journey. Jacob does not even ask his father for a bag of silver; he arrives in Charan with nothing but his walking stick.

Besides guilt, Jacob may feel relief and a sense of freedom. For the first time in his life he is on his own, away from his remote father, his controlling mother, and his big, hairy, primitive brother.

On the first night of his journey Jacob lies down with his head on a stone, and dreams about a ramp or stairway from the ground to the heavens, with divine messengers ascending and descending on it.

And hey! God stood above him and said: “I am Y-H-V-H, god of Abraham your av, and god of Isaac. The land that you are lying on, I will give to you and to your descendants.” (Genesis 28:13)

av (אָב) = father; someone in the role of a father (usually God or the head of a household or clan).

Why does God put it that way? Abraham is Isaac’s father, and Isaac is Jacob’s father. Jacob and his grandfather Abraham never interact in the book of Genesis, probably because Isaac and Abraham were estranged.⁵ So Abraham was neither a nurturer, nor an authority figure, nor a role model for Jacob.

According to 18^th-century Rabbi Chayim ibn Attar, God means that Jacob is Abraham’s sole heir:

“The reason … was intended to emphasize that Esau had no share in the heritage of Abraham. The Torah here made Jacob the sole heir of Abraham. This heritage did not come to Jacob via his father Isaac but directly from his grandfather Abraham. … the fact that all the blessings of Abraham were transferred to Jacob excludes Esau as an heir.”⁶

According to 19^th-century Rabbi S.R. Hirsch, God means that Jacob is Abraham’s spiritual successor:

“Nowhere else in Scripture do we find such a thing that the grandfather is called ‘father,’ with the father himself mentioned right afterward as though he were a stranger. …Jacob truly was the successor of Abraham, with Isaac being only the intermediate link.  Spiritually, Abraham was Jacob’s father.”⁷

But according to 21^st-century Rabbi Shmuel Klitsner, it means Jacob wants Abraham’s God:

“… the Talmud records the observation … that in dreams, ‘a person is shown nothing if not the inner thoughts of his own heart’ (BT, Tractate Berakhot 55b). … It seems clear that in Jacob’s ‘inner thoughts of heart’ the Lord who will comfort him will be the Lord of Abraham his father. As for the God of Isaac (his genetic father), there is a missing relational adjective, as the very situation that begs comfort, Jacob’s precarious homeless state, is a result of his having betrayed the father-son relationship.”⁸

Does the phrase “god of Abraham your father” signal that only Jacob and his descendants will inherit what God promised to his grandfather Abraham (ibn Attar)? Or that Jacob will have the same relationship with God as Abraham (Hirsch)? Or that Jacob wants Abraham’s God rather than Isaac’s? (Klitsner)?

Does Jacob inherit Abraham’s blessings?

Chayim ibn Attar’s proposal is supported by the next words God says in Jacob’s dream:

“And your descendants will be like the dust of the land, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. And all the clans of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants.” (Genesis 28:14)

This statement echoes two of the blessings God gave to Abraham:

“All the land that you see, I give it to you and to your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth, in that if a man were able to count the dust of the earth, your descendants could also be counted.” (Genesis 13:15-16)

“I will bless those who bless you, and those who despise you I will curse, and all the clans of the earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:3) Thus God promises both Abraham and Jacob that their descendants will be as uncountable as the dust, that their descendants will own the land, and that they will become a blessing to everyone on earth. Jacob does indeed inherit Abraham’s blessings.

Is Jacob Abraham’s spiritual successor?

However, Hirsch’s proposal that Abraham, not Isaac, is Jacob’s spiritual father gets only weak support from the book of Genesis. Abraham hears God speak on twelve occasions in the book of Genesis. Isaac hears God speak once.⁹ And Jacob hears God speak three times: once during Jacob’s ladder dream at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, and twice when he returns to the same spot 20 or more years later.¹⁰ (Jacob also tells Leah and Rachel that God also spoke to him in a dream telling him to leave Charan and return to his native land,¹¹ but since he had already decided to go, he might have invented this dream in order to secure his wives’ consent.)

Jacob never experiences the intimacy Abraham has with God. Abraham and God have six conversations.¹² In one of these conversations, Abraham talks God into refraining from obliterating Sodom if the city has at least ten innocent men.¹³ Jacob hears God speak, but never answers. Once Jacob prays to God to rescue him, but God is silent.¹⁴

In addition to the conversations between Abraham and God, God speaks to Abraham another six times to deliver an order or a promise, or both.¹⁵ Abraham obeys all of God’s orders, even when God tests him by telling him to sacrifice his son Isaac.¹⁶ Jacob obeys God’s only order to him, to build an altar at Beit Eil.¹⁷

Furthermore, God cooperates with Abraham’s scams. Twice when Abraham arranges for his wife, Sarah, to be carried off to a king’s harem, God afflicts the king so he cannot have sex with her.¹⁸

In short, God spends a lot more time with Abraham than with Jacob, and the two of them have a real relationship. With Jacob, God is almost as distant as with Isaac.

Is Jacob the heir to Abraham’s God?

What about Klitsner’s proposal that Jacob wants Abraham’s god rather than Isaac’s?

Near the end of this week’s Torah portion, Jacob has left Charan and is heading to Canaan with his family, servants, and herds, when Lavan (his employer, uncle, cousin, and father-in-law) catches up with him in a mountain pass. Lavan accuses Jacob of stealing his daughters—Jacob’s wives. Jacob accuses Lavan of cheating him multiple times as his employer. Jacob concludes:

“Had not for the god of my father—the God of Abraham and the Pachad of Isaac—been for me, certainly now you would have sent me off empty-handed!” (Genesis 31:42)

pachad (פַּחַד) = terror.

Twenty years after he left home and dreamed of the ladder, Jacob now calls both Abraham and Isaac his father.

The two men set up stones to serve as a boundary, and they both swear not to cross it for any harmful purpose. Lavan says:

“May the God of Abraham and the God of Nachor judge between us—the God of their father.” (Genesis 31:53a)

Lavan is referring to a single god, Y-H-V-H, worshiped by the both Abraham and Nachor, their respective paternal grandfathers. We know that Abraham and his brother Nachor had the same god because earlier in Genesis Lavan and his father said Rebecca’s marriage to Isaac “went forth from Y-H-V-H” (Genesis 24:50).¹⁹

But Jacob swore by the Pachad of Isaac. (Genesis 31:53b)

Twice Jacob calls God the Pachad of Isaac. There is no indication in the book of Genesis that Isaac threatened Jacob, with a punishment from God or any other way. So Jacob must be thinking about the defining event in Isaac’s life, when God ordered Abraham to sacrifice him, and did not call it off until Abraham had bound his son on an altar and put a knife to his throat.²⁰

Jacob invokes Isaac’s God as a source of terror in order to make an implied threat against Lavan. But when he left home twenty years before, he did not want the Pachad of Isaac. He wanted a protective God who would help him out of tight spots the way God helped Abraham get his wife back from two kings.

And that is what Jacob got at the end of his dream about the ladder. After saying that Jacob’s descendants will own the land and be a blessing to the world, God added:

“And hey! I myself am with you. And I will guard you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this ground, because I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.” (Genesis 28:15)

Then Jacob wakes up. The God of Abraham has promised to protect him.

He has a new father figure.

1. Genesis 25:29-34. (See my post: Bereishit & Toledot: Seeing Red.)
2. Genesis 27:1-30. (See my post: Toledot: To Bless Someone.)
3. Genesis 27:31-28:5.
4. Genesis 28:3-4.
5. Ever since Abraham bound Isaac as a sacrifice and almost cut his throat (Genesis 22:1-19). See my post: Vayeira: Stopped by an Angel.)
6. Chayim ibn Attar, Or Hachayim, translation in www.sefaria.org.
7. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Bereshis, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2002, p. 602.
8. Shmuel Klitsner, Wrestling Jacob, Urim Publications, Jerusalem, 2006, pp. 82-83.
9. Isaac hears God speak to him, and builds an altar for God, in Genesis 26:24-25.
10. Genesis 35:1, 35:9-13.
11. Genesis 31:9-13.
12. Genesis 15:1-11, 17:1-22, 18:9-10, 18:17-33, 22:1-2, 22:11-12.
13. Genesis 18:17-33. (See my post: Vayeira: Who Is the Teacher?)
14. Genesis 32:10-13.
15. Genesis 12:1-4, 12:7, 13:14-18, 15:12-21, 21:12-13, 22:15-18.
16. Genesis 22:1-10.
17. Genesis 35:1-7.
18. Genesis 12:11-20, 20:1-18.
19. See my post Vayeitzei: Awe versus Terror for the complete inbred family tree.
20. Genesis 22:9-12.

Falling in love can lead to years of unhappiness.

Sometimes an infatuation is gradually replaced by a mature love, one with sincere affection and respect. But sometimes infatuated lovers remain desperate to own the objects of their affection.

When Jacob arrives at his uncle’s house in this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei (“and he went”), he falls in love at first sight with his cousin Rachel. Rachel’s sister, Leah, falls in love with him. And both Jacob and Leah suffer for years.

Jacob

Jacob travels from his home in Beir-sheva to his uncle’s house in Charan on the orders of both of his parents. His mother, Rebecca, tells him to flee and stay in Charan until his brother, Esau, no longer wants to kill him. His father, Isaac, tells him to go and marry one of his cousins.¹

He leaves without anything to give his uncle Lavan for a bride-price. Isaac would not have sent him off to find a wife without providing him with gold, silver, and pack animals. But Jacob, motivated by fear and guilt, rushes off on foot with nothing but his staff.² (See my post Vayeitzei: Father Figures.)

Outside the city of Charan, Jacob meets some shepherds beside a well with a giant stone covering its mouth. When he asks why they do not water their flocks and move on, they reply that they are not able to move the stone by themselves, so they always wait until the other shepherds arrive. While they are talking, a girl approaches with a flock, and the men tell Jacob she is Rachel, one of Lavan’s daughters.

And it happened when Jacob saw Rachel, his uncle Lavan’s daughter, and his uncle Lavan’s flock: Jacob stepped forward and rolled the stone off the top of the mouth of the well, and he watered his uncle Lavan’s flock. (Genesis/Bereishit 29:10)

Jacob is so electrified by a close look at Rachel that he rolls off the stone by himself in a surge of superhuman energy.

Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and he lifted his voice and wept. And Jacob told Rachel that was her father’s kinsman and Rebecca’s son. And she ran and told her father. (Genesis 29:11-12)

Lavan welcomes his nephew as a member of the family, and Jacob works for him like a son rather than a prospective son-in-law; after all, he has brought no bride-price. At the end of a month, Lavan asks Jacob:

“Is it because you are my kinsman that you serve me for nothing? Tell me what your wages shall be.” (Genesis 29:15)

Lavan sounds generous, but later he cheats his nephew twice in order to make him stay longer.³ I believe Lavan offers to pay Jacob wages only in order to make sure he does not find a job elsewhere. Jacob is unusually skilled at animal husbandry, and Lavan wants his flocks to continue increasing.⁴

And Lavan had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. And Leah’s eyes were soft, but Rachel—she had a beautiful shape and a beautiful appearance. Vaye-ehav, Jacob: Rachel. So he said: “I will serve you seven years for Rachel, your younger daughter.” (Genesis 29:16-18)

vaye-ehav (וַיֶּאֳהַב) = and he loved, liked, was fond of, was charmed by. (A form of the verb ahav, אָהַב = loved.)

And Jacob served for Rachel seven years, and they were like a few days in his eyes, be-ahavato for her. (Genesis 29:20)

be-ahavato (בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ) = because of his love. (Another form of the verb ahav.)

Seven years is a long engagement, especially when the two people are living in the same house but are not allowed to share a bed. According to one line of commentary, Jacob had to wait seven years for Rachel to reach puberty.⁵ However, if Rachel were about eight years old, she would probably not be in charge of a whole flock. Furthermore, there are no indications in the book of Genesis that Jacob is a pedophile attracted to small children.

In see my post Vayeitzei: Father Figures I speculated that Jacob volunteers for such a long period of service because he feels guilty and unworthy. His choice of seven years of labor might also indicate that he sets an exaggerated value on the object of his infatuation.⁶

Then Jacob said to Lavan: “Bring my wife, because the time is completed, and I will come in to her.” And Lavan gathered all the people of the place, and he made a drinking-feast. And when it was evening, then he took his daughter Leah and brought her to him, and he came in to her. (Genesis 29:21-23)

Jacob was drunk; it was dark; Leah was wearing a veil.⁷

In the morning, Jacob protests that Lavan deceived him and gave him the wrong daughter. His uncle, and now his father-in-law, proposes:

“Complete this week [with Leah], and I will give you that one also for the service—if you serve with me another seven years.” (Genesis 29:27)

Jacob agrees, partly because he is guilty about deceiving his own father by pretending to be his brother Esau, and partly because he is still in love with Rachel.

And he came in to Rachel also, vaye-ehav Rachel even more than Leah. (Genesis 29:30)

He likes Leah, but he cannot be satisfied unless he also gets the woman he fell in love with. Therefore he spends fourteen years working for someone else without acquiring any wealth of his own.

Leah

Lavan masterminds Leah’s masquerade as Rachel on what was supposed to be the wedding night of Rachel and Jacob. But Leah does it, and Rachel either cooperates or is restrained from appearing at the critical moment.  It is possible that neither of them dares to disobey their father.  But Leah has another motive for her imposture: she is in love with Jacob.

We know this because when she names her first three sons, she explains each name in terms of her longing for Jacob to love her in return.

And Leah conceived and she bore a son, and she called his name Reuvein because “I said that God ra-ah my suffering, since now my husband will love me.” (Genesis 29:32)

ra-ah (רָאָה) = he saw.

Reuvein (רְאוּבֵן) = “Reuben” in English. Ra-u, רָאוּ = they saw (a form of the verb ra-ah) + bein, בֵּן = son.

Leah names her second son Shime-on,שִׁמְעוֹן (“Simeon” in English), claiming that God “heard” (shama,שָׁמַע) that she was hated. She names her third son Leivi, לֵוִי (“Levi” or “Levite” in English). Although the name Leivi is probably a loan-word for a religious functionary from the Minaeans in the southern Arabian peninsula, Leah assigns it a folk etymology as she hopes her husband “will become attached” (yilaveh, יִלָּוֶה) to her.

When her fourth son is born, Leah says “This time I will thank God,” and names him Yehudah, יְהוּדָה (“Judah” in English), referring to the verb yodeh, יוֹדֶה = “willthank, will praise”. Then she has to wait for another pregnancy, because Rachel decides to make Jacob stay away from Leah’s bed. We can deduce this from a scene in which Reuben brings his mother some mandrakes⁸ he found, and Rachel asks for them.

“But she [Leah] said to her: “Was it a trifle you took away my husband? And now to take also my son’s mandrakes!” And Rachel said: “All right, he can lie with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.” When Jacob came in from the field in the evening, then Leah went out to meet him, and she said to him: “To me you will come, because I paid your hire with my son’s mandrakes.” And he lay with her that night. (Genesis 30:15-16)

Leah wants her husband to fall in love with her, but she settles for sex. She has three more children, and retains her position as one of Jacob’s wives.

Rachel

The book of Genesis never says that Rachel loves Jacob, only that she blames him for her childlessness,⁹ and is so jealous of her sister’s fertility that she orders him to stay away from Leah’s bed. The besotted man obeys her. At her command, he also lies with her female slave, Bilhah, so that Rachel can adopt Bilhah’s children. Leah then uses her own female slave, Zilpah, for the same purpose. The competition between the two sisters continues until Rachel bears a child of her own, her son Joseph.

The three of them make peace only after Jacob has worked for Lavan for another six years—this time in order to build up his own flocks. Then, after twenty years of unhappy marriage, he takes both his wives out into a field and tells them that God wants him to leave Lavan and return to Canaan.

And Rachel and Leah answered, and they said to him: “Do we still have a portion of inheritance from our father’s house? … Now do everything that God said to you!” (Genesis 31:14, 16)

The two sisters stop competing. They choose to spend the rest of their lives with each other and their now-rich husband, rather than with their friends and relatives in Charan. The book of Genesis reports no further conflict among Jacob, Leah, and Rachel. At last, twenty years after the three of them met, they achieve a peaceful partnership.

May everyone who falls in love find contentment sooner than Jacob and his wives.

1. Genesis 27:41-28:2. In the previous Torah portion, Toledot, Jacob cheated Esau out of his inheritance as the firstborn and then out of their father’s blessing.
2. Genesis 32:11.
3. Lavan cheats Jacob by replacing his bride in Genesis 29:23-27, and by removing his spotted goats and dark sheep from the flock in Genesis 30:30:27-36.
4. Lavan recognizes Jacob’s skill in Genesis 30:27.
5. E.g. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, Tur HaArokh, circa 1300 C.E., translated by Rabbi Eliyahu Munk in www.sefaria.org.
6. “Perhaps he wanted to demonstrate that he considered Rachel worth more than the maximum servitude that a Hebrew servant serves with his master (Exodus 21,2).” (18^th-century Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, Or Hachayim, translation in www.sefaria.org.)
7. In Genesis 24:65, Rebecca puts on a veil before her wedding night with Isaac.
8. The Hebrew word translated as “mandrakes” is dudaim (דוּדָאִים). Mandrake roots are hallucinogenic and narcotic, and are often forked like human legs. The first Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, translated dudaim as mandragoras.
9. Genesis 30:1.

I am still writing my book, Tasting the Fruit: Moral Psychology in Genesis. Today I wrote about how Rachel steals her father’s household idols as she leaves home, sneaking off toward Canaan with her husband (Jacob), her son (Joseph), and her three fellow wives and their children (Genesis 31:1-21 in the portion Vayeitzei).

Why would Rachel steal the idols?  Because they can be used for divination, and she does not want her father to know where she and her family are.

Idols (physical images of gods) are forbidden in the book of Exodus.  One of the Ten Commandments declares: “You may not make for yourself a statue or any likeness of what is in the heavens above or what is on the earth below or what is in the waters from under the earth.  You may not bow down to them or serve them.”  (Exodus 20:4-5)

The books of Isaiah and Psalms make fun of idols, asking why anyone would treat a piece of inert wood, stone, or metal as if it could hear and speak.  But the book of Genesis is a different story.  The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob do not use idols, but Jacob’s father-in-law Lavan does, and his daughter Rachel believes they can speak to him.

The idols Rachel steals are small enough to fit into a camel pack.  They may look like the figurines of gods I saw last year in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, all smaller than my hand.

Idols were standard religious equipment in Egypt during the 19th dynasty (1292–1190 B.C.E.), where Moses was born in this week’s Torah portion, Shemot.  He would have learned about all the gods of Egypt and their representations in painting and sculpture after he was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter.  When he left Egypt as a young man, he went to live with a priest of Midian, and learned about the gods of the Midianites–probably including the god on Mount Sinai that later became the God of Israel.

Moses first encounters that god, God with a capital “G”, when he sees the  bush on Mount Sinai that burns but is not consumed.  God speaks out of the fire, not from an idol.  Click here to read about it in my post Shemot: Holy Ground.

Today most of us do not hear strange voices in our heads, only the familiar subvocalizations of our own psyches.  Yet many people engage in magical thinking.  I can imagine staring a long time at a bronze figurine, and hearing it speak inside your head.  And if the figurine said something that you did not consciously know, but that turned out to be true, you would stare at it again when you needed insight.

Unless it was gone when you got home, because someone had stolen it.