Jacob is apparently really good at running away from unpleasantness that he's created for himself. First from stealing his brother's birthright, now he's running away from Laban for swindling a bunch of livestock. This time, at least, God tells Jacob to go home. But when Jacob tells Rachel and Leah that they're all leaving, he puts words in God's mouth. He makes it sound like he didn't work the livestock mating system, but that God decided that Jacob deserved more that Laban had been giving him. Hey, Jacob? I'm pretty sure you decided that one, buddy. Anyway, he spins this little story about how he had this dream about receiving as much of the flock as he did (like, all of it...). And the girls, instead of sticking up for their dad, go on about how he never did anything for them but sell them into marriage. So they pack up and go. But first, Rachel steals Laban's household gods (little figurines with some sort of legal significance).
After a few days, Laban realizes that they've all disappeared and chases after them. God shows up in a dream and tells Laban, essentially, to not say a single word to Jacob. Not one word. Eventually, Laban catches up with Jacob and crew, and immediately starts saying words to Jacob. No one listens, I swear. It's just like, "Oh hey, an all-powerful deity is telling me to do something, and I recognize it's power... and I'm still not going to do what it tells me to. It'll all work out, right? It's not like God could wipe out the whole human race or something..." So Laban gets all huffy with Jacob accusing him of stealing his flock, daughters, and household gods. Jacob calls shenanigans. He "earned" the flock and daughters, and frankly knows nothing about the idols (Rachel didn't tell anyone). Jacob even tells Laban that he can search everything for them and kill whoever is found with them. Nice. So he looks and looks. Rachel comes up with a clever plan to hang on to the little things. She sits on them, and tells her dad while he's looking through her stuff that she can't get up because she has her period (the footnotes tell me that anything she would've been seated on would've been taboo for him to touch). Needless to say, Laban doesn't find anything.
Now since Laban's searching proved futile, Jacob turns on him. He calls him out on being a big jerk for the last 20 years (yeah, remember how Jacob's been with them for that long?) and makes it sound like it's all entirely unfounded... because Jacob never did anything even remotely underhanded towards Laban. Oh, and he also reiterates that the only reason he's got more than two pennies to rub together is because God is on his side. I want to point out that God is being referred to in a couple different ways here. We've got God of Abraham; fairly straight forward. We also have God referred to as "the Fear of Isaac" which brings to mind not only the fear of God thing (which I don't know how I feel about, and one of these days I'll spend some time on it), but the fact that Isaac was almost brutally murdered - I mean, sacrificed to God. That's pretty fear inspiring, to say the least. So what are two stubborn, pig-headed, downright-dirty-deceivers to do at such an impasse? They essentially draw a line in the sand by heaping a bunch of rocks together and promise to stay on their own sides. Did you ever share a room with your sibling and do that? I think at one point, I did that to the extreme of laying down masking tape on the carpet in such a way that even the doorway was split in two in order to protect my side. How adult of you, gentlemen. Really good problem-solving techniques there. But it works for them, I guess, and they go on about their business.
<3 Agnostic in the Pews
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