NOTES for Gen 31:22-55

There are people whom only God can stop. Laban, judging by the biblical account, was just such a person. His offense must have been great. However strained the relationship between him and Jacob had been, Jacob's flight simply did not fit any standards of propriety of that time. One could part that way only from the worst enemy, from whom one expects betrayal, a blow in the back, or something similar.

After such a flight, Laban must have thought that Jacob had decided Laban was going to slaughter him at night in his own tent. Such behavior was in fact a direct insult and a challenge, which Laban accepted and to which he reacted accordingly. Jacob, meanwhile, really would have been better off parting from Laban, perhaps not in this form, but still parting from him. To remain any longer in Laban's domain would have meant ever-increasing friction. Jacob had become far too rich, and his wealth was regarded, if not by Laban himself then by many of Laban's relatives, as stolen from their clan. Yet fleeing as Jacob fled was possible only if God required that flight; otherwise it would simply have been madness. And God stopped Laban when he set out in pursuit of Jacob, because Jacob's departure was God's own initiative. Even the teraphim stolen by Rachel, Laban's household gods, did not interfere.

The meaning of the theft is completely understandable: a person who took with him the images of the house's guardians continued to belong to the house. He did not leave entirely, did not lose rights to the house and to the inheritance, and did not renounce them. Rachel, judging by the story, did not want to renounce anything. Perhaps she thought she had already received less than she was owed in her father's house and hoped to make up for what had not been given to her through the inheritance she would receive after her father's death. In any case, she secretly carried off the teraphim with her, thereby preserving her rights to the house and not renouncing the inheritance.

This especially outraged Laban: to leave so defiantly, and then also to make claims on the house whose master had been so deeply insulted, was too much. But here too God does not leave Jacob, for Jacob truly knew nothing about the teraphim carried off by his wife. People can sometimes act strangely, badly, rashly, even sinfully. But as long as there is even the slightest chance to carry out His design, God carries it out. He does this despite human sinfulness and human imperfection, for after the fall He has no sinless and perfect people left.