The Blessings & Curses

If you haven’t already, check out how these blessings and curses line up with each other. The blessings are found in Matthew 5; the curses are found in Matthew 23. If you put them side by side, there’s a symmetric balance like two halves of one menorah, with each branch opposite but the same. Here they are as they were ordered by Matthew. 

Blessing and curse #1:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Woe to you, Pharisees . . . For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor do you allow those who would enter to go in.

 

The kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor in spirit, but the Pharisees shut up the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees aren’t poor in spirit. They are full of certainty and assertion, and they exalt themselves. Case in point: the story from Luke 18 where a Pharisee is seen next to a tax collector, the former proud, the latter poor in spirit. 

 

Next: 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Woe to you, Pharisees! For you devour the house of the widow, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore, you shall receive greater condemnation.

 

A widow is one who mourns, but cursed are those who devour the house of the widow. The Pharisees will receive from God not comfort but great condemnation. Being commanded to care for widows, the Pharisees “do their part” and pray, but their prayers operate for the sake of appearance. Behind the outward show, they prey on the weak at their most vulnerable moment. A widow’s loss is their gain. 

 

Next:  

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Woe to you, Pharisees! For you travel across sea and land to make a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a child of Gehenna as yourselves.

The meek inherit the earth, but the Pharisees—being children of Gehenna—inherit Gehenna. The Pharisees travel to the ends of the earth to exert their influence and expand their domain, but the meek are freely given what the Pharisees work so hard to possess.  

Next:

 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,  for they shall be satisfied.

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.’ You blind fools! For which is greater: the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And you say, ‘Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering on it, he is obligated.’ You blind men! For which is greater: the offering or the altar which sanctifies the offering?

 

Where’s your appetite? What do you value most? The Pharisees have an appetite for the superficial. They value the temple’s gold more than its holiness. They value the meat you give them more than the reason that brought you. The Pharisees crave the physical elements from which they derive benefit. But those who hunger and thirst for righteousness crave the spirit, so God sees to it they are satisfied.

 

Next:

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Woe to you, Pharisees! For you tithe [the smallest of the spices] but have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

The Pharisees neglect the weightier matters of the law like mercy. But blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. The Pharisees are exacting, not just in their tithe but in the way they strain out gnats. Both gnats and camels are unkosher, but gnats may be eaten on accident or without noticing. To a Jewish audience, the message is clear: while the Pharisees criticize others for errors done on accident or without noticing, they themselves swallow a camel as they condemn without mercy. Meanwhile, the merciful can let things go and forgive. God will treat them both in kind. 

 

Next:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Woe to you Pharisees! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence . . . Blind Pharisees! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate so that the outside may also be clean.

 

Purity of heart is clarity. Nothing is hidden; nothing is divided. Because the heart is undistorted, vision is possible. On the flip side, a heart ruled by evil desires produces spiritual blindness. Jesus calls them “blind” not because they lack rules, but because their priorities prevent sight. They obsess over the externals because they “justify themselves in the eyes of others” (Luke 16:15). As long as they’re impressing others with their long robes and synagogue seats, they feel pretty good about themselves. But they fail to see God, a God who looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). The greed and self-indulgence in their heart prevents them from seeing the One they claim to be guiding others toward. Truly, they are blind guides. 

 

Blessing & curse #7:

 

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Woe to you, Pharisees! You’re like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful, but inside you’re full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. You outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you’re full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

 

The Pharisees are not called the sons of God. Instead, they conspire to murder the Son of God under the guise of peace (Mark 14:1-2)! The difference between a Pharisee and a peacemaker is severe. Take first the peacemaker. For the sake of restoring peace, a peacemaker will lay down their pride and, if appropriate, admit faults and shortcomings. Their action is to restore peace by forgiving and seeking forgiveness—the hard labor of reconciliation. On the other hand, a Pharisee’s action is to maintain appearances while secretly acting in self-interest. What seems beautiful conceals death, so while pursuing peace at the surface, they sow the seeds of its destruction. As hypocrisy and lawlessness give way to betrayal, distrust, anger and hurt, the true nature of their deeds is revealed. 

 

Blessing & curse #8: 

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Woe to you, Pharisees! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate their monuments, saying ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have taken part in their murder.’ Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

 

The righteous are falsely accused; the unrighteous falsely acquit themselves. The persecuted are rewarded with heaven; the persecutors are sentenced to hell. Both passages revolve around the prophets and how they were treated, but for the Pharisees, the prophets are mere relics: safely dead, ornamental, and unthreatening. In the Beatitudes, the hearers are aligned with the prophets “who were before you,” and their suffering places them in continuity with that long line. Here, the prophets are living voices rather than dead symbols. These passages quietly divide Jesus’ hearers into two groups, not religious and irreligious, but responders and resisters. One names the blessing of faithful suffering; the other exposes the hypocrisy that produces it.

 

So there you go, the eight blessings and curses as ordered by Matthew. It’s cool how they line up so well. I have reasons to think Jesus did this intentionally, but that’s another matter. When I step back and consider the base that supports this symmetry, I think about the misleading nature of appearances. 1 Samuel 16:7 hits it on the head: “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’” 

Judah in Three Acts

Judah is an important figure, a character we should want to understand. But dig into his story and it gets complicated. He seems like two different people.

Have you ever felt like two different people?

In Genesis 37 he is a villain; in Genesis 44 he is a hero. How do we reconcile two extremes in one person? How do we connect the dots to draw up a man who makes sense and feels real, interesting, and relevant? Well check it out: it all comes together when we notice his story follows a three-act structure, a classic method of story-telling that we Westerners so know and love. 

• Act 1: The Setup
• Judah instigates the sale of Joseph into slavery (Genesis 37). 
• Act 2: The Confrontation
• Judah sins again, but is confronted by his daughter-in-law Tamar (Genesis 38). 
• Act 3: The Crisis & Resolution
• Judah must choose whether to step out and save his little brother Benjamin from slavery. To do so is to put his own life on the line (Genesis 44).

Let’s run through all three acts, but not in chronological order for dramatic reasons. (To add some extra flavor, you might play this music as you read what follows.)

Act I: The Judean wilderness. 

 

Joseph is struggling for breath at the bottom of a pit, having been left for dead. His older brothers are seating themselves for lunch, the fingernail scratches on their forearms still red and fresh. A merchant caravan appears on the hillside, heading in the direction of Egypt. Judah spies an opportunity and presents it to his brothers. His pitch is simple: Brothers, let the slavers in Egypt work Joseph to death. This way his blood is on their hands, not ours. As an added bonus, an easy profit will be ours to enjoy.

The brothers like the proposal. They return to the pit to hoist Joseph back to sunlight. For a moment Joseph thinks they’ve had a change of heart. Sadly the opposite is true. The brothers have returned merely to make his disappearance irrevocable. 

 

Who brokers the deal with the merchants? Genesis doesn’t specify. But with the oldest brother being absent and given that Judah proposed the idea, it seems fitting that Judah would lead the negotiation. Whatever the case may be, the merchants ultimately purchase Joseph and go on their way, disappearing beyond the south horizon. 

 

Judah and his co-conspirators now find themselves in a cover-up. To hide this heinous deed from their father, they immerse Joseph’s robe in a pool of goat’s blood. Days later they present the robe to their father and, in an Oscar-worthy performance, they tell him, “This coat we have found, identify please (ha’ker na in Hebrew) if it is your son’s robe.” Their father Jacob is panic-stricken. He cries out, “It is my son’s robe! A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph has been torn to pieces.” Their father then rips his garment and puts on sackcloth. He mourns the loss of his son for many days, weeping (37:34). 

 

As time passes, the brothers (including Judah) try to comfort their father, but he is inconsolable. Their father Jacob insists, “No, I will continue to mourn until I join Joseph in the grave.” Having to witness their father shrivel into a shell of his former self, Judah – the ringleader of Joseph’s disappearance – becomes a target of resentment. For the brothers, it is easier to blame him than blame themselves. They reason: if we had left Joseph to die in the pit as originally planned, Rueben would’ve returned and pulled him to safety, then today everything at home would be better than it is. Instead, nothing is right. Their father’s crestfallen spirit sucks the life out of every room they ever share. 

 

Be that as it may, the brothers keep the big secret a secret. For us readers, this is a telling insight because we catch of a glimpse of Judah through the eyes of his brothers. In the eyes of his brothers, he towers. We know this because all the sons of Jacob try to comfort their father (37:35), yet not one points a finger at Judah. Not one confesses or lays the crime at his feet – not even the oldest brother Rueben! Judah shines here. He is a natural leader, evidenced by his brothers’ cooperation and loyalty. Judah possesses the gift of influence, or perhaps authority. Whether he wields this gift for good or evil is ultimately his choice to make. But we see its effect on those around him: the brothers watch their father agonize over a false narrative while they keep their mouths shut, prioritizing their brother Judah above all. 

 

However he manages to garner their loyalty, Judah will certainly merit our respect in Act III. Act III is Genesis 44, a chapter in which Judah wields his gifting for the good. 

 

 

Act III: An opulent Egyptian palace, 20 years later.

Joseph has become viceroy of the most dominant superpower on earth. He doesn’t answer to Joseph anymore. In this place he is Zaphenath-Paneah (41:45). And seated in the heights of the royal palace at the center of the world, Zaphenath is right at home. Zap looks, acts, and speaks like an Egyptian overlord in full command, a power-player on the world’s biggest stage. 

 

Being reacquainted with his long-lost brothers, the unrecognizable Joseph plays 4D chess. His actions reset the table in a way that gives him the advantage. He wants to see if his brothers will make the same move as before. He creates a scenario in which a familiar opportunity presents itself: the brothers can expend a pawn at the edge of the board to advance their own self-interest, absent their father. The question is, will they do it? Will they rid themselves of Rachel’s second son just as they rid themselves of her first? 

 

Joseph frames Benjamin for a theft Benjamin did not commit. Joseph then summons the boy to receive due punishment: a life of slavery in Egypt, a death sentence. But then Judah (Judah!) steps out from the group. In earnest, he tells this Egyptian Royal, “What can we say, my lord? God has uncovered our guilt. We are now your slaves.” 

 

In response Joseph nudges a chess piece forward. His move is one of curiosity without risking control. “No,” he says, “you go back to your father in peace. Just leave me the boy guilty of theft.” 

There it is: the way is paved. The brothers can rid themselves of the boy with a simple nod. They have all the justification they would ever need to ditch him. 

 

But Judah counters, his answer unexpected. Joseph has no way to know that Judah isn’t the same man he remembers. Today a much-older Judah stands before him: a man who has seen his father destroyed by the loss of a son. Judah himself has endured the loss of two sons. He is a changed man. Now holding back tears, Judah tells Zaphenath-Paneah, “Pardon your servant, my lord, but let me speak a word to you.” 

With modern eyes, we might picture this a high-stakes courtroom drama. Judah approaches the bench with his brothers behind him, their heads down, their eyes wide and uncertain. 

 

The old shepherd speaks personally to the Egyptian Royal. Making the best of his weathered voice, Judah pleas, “Do not be angry. I recognize that you are equal to Pharaoh. But listen, our father loves this boy. He didn’t want him to come in the first place! But we insisted; I insisted. If we now return without him, my dad will die in grief. My lord, you must understand: I personally guaranteed the boy’s safety. I said, ‘Father, if I don’t bring him back as promised, the blame. I will bear it until the day I die.’” 

 

With eyes sharpened by make-up and trained for steadiness, Joseph watches the wrinkled and sunburnt face of the old shepherd soften. It is the surrender of a natural-born leader. “Please, let me stay behind as your slave in place of the boy. Let the boy go back. I cannot go back if the boy is not with me. I cannot see the misery that would befall my father.”

 

Judah’s redemption moment has arrived. Joseph is so awestruck by the transformation that he cannot contain his emotions for much longer. He commands the palace servants to leave at once. Only after the last servant has exited the palace hall does the Egyptian lord reveal his true identity to the brothers. 

 

Some 4000 years later, the heaviness in that room maintains its weight. 

A question emerges. How does Judah go from the wicked, self-serving opportunist of Act I to the selfless, family-first heroism of Act III? Having only these two acts, our main character seems totally incongruent. How do we reconcile the contradictions?  

The answer lies in Act II, i.e. Chapter 38. In Chapter 38 we witness Judah’s turning point, or, if you prefer, his breaking point. Let’s rewind to Chapter 38 and see what happens. 

 

 

Act II: Canaan, the decades between Chapter 37 & 44. 

 

Chapter 38 is the middle act in Judah’s story. Here’s a summary of the chapter. I will set the stage with a few key points. 

 

Judah leaves his brothers at the beginning of the chapter (38:1). 

No surprise here! Given the level of tension among the brothers following the sell of Joseph and their father’s ensuing depression, Judah leaves his home because he wants to escape the mess he has caused. He is running away from his past in hopes he can quiet a guilty conscience. 

Judah marries a Canaanite woman (38:2). 

This is indicative of a man who is breaking ties with his Hebrew family. He is waging total war against his past. 

Judah and his Canaanite wife have three boys, all of whom reach the age of marriage before the end of the chapter (38:3-14). 

In terms of its timespan, Genesis 38 is a long chapter. It spans close to two decades. 

Reading the chapter, we learn that Judah’s oldest son dies. This makes the son’s wife, Tamar, a widow. Tamar is then married to Son #2 (as was custom in those days). But then Son #2 dies. Tamar, again a widow, is now supposed to be given to Judah’s third son. However, the third son is, for the time being, too young to be married. So Tamar goes off to live with her parents while she waits on further word from her father-in-law, Judah. 

After a long time Judah’s wife passes away. Judah becomes a widower. As a widower, Judah travels to a town where he encounters a prostitute along the roadside. A veil cloaks her face. For temporary payment, he gives this prostitute his staff, his seal and its cord. They sleep together and he leaves. A few weeks pass. Through a series of revelations, he discovers he’s been robbed by the prostitute and he’ll never see his belongings again (or so he thinks). So as not to become a laughingstock among the townspeople, he writes off the loss and buries the matter. 

Three months later he learns that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, has become pregnant. In his eyes, the surprise pregnancy is audacious. She bore no kids to his first two sons; she has yet to marry his third son; how can she be pregnant if not but for adultery? Furious beyond measure, he calls for a public execution. “Bring her out and burn her to death!” he declares. The townspeople like the proposal. They bring Tamar out to be killed, both her and the unborn life inside her. 

But Tamar does the most unexpected thing. She sends word to Judah privately, saying, “I am pregnant by the man who owns these.” Lo and behold, the items she presents are Judah’s personal belongings: his staff, his seal and its cord. Tamar says then, “Identify please (ha’ker na) whose seal and cord and staff these are.” 

 

Without realizing it, Tamar uses the same language that Judah and his brothers employed when they presented the torn and bloodied robe of Joseph to their father, Jacob. 

A flashback jolts Judah to his senses. Judah hears her words in a way that only Judah can hear. Her words land with all the force of the Holy Spirit. He melts. Judah reverses course and halts the execution. “She is more righteous than I,” Judah says, “since I did not give her my son.” 

This moment marks a turning point in the life of Judah, and for our purposes it closes the curtains on Act II. Here a stir should ripple among us audience members, a stir of whispers and intrigue. Judah sees himself in Tamar, no doubt! In various ways Judah and Tamar are alike. 

• Judah deceived his father; Tamar deceived her father-in-law. 
• Both Tamar and Judah, a widow and widower, slept with someone out of wedlock.  

Yet according to Judah, Tamar is the more righteous. How can this be? 

Well, notice:

• Judah’s ha’ker na was a selfish manipulation. It was meant to cover up Judah’s evil deed of selling Joseph. 
• Tamar’s ha’ker na was a selfless plea to live. It was made with such discretion that it covered up Judah’s evil deed of sleeping with a prostitute.

By sending word to him privately rather than blurting it out in public, Tamar kept Judah from becoming a laughingstock. She also put her life into his hands. Because, after having repossessed his belongings, Judah could have denied the legitimacy of her plea and followed through with the execution – a brand new cover-up of epic proportions. But this time around, Judah chooses a more righteous path forward. He recognizes that Tamar did the same thing that he did, but she did it in the opposite direction: toward the good rather than the bad, toward life rather than death. And this made an indelible impact on him. “She is more righteous than I,” he says. 

The next time we see Judah, he is a changed man. He is once again living alongside his brothers and Jacob, their father. He is the man who will go on to display the selfless heroism of the third act, standing up for Benjamin and putting his own life on the line. It just goes to show how God can transform a person through a careful orchestration of life experiences. The person doesn’t even have to be centerstage to receive main-character treatment. Judah is proof of that. 

My Take on Gentile Inclusion - Helpful Parallels

In my view, the Torah provides two pictures to help us understand Gentile inclusion into the commonwealth of Israel and the covenants of promise (Ephesians 2:12). 

• First: Jacob's adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh. 
• Second: the mixed multitude's presence at Sinai. 

Picture 1:

In Genesis, Joseph has two sons during his residence in Egypt (i.e., the Gentile world). Their names are Ephraim and Manasseh. Ephraim and Manasseh (E&M) are Gentiles according to Jewish law because their mother was a Gentile. And growing up in Egypt, E&M knew only the Gentile version of Joseph. They knew little of their father's Jewishness. They knew, perhaps, that his Jewish brothers had rejected him, had put him in the ground, had sold him for silver, had passed him off to the Gentile world, had vetoed his place among the family. Indeed, E&M may have esteemed their father's Jewish roots to be of very little worth to them. 

Fast forward. 

Jacob Israel adopts Ephraim and Manasseh as sons of his own. With a careful read of Genesis 48, the cosmic curtain pulls back to give you a peek into the truths revealed later in Romans 11. How so? Because in Genesis 48, Israel tells Joseph that his sons "are mine, as Rueben and Simeon are." In other words, Israel grafts Jospeh's Gentile sons into his Jewish family as if they were his own – and not only that, but he elevates them to a firstborn position (as Rueben and Simeon are)! Catch the undercurrent here: Israel the father pictures God the Father; Joseph the son pictures Jesus the Son; E&M picture us Gentiles being grafted into the house of Israel due our connection to Jesus.

Later in Exodus, the sons and daughters of Ephraim and Manasseh leave behind everything they have ever known. They leave Egypt and all its trappings to travel alongside the families of Jacob. They journey to a place entirely unknown to them. They are nevertheless determined: they belong to Israel now, not to Egypt – even though their fathers E&M never once left the Gentile world! The tribes of E&M represent us Gentiles who find our place among the family of Abraham. We are not Jewish to be clear, but we do inherit the covenants of promise and the commonwealth of Israel. Recall, Jacob didn't adopt Ephraim and Manasseh. Israel adopted them. From this we derive an insight: we Gentiles are not the sons of Jacob (i.e., Jews), but we are the sons of Israel – products of the one who wrestled with God and persevered, albeit with a limp.

Picture 2:

At Sinai God gave His Torah to the Israelites, and hearing this, we tend to think of the Jews only, and no one else. But what about the great mixed multitude that went out of Egypt with the Jews? Those Gentiles who saw the judgement of Egypt and recognized that the God of the Hebrews was, indeed, the one true God. Maybe they put the blood on their doorposts; maybe they lost a firstborn son. Whatever the case may be, they left Egypt behind and bet their lives on a new way forward. 

I believe this mixed multitude represented every nation on earth. How can I say this? Because Genesis 41:56 says a great famine was over "all the face of the land." The whole civilized world was affected by this famine. Egypt became the best-known place to go for food. Some hungry travelers came and went; others came and stayed. I believe God used a global famine to bring people of every nation into Egypt so that, in time, He could pinch away a sample of the world and bring them to Sinai. 

No matter what happened, we know a great mixed multitude was present at the foot of Sinai. They, too, had a Pentecost experience when God gave them the Torah. These Gentiles came to see themselves as partakers in the covenants of promise, members of the commonwealth of Israel. God didn't just give His Torah to Jews; He gave it to Gentiles too. He gave it to His assembly, the kahal, the sons of Israel. 

Final Thoughts: 

These two pictures color my thinking as it pertains to Gentile inclusion. Remember, the New Covenant was made not with Gentiles but with the house of Israel (Jeremiah 31:31-33). The way we Gentiles enter into the New Covenant is by being grafted in to the house of Israel. 

With that said, I look at the elders in Acts and I appreciate the wisdom of their light-handed approach to things regarding the Gentiles. Leading with grace and patience, they leave the coming together of Jews and Gentiles so open ended. In Acts 15, they prescribe four basic laws which work to get Gentiles into a synagogue in such a way they don't offend their Jewish counterparts. Once in the synagogue, Gentile believers would hear Scripture read (no New Testament at the time), they would learn about God and His commandments, and they would learn more about their Messiah in the context of God's great redemption plan. Where they went from there would a personal journey, but that journey was always seen as being downstream of God's blood covenant with Abraham.  

Buried Treasure: Rachel’s Last Call for Confession

There’s a treasure of a story beneath the surface narrative of Genesis 31-35. It’s quiet though, buried between and underneath details, so we’ll have to look carefully to uncover its existence. 

The characters in focus are Jacob, Rachel, and Laban. We join the plot as Jacob prepares to flee his father-in-law (Laban) in secret. Jacob will take with him a caravan of family members, servants, animals and possessions. Little does he realize, his beloved wife Rachel is about to steal her father’s idols and bring them along with the caravan.

Alone in Laban’s dwelling, a question must cross Rachel’s mind as she pockets her father’s idols. “How am I going to get away with this?” she thinks, as do all thieves. Rachel realizes that Laban will soon discover his idols are missing, and he will link their disappearance to Jacob. But Rachel reasons with herself: No, Laban won’t go so far as to pursue us into the hills. Laban is more likely to replace the idols and leave the matter alone. 

Why does Rachel take her father’s idols? Of the six potential motives I’ve come across, this is the one I find most convincing. 

Dennis Prager puts it well: “Rachel surely believed in the God of Jacob, but she might well have still believed in the power of idols with which she grew up. When people believe in many visible gods, it takes a very long time to get them to believe in one invisible God. Rachel’s behavior may have been like that of Neils Bohr, the Nobel-prize winning physicist who was said to keep a rabbit’s foot in his laboratory. When an astonished visitor asked, ‘But surely, professor, you don’t believe in a rabbit’s foot?’ Bohr responded, ‘Of course not. But they say a rabbit’s foot brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.’”

Rachel is desperate to have a child (Gen. 30:1), and later desperate to have a second child. Prager points out that Rachel may have taken the idols because she was open to utilizing all means necessary to procure her goal, including mandrakes, Jacob’s God, and perhaps also the gods from her father’s household. This point, I believe, explains Rachel’s motivation in the most satisfying way. 1) She’s an anxious person by nature, 2) She is desperate to have children, and 3) She’s hedging her bets.

Ten days after leaving, the unexpected happens. Laban catches up to Jacob’s caravan and confronts Jacob about the disappearance of his idols. Jacob is disgusted by the accusation. In response, Jacob wishes death upon the thief. He tells Laban, “Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not live!” (31:32).

Now Jacob occupies a unique position to bless and curse others because he has inherited God’s promise to Abraham. God promised, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse” (12:3). This thief has brought dishonor to Jacob’s name, so Jacob returns curse with curse, and his terms are harsh. His words wash over Rachel like ice water.

Dennis Prager comments, “We are all occasionally tempted to make these types of grandiose avowals, but they are risky and rarely necessary. Jacob’s statement turns out to be highly risky—and unnecessary, as it does not deter Laban from searching the tents in Jacob’s camp.” Even more than risky and unnecessary, it is harmful because, in this moment, Rachel cements the secrecy of her sin. Suddenly it threatens her very life. “Her husband’s condemnation is so strong that the possibility of her ever admitting the truth to him is here and now smothered.”

The search begins. Laban starts with his top suspects: Jacob, then Leah, then the two maidservants. His youngest daughter, Rachel, is the least suspected of all, so he searches her tent last. 

As he closes in on her, I am reminded of Achan in Joshua 7.

• Just as Achan took from Jericho “some of the devoted things,” Rachel has taken from Laban some of his devoted things. 
• Just as Achan endured an agonizing countdown before being singled out in front of his family, so too Rachel endures an agonizing countdown as Laban gets closer and closer her and her secret. 
• Just as Achan hid the stolen gold and silver in the ground beneath his tent, now Rachel hides the stolen idols in a saddle beneath her in a tent. 

Of course, death was Achan’s sentence. If discovered, what will come of Rachel? 

As Laban enters her tent, Rachel tells him, “Let not my lord take it amiss that I cannot rise before you, for the period of women is upon me.” Laban takes Rachel at her word. It would be, as Prager says, “inconceivable to him that Rachel would risk menstruating on his gods,” so he does not look under her cushion. Instead, he exits the tent empty-handed, and Rachel, believing she is off the hook, breathes a sigh of relief. 

But is she really off the hook? 

We read that after Jacob and Laban part ways, Jacob arrives safely at the city of Shechem and buys some adjacent land (33:18-19). Not long after, a crazy series of events transpires (Genesis 34). As a result, the women and children of Shechem fall under Jacob’s authority (34:27-29). Jacob wants to vacate the area because he is concerned the neighboring Canaanites will seek vengeance and attack his family (34:30). God gives him directions to go to Bethel. Jacob obeys. But before he leaves, Jacob commands all who are with him to give up their idols. He does not want any foreign god to join them on their journey to Bethel. 

The widows of Shechem approach Jacob as commanded and, one by one, discard their idol. The question is – is Rachel still harboring Laban’s idols? And if so, does she bring them forward? Because this is her opportunity to do so! In fact, it may well be her last call for confession, because Genesis tells us her death is just around the corner. 

The Bible doesn’t tell us what Rachel does with the idols. We as readers are given no closure in this regard. Laban’s idols are last seen with Rachel sitting on them in her tent, as she guards her sin from everyone around her. What happens to the idols after that moment remains a mystery to this day. 

Nevertheless, here’s a way to demystify the story with a measure of plausibility. We teleport ourselves to that afternoon. There, with Jacob and pregnant Rachel standing next to us, we watch the Shechemite women – widow after widow after widow – step forward to hand over their household idol. What is not so obvious is that Rachel envies their ability to surrender such things. She thinks about the idols that remain in her secret possession. They are stowed away among her belongings. She has come to resent them in a way, yet she remains extremely protective of the saddle they stay inside. She is pregnant, after all, and miscarriages are common.

Believing all idols to have been handed over, Jacob buries them under a terebinth tree near Shechem. His caravan then sets out, traveling southward. The caravan makes a stop in Bethel before it travels onward to Bethlehem. Along the way Rachel gives birth to a son. She names the baby Benoni, “son of my sorrow.” She then dies unexpectedly during childbirth.

Okay – here is the question, a question that can’t be answered with certainty but a question that still merits some consideration. Is Rachel’s premature passing a result of the declaration Jacob pronounced over her life without realizing it? Recall, Jacob said the thief who stole Laban’s idols would not live. At the time, he did not know upon whom the curse would fall. Even still, his words carry the weight of God’s promise to Abraham, that “whoever dishonors you I will curse” (Gen. 12:3). And then, given Rachel’s failure to confess and seek correction, had Rachel unknowingly sealed its lethal effect?

Her departing words express sadness as she names her son Benoni. We would assume this is because she knows she is dying, but we might also wonder: what if her sorrow is made worse by unresolved guilt? She knows that Laban’s idols still hide in a pouch inside her tent. She knows that Jacob will discover them over the course of time, but perhaps she takes this knowledge to the grave. 

Jacob buries Rachel’s body along the road to Bethlehem, places a rock over her grave, then journeys on with their newborn child (now motherless). Genesis 35:21-22 describes that dark period. Rabbi Samson Hirsch, a giant in Jewish circles writing 150 years ago, translates the Hebrew of verse 21 in a way that renders an insight. “[Jacob] journeyed on and pitched his tent at some distance from the herd tower.” 

What is the meaning of this detail: at some distance from the herd tower? Hirsch writes, “It is possible the tent pitched by Jacob is the tent that Jacob formerly shared with Rachel. Thus, the meaning would be Jacob pitched the tent he once shared with Rachel at some distance from the herd tower, the tower around which the rest of his family camped.” 

So to say, Jacob withdraws from the rest of his family due to his grieving Rachel. Whereas Jacob resided among them while Rachel was alive, he now withdraws from them in the days or weeks after her death. And it is during his absence that Jacob’s oldest son Rueben makes a move on Jacob’s concubine.

We can imagine a moment during this timeframe. It might have gone like this: A servant breaks off from the camp and travels over to Jacob’s tent, a tent distant and isolated. The servant goes in to tell Jacob about the outrageous act committed by his oldest son Rueben. Jacob is angry, but too detached and exhausted to seek immediate action. At first the servant cannot understand why. But then Jacob gestures toward a pouch folded in the dark corner of the tent. He goes to it. From the bag, the servant pulls several carved objects into the firelight. The objects are unmistakable. The objects are Laban’s idols. 

This is the story that’s buried beneath the surface narrative of Genesis 31-35, at least the way I read it. Now I can’t tell you with certainty it happened just the way I’ve described it. Nevertheless, I can’t help but enjoy how this telling adds color to the story in a way that feels real without contradicting the concrete details.  

Ultimately, we are left with a question that cannot be answered. What if, following the burial of Rachel, Jacob stumbled upon his beloved wife’s long-held secret? If such a thing happened, well then perhaps Jacob, wide eyed and white faced, called to mind the curse he so rashly blurted out over the thief’s life in a moment of anger.