There’s a treasure of a story buried beneath the topsoil of Genesis 31-35. The characters in focus are Jacob, Rachel, and Laban. We join the plot as Jacob prepares to flee his father-in-law, Laban, without telling him. 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 as well.
Alone in Laban’s dwelling, a question crosses Rachel’s mind as she pockets her father’s idols. “How am I going to get away with this?” 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? Five potential motives are detailed here. For the purposes of this article, I will jump to the motive 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 similar to 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 was desperately anxious to have a child (Gen. 30:1) and then, later on, desperately anxious to have a second child. Prager points out that Rachel may have taken the idols because she was open to utilizing all means necessary toward procuring 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 them and confronts Jacob about the disappearance of his idols. Jacob is flabbergasted by the accusation. In response, Jacob wishes death upon the thief. He says, “Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not remain alive!” (31:32).
Remember now: Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, has inherited the power to bless and the power to curse. His words carry real-world consequences. Furthermore, how do you think his statement washed over Rachel as she heard them?
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.
Laban doesn’t believe Jacob’s denial of guilt. Being a deceiver himself, Laban goes through life convinced he is constantly being lied to. So goes the built-in punishment of being a dishonest person. Laban starts his search beginning with his top suspects: Jacob, then Leah, then the two maidservants. His youngest daughter, Rachel, is the least suspected of all. Laban searches her tent last. And as he closes in on it, I am reminded of Achan in Joshua 7.
- Just as Achan took from Jericho “some of the devoted things,” Rachel had taken from Laban some of his devoted things.
- Just as Achan endured an agonizing countdown before being singled out from his family, so too Rachel endures an agonizing countdown as Laban closes in on 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 inconceivable to him that Rachel would risk menstruating on his gods, so he does not look under her cushion. Soon 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, something crazy takes place (Genesis 34). As a result, the women and children of Shechem fall under Jacob’s authority (34:27-29). Jacob wants to leave the area because he is worried the neighboring Canaanites will seek vengeance on his family (34:30). God gives him directions to go to Bethel. Jacob obeys, but before leaving, Jacob commands all who are with him to bury their idols under an old oak tree. He does not want any foreign deities to join them on their journey to Bethel.
The widows of Shechem approach the old oak tree as commanded. There they discard their idols, one by one, into a pit. The question is – is Rachel still harboring Laban’s idols? And if so, does she bring them forward? Because this (we can agree) is her opportunity to do it! In fact, it may well be her last call for confession, because the Bible tells us her untimely death is just around the corner. The Bible doesn’t specify 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 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 under the old oak at Shechem. There, with Jacob and pregnant Rachel standing next to us, we watch the Shechemite women – widow after widow after widow – step forward to deposit a household idol into this pit under the oak tree. What is not so obvious is that Rachel envies their ability to surrender their idols. She thinks of the idols that secretly remain in her possession. They are stowed away among her belongings. She has come to resent them in a way, but she is extremely protective of the saddle that they stay inside. She is pregnant, after all, and miscarriages are common.
Believing all idols to have been discarded, Jacob leaves Shechem and travels southward with the rest of his caravan. The caravan makes a stop in Bethel and then travels onward to Bethlehem. Along the way Rachel goes into labor and gives birth to a son. She names the baby Benoni, “son of my sorrow.” She then dies unexpectedly during childbirth.
Okay y’all – here is the question I have been building up to, 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 curse that Jacob pronounced over her life without realizing it? Recall, Jacob sentenced the thief who stole Laban’s idols to death. At the time, he did not know who the curse would fall upon. 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 might wonder: what if her sorrow was 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 disappointment to the grave.
We know that Jacob struggles in the wake of Rachel’s death. He withdraws from the rest of his family. Genesis 35:21-22 describes that dark period. Rabbi Hirsch translates the original Hebrew in a way that renders a unique insight. We key in on one specific detail: “Jacob journeyed on [from the place that Rachel was buried] and pitched his tent at some distance from the herd tower. When Jacob was residing in that land, Rueben . . . placed his couch beside his father’s concubine so that Jacob heard of it.” 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 that he and Rachel used to share at some distance from the herd tower, the tower around which the rest of his family encamped.”
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 isolates himself in the days or weeks after her death. And it is during this absence that Jacob’s oldest son Rueben makes a salacious move and sleeps with his 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. But Jacob, for the time being, is too detached to be outraged, too exhausted to seek action. At first the servant cannot understand why. But then Jacob gestures toward a pouch that is folded up in the dark corner of the tent. From the bag, the servant pulls a number of carved objects into the firelight. The objects are unmistakable. The objects are Laban’s idols.
This telling sure seems plausible to me. What if, following the burial of Rachel, Jacob stumbled upon her long-held, closely-held secret? And perhaps Jacob, wide-eyed and white-faced, couldn’t help but remember the declaration he so rashly blurted out over the thief’s life.
