Chuck Larsen

Laban, Jacob’s uncle, had kissed him upon his arrival. That’s interesting because Jacob had kissed his father when he tricked him out of giving the blessing to Esau instead of himself. After Laban’s welcoming kiss, he proceeded to trick Jacob into marrying his oldest daughter after Jacob had served for 7 years to win Rachel. Laban then exacted another 7 years from Jacob to get Rachel. Besides this there were disputes between the two and Laban attempted to keep the richest parts of the flocks and harvests from Jacob. But God would have none of that. Genesis 30:43 says, “Thus the man (Jacob) increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.” However, don’t forget that Jacob was plotting to plot to mate the flock before some kind of reed that would guarantee their health and color. The blessing of prosperity and wealth came to Jacob, not because of his reeds and rods but because someone was watching over him. If Laban would have had his way, Jacob would never leave and would end up with little or nothing. Fortunately, as Boice observes, “Jacob had an ally who was open-handed, upright, straightforward, generous, and compassionate. His ally was God. The secret of Jacob’s success in working for Laban is that even in the unpleasant earthly relationship, he was really working for God, who would protect him and prosper his efforts.”

The Handbook for translators disagrees with Boice’s interpretation and thinks that his wealth had to do with his conniving nature associated with his name Jacob, which means trickster or supplant. It reads, “Thus the man grew exceedingly rich: thus marks a conclusion to this story, which has been told to explain that Jacob became a rich man because he was more clever than his uncle. We may say in English, for example, ‘And so it happened,’ ‘In this way,’ ‘By doing these things,’ ‘as a result.’ Grew … rich translates a Hebrew verb that describes something bursting or breaking forth, and so in this context describes Jacob’s wealth as developing suddenly and greatly.”¹ Regardless, both Laban and Jacob got what they deserved from each other. Ryle summarizes the contest between Jacob and Laban for us. He writes “In this passage and in the following chapter Laban is depicted in the Israelite narrative as the typical Aramaean, a crafty, selfish, grasping man of business. Jacob, however, in spite of Laban’s duplicity, prospers exceedingly. By greater cunning he outwits Laban himself, and God gives him protection and prosperity.”²

It seems that based on the promises that God had made to Abraham, Isaac and they passed on to Jacob, the wealth that Jacob acquired had much less to do with his own cleverness than it had to do with the promises of blessing that he tricked his father Isaac into giving to him rather than his brother Esau. Romans 9:13 makes it clear that God’s blessing was freely bestowed on Jacob not Esau. Why God chose Jacob over Esau was simply a matter of His promises to Abraham and Isaac. He could not go back on his promise. It wasn’t Jacob’s cleverness. Butler suggests, “Success accompanied the scheming but success did not result from the scheming. Sometimes when God blesses us in spite of ourselves, we have a tendency to credit some evil scheme.” ³

¹ William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 705.

² Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version with Introduction and Notes, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), 306.

³ John G. Butler, Analytical Bible Expositor: Genesis (Clinton, IA: LBC Publications, 2008), 301.

Rachel was beautiful alright and Jacob loved her dearly. Leah was rather plain and was basically unloved. God as much as said so and he chose to bless her specially with children whereas Rachel had none. Guzik is correct, he says, “Despite Rachel’s great beauty, she also was near despair. No doubt, Leah often said, ‘If I only had my sister’s beauty and the love of my husband, I would be happy.’ No doubt, Rachel often said, ‘If I only had sons like my sister.’ Beautiful or plain, we all have our problems.¹ Even beautiful women have their problems. Rachel, beautiful but barren, struggled with her sister for the continued affection of Jacob. Leah gave birth to four sons in a row; Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. Her struggle with Leah becomes so severe that In Genesis 30:1 Rachel screams to Jacob “give me children or I die!” As if Jacob can control who conceives and who does not. Jacob reminds her that he’s not in God’s place thus telling her that her problem is not with him, it’s really with God.

Rachel tries to fulfill her desire for children by using her hand maiden, Bilhah, who gives Jacob two sons. Rachel asks Jacob for him to go into Bilhah so she might deliver me a son “on my knees.” Unfortunately most translations ignore that phrase. On my knees refers to the custom where the husband impregnated the surrogate while the surrogate reclined on the lap of the wife, and how she might even recline on the wife as she gave birth. The symbolism clearly showed the child was legally the child of the mother, not the surrogate, who was merely in the place of the wife in both conception and birth. The Handbook for translators doesn’t think the phrase should be taken literally. It says, “That she may bear upon my knees is the literal Hebrew figurative expression and refers to the practice of obtaining children through the service of another woman, or of recognizing the child that is born as legally one’s own. In 50:23 Joseph’s grandchildren were “born upon his knees,” a way of saying that he acknowledged them as legitimate. In this case Rachel proposes to make Bilhah’s offspring her own, and thus she is to become the adoptive mother.”²

Regardless, the text says that Rachel is the one who named them. She named the first one “Dan,” which means “vindicated.” She thinks that somehow the birth of this surrogate son gives her the edge in her struggle with her plain but productive sister Leah. Then she names Bilhah’s second son, Naphthali. This literally means “my struggle.” Boice observes, “Some commentators refer this to Bilhah’s struggle in childbirth, which Rachel claims as her own. But this is not it at all. Rachel is struggling with Leah, and the additional baby is only another weapon in her arsenal. She is really hitting Leah over the head with him.” Jacob had made it clear that Rachel’s struggle was truly with God. He determines the lot of us all. When you don’t like it, you rebel against God. I believe God was using Rachel’s barrenness to humble her. Beautiful women sometimes grow up getting whatever they want and sometimes need to be reminded of their place. It’s easy to see the beautiful women as less spiritual as others. But as Boice observes, “It would be good if some women who are less favored outwardly could see that God is also concerned about those who are beautiful. The plain girls envy the beautiful ones, but the beautiful ones have problems of their own, and God does not look down on them as you or I might do.”

¹ David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 30:1–4.

² William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 684.

Jacob got the blessing his father, Isaac, had intended for Esau. He got it by trickery. You might remember that “trickery” might even be the word that defines his name. Jacob means deceiver or trickster. There seems to be an interesting progression of Jacob’s deception. It begins by listening to his mother. He then impersonates his brother. Then he lies to his father. He then goes to the awful length of bringing the name of the Lord God into the deception. When Isaac questions the quickness of his returning with the food, Jacob says “because the Lord your God granted me success.” I don’t expect God smiled down on that. There’s always a progression. It begins with listening. Genesis 3, the first sin, began the same way. Eve listened to the serpent and Adam listened to his wife.

It’s interesting that a “kiss” is involved in the deceit. Genesis 27:26-27 tells us, “Then his father Isaac said to him (Jacob), Come near and kiss me, my son’ (thinking it was Esau) So he (Jacob) came near and kissed him.” Butler observes “Jacob had very affectionate manners in beguiling Isaac. His deceitful kissing of Isaac is one of the deceitful kisses recorded in the Bible. Joab kissed Amasa before he murdered him (II Samuel 20:9); the harlot kissed the young man before she destroyed his morals (Proverbs 7:13), and Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss (Matthew 26:48, 49). The devil has used kissing for ages to deceive and destroy.”¹

Faith Hill sings a song “This Kiss.” In the later chorus to the song she sings, “It’s the way you love me. It’s a feeling like this. It’s centrifugal motion. It’s perpetual bliss. It’s that pivotal moment. It’s, ah, subliminal. This kiss, this kiss (it’s criminal)…” Louis Armstrong also had a song about a kiss. It contained the phrase “A kiss is just a kiss.” Is it really? Jacob was to receive a couple kisses in his later life that might be compared to the one he gave his father to deceive him. Laban kissed Jacob and tricked him into marrying Leah instead of Rachel. Esau kissed Jacob when he returned to Canaan as well and their relationship remains strained as long as Edom existed. (King Herod was the last Edomite, descendant of Esau, mentioned in the Bible. Remember, a kiss is not always a kiss.

¹John G. Butler, Analytical Bible Expositor: Genesis (Clinton, IA: LBC Publications, 2008), 265.

Things are going along for Adam and Eve in the Garden in their state of innocence. But Chapter three is going to bring into the picture. God’s enemy. There is no warfare without a foe and it’s in Chapter 1 of Genesis three that we meet the foe. The text says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.” The Hebrew word for “Naked” that we encountered at the end of chapter two of Genesis, sounds like the Hebrew word for “crafty” which is used to described Satan. It’s like our English words, “hear” and “here.” They are homonyms but have different meanings. According to Niehaus, “The author apparently uses this homonym and its wordplay purposefully: It is precisely the sinless quality of physical and spiritual nakedness without shame that is about to be lost as a result of the serpent’s craftiness. The serpent is also later identified as ‘that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray’ (Rev. 12:9). He leads astray by means of lies, and he is in fact the ‘father of lies’ (John 8:44). He trades in sin, which is deceptive (Heb. 3:13).”^[1]

What or who is this “serpent.” Various explanations for the serpent compete for our understanding. It has been interpreted as a mythological character related to magical powers or taken as a symbol of human curiosity, the fertility cult, or of chaos/evil. Still others have proposed that the voice of the snake is the inner person. The voice is none other than the woman’s thoughts.  The traditional opinion among Jewish and Christian interpreters is that the serpent is Satan’s instrument. Luther explained: ‘The devil was permitted to enter beasts, as he here entered the serpent. For there is no doubt that it was a real serpent in which Satan was and in which he conversed with Eve.’”^[2] Luther’s idea is most appealing to me because we see that the Demons could possess humans in the Gospels. Jesus even casts them out of someone and sends them into a herd of swine. Further, we see Satan himself speaking through Peter in his attempt to dissuade Jesus from heading to the cross. And it is Satan who is at work in Judas prompting the great betrayal.

Paul recognizes the “craftiness” of Satan in his comment in 2 Corinthians 2:14 where he warms his readers that Satan disguises himself as an “angel of light.” Proverbs speaks of Satan as the roaring lion, wandering around looking to feed on the souls of men. Satan is cunning, crafty, devious and treacherous. He did not present himself as our cartoons might today as a hideous creature with horns, a forked tail carrying a pitchfork. Culver says, “He is wicked, threatening and dangerous, for he is likened to a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8) and said to be a murderer and liar (John 8:44). Believers are told to beware of him, and to be sober and vigilant against him. This is because he is ‘subtle,’ that is, cunning, deceitful, everything a successful tempter needs to be. This, of course, Eve did not know. One wonders why the Lord God had not warned her of him. At any rate it was precisely the serpent’s deceit, making evil appear good, desirable, and beautiful, that gave him victory over Eve. And the Bible does not fail to make that point for our benefit.”^[3] To always be alert to the wiles of the Devil, Jesus exhorted his followers in Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” When something God says is bad is reasonably presented to us as good, watch out!

^[1] Niehaus, Jeffrey J. 2014. Biblical Theology: The Common Grace Covenants. Vol. 1. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[2] Mathews, K. A. 1996. Genesis 1-11:26. Vol. 1A. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

^[3] Culver, Robert Duncan. 2005. Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical. Ross-shire, UK: Mentor.

When Eleazar explained his mission to Rebekah’s parents, they called their daughter and left the decision up to her. Genesis 24:58 says, “And they called Rebekah and said to her, ‘Will you go with this man?’ She said, ‘I will go.’” Rebekah had a servant’s heart without doubt. The offer to water Eleazar’s camels proves that. Boice says, “A camel drinks more than twenty gallons of water, especially after a long day’s journey in hot lands. Here were ten camels. Would her pitcher hold a gallon? If so, she must have made two hundred trips from the spring to the watering trough. It would have taken several hours.” Her servant’s heart is obvious, but there’s another trait she has that is extremely attractive. This is a woman of great faith and trust in God. When her parents vacillated about her immediate departure they put the question to her.

I expect Laban and Bethuel (Her parents) were a little fearful facing the departure of their daughter not knowing if they would ever see her again. There is no record that they ever did. I expect they ask Rebekah to stop, think this over, consider the seriousness of this decision, honey! But Rebekah said “I will go.” Abraham gets all the credit for being the man of faith because he left his home in Haran to travel to the Land God would show him – not knowing what to expect. If Father Abraham is the “father of faith” Rebekah must be the “mother of faith.” She left her home and family when she was no more than a girl, bound for what only God knew. She had only the promise of Eleazar.

Many compare Eleazar to God’s spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s emissary sent to bring us to his son, Jesus Christ, for a great wedding day. He woos us. He makes big promises. He gives us gifts. He also promises wonderful fruit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, if we accept his invitation. He’s always asking us, “Will you go?” Well? Will you?