Genesis 29

"Lifted his feet" is found only here, and the idiom of the body is kept (guide §4.12). Genesis Rabbah 70:8 reads it from what went before: after the promise at Bethel, "his heart lifted his feet," and he walked light. "The sons of the east" (בְנֵי קֶדֶם) are the peoples east of Canaan (Judg 6:3; 1 Kgs 5:10; Job 1:3). Harran lies north and east, and the Hebrew uses the wide name.

The constructions vary and stay varied. The stone is "great on the mouth" (v. 2), rolled "from on the mouth" and brought back "on the mouth … to its place" (v. 3), and rolled "from on the mouth" in the shepherds' answer (v. 8) and by Jacob alone (v. 10). The great stone is why the shepherds wait for one another: it is moved when all the droves are gathered (vv. 3, 8). Jacob moves it by himself. This well scene answers the one at Gen 24. There a servant waited at the spring for a woman, and she gave drink to him and to his camels (24:11–20). Here the man arrives, and he gives drink to the woman's flock. Moses does the same for the daughters of the priest of Midian (Exod 2:15–17).

גָּלַל "roll" (vv. 3, 8, 10) is the verb Gilgal is named for: "this day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from on you" (Josh 5:9). Stones are rolled to a cave's mouth at Josh 10:18, and the stone of the tomb is rolled at Mark 16:3–4.

הֲשָׁלוֹם לוֹ "Is there peace to him?" is the greeting question, kept as it stands (43:27; 2 Kgs 4:26; 9:17–22). שָׁלוֹם is wholeness and well-being, and the shepherds answer with the bare noun, "Peace." The WPRB has "Is he well?"

"The day is still great": the day is at its height, far from evening, when the flocks were gathered in. Watering at noon was the shepherds' custom (Song 1:7, "where you make them crouch at noon"). Jacob's "go, shepherd" sends them back to pasture; he wants them gone before Rachel arrives.

רֹעָה הִוא "she was shepherding" uses the participle of רָעָה, as Abel was "shepherding flock" (4:2), and the participle stays a verb (10). Rachel's name, רָחֵל, is "ewe" (31:38; Isa 53:7, "like a ewe before her shearers"). The shepherd is named for one of her animals. The daughters of the priest of Midian shepherd their father's flock in the same way (Exod 2:16).

The verse names Laban "brother of his mother" three times: Rachel is his daughter, the flock is his, and Jacob waters it. The narrator follows Jacob's mind back to Rebekah, who sent him (27:43; 28:2). "Approached" is נָגַשׁ, the verb of his coming close to Isaac to be felt and kissed (27:21–27); here, too, a kiss follows (v. 11).

"My bone and my flesh" is the formula of kinship (Judg 9:2; 2 Sam 5:1; 19:13–14), first spoken by the man of the woman, "bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh" (2:23). Laban says it before Jacob has asked for anything, and before he sets him to work (v. 15).

חִנָּם "gratis," the core gloss, is "without pay." The Satan uses it in Job: "Is it gratis that Job fears Elohim?" (Job 1:9). Laban's offer of wages opens the twenty years in which, Jacob says, Laban "changed my wages ten times" (31:7, 41). מַשְׂכֹּרֶת "wages" is from שָׂכַר "hire," the root of שָׂכָר "wage" (15:1; 30:18). The question opens with הֲכִי, "Is it because," and the clause that follows is joined by "and."

"Beautiful of form and beautiful of sight" is said again only of Joseph, Rachel's son (39:6), in the masculine. Abigail is "good of understanding and beautiful of form" (1 Sam 25:3). תֹּאַר "form" is the shape of a body (1 Sam 16:18; Isa 52:14); מַרְאֶה "sight" is how it looks.

טוֹב … מִן is the Hebrew comparative, "good … more than": Laban would rather give his daughter to a kinsman than to an outsider. He does not say yes to the terms Jacob named, and v. 25 shows what that left open.

אֲחָדִים "a few" (127j) is the word Rebekah used when she sent Jacob away: "dwell with him a few days, until your brother's fury turns" (27:44). Her few days have become seven years, and the seven years were like a few days in Jacob's eyes. They will be twenty years before he leaves (31:38, 41). The בְּ of "in his loving her" can be "because he loved her" or "while he loved her"; the English keeps the preposition.

"And it was in the morning, and look, she was Leah." The narrator gives the discovery through Jacob's eyes, with הִנֵּה "look," and holds it until morning. The dark tent answers the blind father: Jacob came to Isaac in his brother's clothes and said "I am Esau your firstborn" (27:19), and now the elder sister is brought to him in the younger's place. Genesis Rabbah 70:19 gives Leah the reply: did your father not call "Esau," and you answered him?

The piel of רָמָה is "deceive" (1 Sam 19:17; 28:12; 2 Sam 19:27). It is the root of מִרְמָה "deceit," Isaac's word for what Jacob did: "your brother came with deceit and took your blessing" (27:35). The one who came with deceit is now deceived, and the English keeps "deceive" and "deceit" on one root so the reader hears it.

"In our place" sets Laban's custom against the word "place" said six times at Bethel (28:11–19). "The younger before the firstborn" turns back on Jacob, who took the firstborn's birthright (בְּכֹרָה, 25:31–34) and blessing (27:36). בְּכִירָה "firstborn" is the feminine of בְּכוֹר and sounds like the birthright. לִפְנֵי is of time here, the preposition "before" (120).

שָׁבוּעַ "week" is a span of seven: of years (Dan 9:24–27), the feast of weeks (Deut 16:9–10), and here the seven days of a wedding feast (Judg 14:12, 17). It is kept apart from שֶׁבַע "seven," in the same verse, and from שָׁבַע "swear," which shares its letters. "Fill the week" keeps the home gloss of מָלֵא, as in Jacob's "my days are filled" (v. 21).

וְנִתְּנָה is pointed as the qal, "and we will give." The same consonants and vowels can be the niphal, "and she shall be given." The LXX has δώσω "I will give." The Masoretic text is printed: Laban speaks for "we," the household and the custom of the place.

עֲבֹדָה is the noun of עָבַד "serve," and the cognate pair "the service that you will serve" is kept (6). It is labour owed to another (Exod 1:14; 2:23) and the service of the sanctuary (Exod 12:25–26; Num 3:7–8); "service" covers both. Jacob's service is a bride-price paid in years, as Hosea remembers: "Israel served for a woman, and for a woman he kept" (Hos 12:13).

מִלֵּאָה "more than Leah" is the comparative מִן: Jacob loves both, Rachel more. The next verse calls Leah "hated," and the law knows the same pair: "the loved one and the hated one" of a man with two women, where the son of the hated one may be the firstborn (Deut 21:15–17).

שְׂנוּאָה "hated" keeps the home gloss of שָׂנֵא. The hate is loving less, second place in a man's love (v. 30; Deut 21:15–17), as in "Jacob I loved and Esau I hated" (Mal 1:2–3; Rom 9:13) and Luke 14:26. The English keeps the hard word because Leah says it of herself (v. 33).

Reuben, רְאוּבֵן, sounds like רְאוּ בֵן "See, a son!" Leah explains it with another phrase: "Adonai has seen (רָאָה) my affliction." The verb of seeing is in the name, but English cannot carry it, so the pun stays in this note (17). "Seen my affliction" recalls Hagar's son, named because Adonai heard her affliction (16:11), and it anticipates the Exodus, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people" (Exod 3:7). The names are in the names table.

Simeon, שִׁמְעוֹן, is from שָׁמַע "hear": "Adonai has heard that I am hated." The name and the verb share the root, but English "hear" cannot be the name, so the pun stays in this note. Ishmael was named the same way, "El hears" (16:11).

Levi, לֵוִי, is explained by יִלָּוֶה "will be attached," the niphal of לָוָה. The verb returns of the Levites themselves, "that they may be attached to you and serve you" (Num 18:2, 4), and of the foreigners "attached to Adonai" (Isa 56:3, 6). The pun stays in this note. "Join" is kept for חָבַר. הַפַּעַם "this turn" is the word of 2:23, "this turn, bone from my bones," and Leah says it in vv. 34 and 35 (97).

Judah, יְהוּדָה, is heard in אוֹדֶה "I will confess." The name of the tribe and of the kingdom gives the Jews (יְהוּדִים) their name. English cannot carry the pun, so it stays in this note.

וַתַּעֲמֹד מִלֶּדֶת "she stood still from bearing": עָמַד is to stand and to stay, to stop moving (Josh 10:13, the sun "stood still"). Leah stopped bearing for a time; she bears again at 30:17–21. The next chapter opens with Rachel's envy.