Genesis 31

Notes

1. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "glory" (KJV) / "wealth" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 39

   כָּבוֹד is from כָּבֵד "be heavy" (H3513): weight, then the substance that gives a man weight, then honour and glory. Here it is livestock and goods, as in Ps 49:17, "when the glory of his house grows great," and Isa 10:3, "where will you leave your glory?"; "the glory of the nations" in Isa 61:6 is their wealth. The same word is the glory of Adonai (Exod 16:7; 33:18; 40:34), so one English word serves both, and the reader hears Laban's sons call Jacob's flocks his "glory." "Weight" belongs to מִשְׁקָל. The sons say "our father" twice; Jacob's answer (v. 9) and the daughters' (v. 16) name Elohim as the one who took it from him.

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 8

   כִּתְמוֹל שִׁלְשֹׁם, "as yesterday, the third day," is the idiom for "as before" (Exod 5:7–8, 14; 1 Sam 19:7; 2 Kgs 13:5); both its words are printed. אֵינֶנּוּ, "he is not," is singular and masculine. "Face" (פָּנִים) is plural in Hebrew and takes a plural verb ("my face will go," פָּנַי יֵלֵכוּ, Exod 33:14), so the subject is Laban himself, seen in his face, and the English "he" follows the grammar (8). Verse 5 repeats the idiom with "toward me" (אֵלַי) where v. 2 has "with him" (עִמּוֹ), and the two are kept apart.

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 95

   מֹנִים "counts" is from מָנָה "count" (H4487): the changes were counted, and v. 41 repeats the charge in the same words. "Ten" may be a round number for "again and again" (Num 14:22; Job 19:3). "Elohim did not give him" is the idiom of permission with נָתַן, as at 20:6, "I did not give you to touch her"; "give" is held (2).

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 37

   Laban's terms are those of 30:32–39, and the glosses fixed there hold through Jacob's account and his dream (vv. 8, 10, 12): "speckled," "striped," "be in heat." Jacob tells of two bargains, one for each mark, each answered by the flock: Laban changed the term, and the flock changed with it. The yiqtol יֹאמַר is a repeated past, "if he said."

5. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "rams" (KJV) / "he-goats" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 39

   עַתּוּד is the male goat: the offerings of the tribes' chiefs (Num 7:17–88), "rams… and he-goats" (Deut 32:14; Ps 50:9, 13), the goats that go out ahead of the flock (Jer 50:8), and so a name for leaders (Isa 14:9). "Ram" is אַיִל's (v. 38) and "goat" is עֵז's (v. 38), so "he-goat" names the male goat apart from both (129), as תַּיִשׁ is "buck" (30:35). "Going up on" the flock is mounting it. בָּרֹד "dappled" is spotted as with hail (בָּרָד), the colour of the horses of Zech 6:3, 6. In Jacob's telling it stands where 30:32–39 had טָלוּא "patched."

6. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "the angel of God" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 9, 107, 128

   הָאֱלֹהִים has no agreeing verb in its clause, but the speaker names himself in v. 13, "I am the El of Bethel," so the capital is printed by reference (107; 128d), as at 28:12. "Messenger" is the core gloss (62).

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "Here am I" (KJV) / "Here I am" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 37, 88

   הִנֵּנִי, as at 22:1, 7, 11 and 27:1, 18: הִנֵּה with the suffix "me," "look—me." The home gloss "look" (88) cannot take an object pronoun in English, so the particle and its suffix are printed together as "Here I am," and the phrase is held whole.

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   Jacob's account credits a dream and Elohim (vv. 9, 12) with what 30:37–43 tells as his own work with peeled rods at the troughs. The narrator gives no dream in Gen 30, and Jacob mentions no rods here. Neither account corrects the other.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 9, 18, 68

   הָאֵל בֵּית־אֵל puts the article on a word bound to a name, an unusual construct: "the El, Bethel," or "the El of Bethel." The LXX fills it out, "the God who appeared to you in the place of God," and Onkelos, "the God who revealed himself to you at Bethel"; both point back to 28:13–22, the stone and the vow. There Jacob poured oil on the stone (יָצַק, 28:18); here Elohim calls it anointing, מָשַׁח, the verb of מָשִׁיחַ "anointed" (68). "El" is printed under 9.

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 39

    They were sold, and the price went to their father: Jacob paid for them with fourteen years of service (29:18–30), and none of it came to them. "He has eaten, eating it up too" keeps the infinitive absolute (6); "it up" is supplied. "Silver" is the metal as money (39). The root of כֶּסֶף "silver" is also Laban's "yearning" at v. 30 (כָּסַף).

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "images" (KJV) / "household gods" (RSV)

    Rulings 5, 18, 46

    תְּרָפִים, a plural that can stand for a single object, names figures kept in the house. Laban calls them "my elohim" (v. 30). Michal lays one in David's bed to pass for him (1 Sam 19:13, 16), so one could be the size of a man. Micah's shrine has them with the ephod (Judg 17:5; 18:14–20); they are consulted for oracles (Ezek 21:26; Zech 10:2; Hos 3:4) and condemned (1 Sam 15:23; 2 Kgs 23:24). The word is transliterated, as the KJV itself does at Judg 17:5 and Hos 3:4, because no English word holds image, household god and oracle together. The text does not give Rachel's motive. Rashi says she meant to wean her father from idolatry. The Nuzi tablets, which tie household gods to the inheritance of an estate, led E. A. Speiser to read a claim on Laban's property (compare v. 14, "is there still for us a portion and inheritance?"); Moshe Greenberg and others have disputed the parallel. Rachel's theft and Jacob's (v. 20) take one verb; see the note there. The WPRB has "household gods."

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Jacob stole away unawares to Laban" (KJV) / "Jacob outwitted Laban" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 37

    גָּנַב לֵב, "steal the heart," is to deceive, to take someone's mind unawares: Absalom "stole the heart of the men of Israel" (2 Sam 15:6). The verb is held as a chain (37). Rachel steals the teraphim (v. 19); Jacob steals Laban's heart (v. 20); Laban says "you stole my heart" and "you stole me" (vv. 26–27) and asks "why did you steal my elohim?" (v. 30); the narrator answers "Rachel had stolen them" (v. 32), and Jacob says "stolen by day and stolen by night" (v. 39). לֵב "heart" sounds in לָבָן "Laban." עַל בְּלִי הִגִּיד is "on the ground of not telling": בְּלִי negates a finite verb, which English "without" cannot take, so the verb becomes "telling" (10). In v. 26 Laban uses the longer form לֵבָב (88).

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    הַגִּלְעָד keeps the article, "the Gilead," a region rather than a town: the hill country east of the Jordan. The chapter explains the name by the heap of witness, גַּל עֵד (vv. 47–48), a popular etymology the Hebrew letters allow; English cannot carry it (17). The names table below has the forms.

14. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "overtook" (KJV, RSV)

    Ruling 2

    The hiphil of דָּבַק in a pursuit is to catch up and stay on someone's heels: "they clung after them in the battle" (1 Sam 14:22; also 31:2; Judg 18:22; 20:42, 45). "Cling" is held. The overtaking proper is v. 25, נָשַׂג.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 103, 2

    "From good to bad" is a range with מִן…עַד, so עַד is "to" (103). It is the merism of 24:50, "we cannot speak to you bad or good," and of 2 Sam 13:22, where Absalom "did not speak with Amnon from bad to good": nothing at all. Laban then speaks at length (vv. 26–30, 43–53). Rashi reads the warning as a ban on what is bad only: even the good of the wicked is bad for the just. Laban repeats the warning himself at v. 29.

16. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "It is in the power of my hand" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 9, 40

    יֵשׁ לְאֵל יָדִי is an idiom: "when it is in the power of your hand to do it" (Prov 3:27); "there is no power in your hand" (Deut 28:32; Neh 5:5); "for it is in the power of their hand" (Mic 2:1). Strong's and OSHB file the noun with אֵל "El," and some read "my hand is my god" (compare Hab 1:11, "whose power is his god"). No attested reading makes a divine name of it here, so the expected sense is printed (40). "El" would create a false sense (guide §9), and "power" belongs to כֹּחַ (v. 6), so "might" is printed.

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 17

    The infinitive absolute is kept twice: "going you have gone… yearning you have yearned" (6). The niphal of כָּסַף is to long, to pine: "my soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of Adonai" (Ps 84:3). The root is the root of כֶּסֶף "silver," perhaps the pale metal. Laban, whose daughters say he has eaten their silver (v. 15), now says that Jacob "yearned" for home; English has no pun (17).

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "my gods" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 38, 123

    אֱלֹהָי has no agreeing verb; it is a foreigner's word for the teraphim (v. 19), and Jacob takes it up at v. 32 as "your elohim," which the narrator follows with "had stolen them." Lowercase "elohim" under 38 (123c), in the WPB and the WPRB. The same word is "Elohim" in Jacob's mouth (vv. 5, 7, 9) and in Laban's own at v. 29, where it agrees in the singular: Laban names his household figures with the word for Jacob's Elohim.

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 22, 74

    "The way of women" is menstruation, as "the way of women" (אֹרַח כַּנָּשִׁים) had ceased for Sarah (18:11). By the later law whatever a menstruating woman sits on is unclean (Lev 15:20). Laban's elohim are under the camel litter of a woman who claims that state, and he does not touch it. Isaiah mocks gods that must be carried on beasts (Isa 46:1–2). "My lord" is a daughter's deferential address to her father, in the third person (22).

20. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Set it here" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 130

    A bare כֹּה of place is "here" (130), the place where the speaker stands: Jacob bids Laban set out whatever he has found where the kin of both men can see it. With עַד "as far as," כֹּה points away, "as far as yonder" (22:5; Num 23:15). The home gloss "so" belongs to כֹּה of manner (15:5).

21. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    רְחֵלֶיךָ "your ewes" is the word of Rachel's name, רָחֵל "Ewe" (Isa 53:7). Jacob, who does not know she has the teraphim (v. 32), names the ewes as he defends his keeping of the flock; English cannot carry the pun (17). The piel שִׁכֵּלוּ is to cast young, to miscarry (Exod 23:26; 2 Kgs 2:19, 21). The home gloss "be bereaved" is held: the ewes were not bereaved of their lambs.

22. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "I bare the loss of it" (KJV) / "I bore the loss of it myself" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 89

    אֲחַטֶּנָּה is the piel of חָטָא with an object: "I made it a miss," I set the missing animal against myself. The qal is to miss a mark (Judg 20:16; Prov 19:2), and the piel elsewhere is to clear of sin (Lev 8:15; Ps 51:9). "Sin" is held (89), and "count it my" is supplied to carry the stem. By the later law a keeper does not repay what beasts have torn if he brings it as evidence (Exod 22:12); Jacob says he paid even for that. The passive participles גְּנֻבְתִי "stolen" keep an old ending in ־ִי.

23. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the fear of Isaac" (KJV) / "the Fear of Isaac" (RSV)

    Rulings 9, 18, 46

    פַּחַד is sudden dread: "dread came on me, and trembling" (Job 4:14); "the dread of your heart" (Deut 28:67); "the terror of the night" (Ps 91:5). The פַּחַד of Adonai is the dread he casts on others (1 Sam 11:7; Isa 2:10, 19, 21; 2 Chr 17:10). Here it is a title, set in a list with "the Elohim of Abraham," so it takes a capital as a name (9, 18): the one Isaac dreads, or the one who strikes dread for him. Onkelos reads "the one whom Isaac feared." W. F. Albright read "the Kinsman of Isaac," from a word for kin in Aramaic and Arabic; D. R. Hillers argued against it, and the reading has not held. "Fear" is the gloss of יָרֵא and יִרְאָה, which stay apart from פַּחַד ("fearing Elohim," 22:12). Jacob swears by this name at v. 53. The WPRB has "Fear."

24. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 20, 74

    וַיּוֹכַח, "and he set right," is the verb of v. 37, where Jacob asks the kin of both men to "set right" between them. He reads Elohim's warning to Laban (vv. 24, 29) as a verdict already given. The KJV has "rebuked thee," the RSV "rendered judgment"; the hiphil keeps its home gloss (20).

25. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 128

    לְכָה is the imperative of הָלַךְ (H3212) "go," before the cohortative "let us cut"; "go" is held. It is not הָבָה, whose call before a cohortative is "up" (11:3–4, 7; 128c). "Cut a covenant" keeps כָּרַת (15:18; 21:27).

26. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 18, 28, 29, 30

    יְגַר שָׂהֲדוּתָא is Aramaic, the first Aramaic in the Bible and the only Aramaic in the Torah. Laban the Aramean (vv. 20, 24) names the heap in his tongue, and Jacob names it in Hebrew, גַּלְעֵד; the two names stand side by side in one verse, one for each party to the covenant. They mean the same thing, "heap of witness": יְגַר is a cairn (Syriac yaggārā), and שָׂהֲדוּ is witness, the word Hebrew borrows at Job 16:19 ("my witness is on high," שָׂהֲדִי). The span is marked as Aramaic (30). Both are printed as names in their familiar forms (18), so the Aramaic takes no English used for Hebrew (29). Names table below.

27. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18, 23

    Laban's sentence spells the name: "this heap (גַּל) is witness (עֵד)," therefore "Galeed" (גַּלְעֵד). The same letters make "Gilead" (גִּלְעָד), the region the heap stands in (vv. 21, 23, 25). English carries the pun with neither name; "Heap-of-Witness" would replace the name with a phrase, so the pun stays in this note.

28. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18, 74

    הַמִּצְפָּה is "the watchpost," and Laban explains it by יִצֶף "may he watch" (צָפָה). The LXX reads the noun as ἡ ὅρασις, "the sight." Mizpah is also a town of Gilead later (Judg 10:17; 11:11, 29, 34). The words call on Adonai to watch over a partner who cannot be trusted out of sight (v. 50), not to bless two friends; later use has made them a parting blessing. The name is printed in its familiar form (18).

29. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "God" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 9, 38, 107, 128

    אֱלֹהִים here has no agreeing verb (רְאֵה is said to Jacob), and a foreigner's bare אֱלֹהִים stays lowercase (38; 123c; v. 30). But in the verse before Laban has called on Adonai by name to watch between the two men, and "Elohim is witness" names the same watcher in the same scene, so the capital is printed by reference (128d). Laban's oath at v. 53, with a plural verb, prints lowercase.

30. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 25

    יָרָה is to cast or throw: lots (Josh 18:6), arrows (1 Sam 20:36), "who cast its cornerstone?" (Job 38:6). Laban says "I have cast" of the standing stone Jacob set up (v. 45), and of the heap Jacob's kin gathered (v. 46).

31. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "that I will not pass over this heap to thee" (KJV) / "that I will not pass over this heap to you" (RSV)

    Rulings 21, 35, 57

    Each clause opens with אִם and has לֹא: literally "if I will not pass… and if you will not pass." In an oath a bare אִם denies and אִם לֹא affirms (21; 14:23; 21:23), and printed word for word the line would read in English as a condition with nothing to follow, or as its opposite. Here the heap and the stone witness an undertaking by each side not to cross, so "that" is printed, both negatives are kept, and the "if" goes to this note (57). "For bad" closes both clauses.

32. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge betwixt us" (KJV) / "The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us" (RSV)

    Rulings 38, 46, 123

    יִשְׁפְּטוּ is plural, and a plural verb outranks reference (123c), so all three are printed lowercase. The verse is a crux of one god or two: Laban, who has just called on Adonai (v. 49), sets the elohim of his grandfather Nahor beside Abraham's and has them judge together. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX have a singular verb (κρινεῖ), and the LXX lacks "the elohim of their father." Rashi marks the second name as profane. Jacob answers by swearing by the Terror of Isaac alone, a name Laban does not use. The jussive is printed "May… judge."

33. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 39

    זָבַח and זֶבַח, verb and noun of one root, "sacrificed a sacrifice," appear here for the first time: an animal slaughtered and eaten together, the meal of a covenant (Exod 18:12; 24:5, 11). "Bread" is food in general (39). "His brothers" are the kin who gathered the heap (v. 46).