1And Jacob lifted his feet and went on to the land of the Easterners. 2And he saw and, look, there was a well in the field, and, look, three flocks of sheep were lying beside it, for from that well they would water the flocks, and the stone was big on the mouth of the well. 3And when all the flocks were gathered there, they would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and would water the sheep and put back the stone in its place on the mouth of the well. 4And Jacob said to them, “My brothers, where are you from?” And they said, “We are from Haran.” 5And he said to them, “Do you know Laban son of Nahor?” And they said, “We know him.” 6And he said to them, “Is he well?” And they said, “He is well, and, look, Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep.” 7And he said, “Look, the day is still long. It is not time to gather in the herd. Water the sheep and take them to graze.” 8And they said, “We cannot until all the flocks have gathered and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well and we water the sheep.” 9He was still speaking with them when Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherdess. 10And it happened when Jacob saw Rachel daughter of Laban his mother’s brother and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother that he stepped forward and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother. 11And Jacob kissed Rachel and lifted his voice and wept. 12And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kin, and that he was Rebekah’s son, and she ran and told her father. 13And it happened, when Laban heard the report of Jacob his sister’s son, he ran toward him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house. And he recounted to Laban all these things. 14And Laban said to him, “Indeed, you are my bone and my flesh.”
15And he stayed with him a month’s time, and Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kin, should you serve me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be.” 16And Laban had two daughters. The name of the elder was Leah and the name of the younger Rachel. 17And Leah’s eyes were tender, but Rachel was comely in features and comely to look at, 18and Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, “I will serve seven years for Rachel your younger daughter.” 19And Laban said, “Better I should give her to you than give her to another man. Stay with me.” 20And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed in his eyes but a few days in his love for her. 21And Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife, for my time is done, and let me come to bed with her.” 22And Laban gathered all the men of the place and made a feast. 23And when evening came, he took Leah his daughter and brought her to Jacob, and he came to bed with her. 24And Laban gave Zilpah his slavegirl to Leah his daughter as her slavegirl. 25And when morning came, look, she was Leah. And he said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you, and why have you deceived me?” 26And Laban said, “It is not done thus in our place, to give the younger girl before the firstborn. 27Finish out the bridal week of this one and we shall give you the other as well for the service you render me for still another seven years.” 28And so Jacob did. And when he finished out the bridal week of the one, he gave him Rachel his daughter as wife. 29And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his slavegirl as her slavegirl. 30And he came to bed with Rachel, too, and, indeed, loved Rachel more than Leah, and he served him still another seven years. 31And the LORD saw that Leah was despised and He opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. 32And Leah conceived and bore a son and called his name Reuben, for she said, “Yes, the LORD has seen my suffering, for now my husband will love me.” 33And she conceived again and bore a son, and she said, “Yes, the LORD has heard I was despised and He has given me this one, too,” and she called his name Simeon. 34And she conceived again and bore a son, and she said, “This time at last my husband will join me, for I have borne him three sons.” Therefore is his name called Levi. 35And she conceived again and bore a son, and she said, “This time I sing praise to the LORD,” therefore she called his name Judah. And she ceased bearing children.
CHAPTER 29 NOTES
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1. lifted his feet. Although eyes are frequently lifted or raised in these narratives, the idiom of lifting the feet occurs only here. Rashi suggests that Jacob’s elation after the Bethel epiphany imparted a buoyancy to the movement of his feet as he began his long trek to the east. Perhaps this is a general idiom for beginning a particularly arduous journey on foot. In any case, a symmetry of phrasing is created when, at the end of the journey, having discovered Rachel, Jacob “lifted his voice and wept.”
2. And he saw, and, look. These sentences are an interesting interweave of Jacob’s perspective and the narrator’s. It is Jacob who sees first the well, then the flocks. It is the narrator who intervenes to explain that from this well the flocks are watered, but it is in all likelihood Jacob who sees the stone, notes its bigness, observes how it covers the mouth of the well (the order of perception is precisely indicated by the word order). Then, in verse 3, the narrator again speaks out to explain the habitual procedures of the Haranites with the stone and the well.
7. Look, the day is still long. Jacob’s scrupulousness about the shepherds’ obligation to take full advantage of the daylight for grazing the flocks prefigures his own dedication to the shepherd’s calling and his later self-justification that he has observed all his responsibilities punctiliously.
10. he stepped forward and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the sheep. The “Homeric” feat of strength in rolling away the huge stone single-handedly is the counterpart to his mother’s feat of carrying up water for ten thirsty camels. Though Jacob is not a man of the open field, like Esau, we now see that he is formidably powerful—and so perhaps Rebekah was not unrealistic in fearing the twins would kill each other should they come to blows. The drawing of water after encountering a maiden at a well in a foreign land signals to the audience that a betrothal type-scene is unfolding. But Jacob is the antithesis of his father: instead of a surrogate, the bridegroom himself is present at the well, and it is he, not the maiden, who draws the water; in order to do so, he must contend with a stone, the motif that is his narrative signature. If, as seems entirely likely, the well in the foreign land is associated with fertility and the otherness of the female body to the bridegroom, it is especially fitting that this well should be blocked by a stone, as Rachel’s womb will be “shut up” over long years of marriage.
11. And Jacob kissed Rachel. As Nahum Sarna notes, there is a pun between “he watered” (wayashq) and “he kissed” (wayishaq). The same pun is played on by the poet of the Song of Songs.
12. and she ran and told. The hurrying to bring home the news of the guest’s arrival, generally with the verb ruts (“to run”), as here, is another conventional requirement of the betrothal type-scene.
13. he ran toward him. This may be standard hospitality, but Rashi, exercising his own hermeneutics of suspicion, shrewdly notes that Laban could be recalling that the last time someone came from the emigrant branch of the family in Canaan, he brought ten heavily laden camels with him. Rashi pursues this idea by proposing that Laban’s embrace was to see if Jacob had gold secreted on his person.
15. Because you are my kin, should you serve me for nothing? In a neat deployment of delayed revelation, a device of which the biblical writers were fond, we now learn that this “bone and flesh” of Laban’s has already been put to work by his gracious host for a month’s time.
17. Leah’s eyes were tender. The precise meaning in this context of the adjective is uncertain. Generally, the word rakh is an antonym of “hard” and means “soft,” “gentle,” “tender,” or in a few instances “weak.” The claim that here it refers to dullness, or a lusterless quality, is pure translation by immediate context because rakh nowhere else has that meaning. Still, there is no way of confidently deciding whether the word indicates some sort of impairment (“weak” eyes or perhaps odd-looking eyes) or rather suggests that Leah has sweet eyes that are her one asset of appearance, in contrast to her beautiful sister.
18. seven years for Rachel your younger daughter. True to legalistic form, Jacob carefully stipulates the duration of the labor (in lieu of a bride-price that he does not possess), the name of the daughter, and the fact that she is the younger daughter. In the event, none of this avails.
20. they seemed in his eyes but a few days in his love for her. The writer’s eloquent economy scarcely needs comment, but it should be observed that “a few days” (or, “a while,” yamim aḥadim) is exactly the phrase his mother had used in advising him to go off to stay with her brother (27:44).
21. and let me come to bed with her. The explicitness of Jacob’s statement is sufficiently abrupt to have triggered maneuvers of exegetical justification in the Midrash, but it is clearly meant to express his—understandable—sexual impatience, which is about to be given a quite unexpected outlet.
25. why have you deceived me? The verb Jacob uses to upbraid Laban reflects the same root as the key noun Isaac used when he said to Esau, “Your brother has come in deceit and has taken your blessing” (27:35).
26. It is not done thus in our place, to give the younger girl before the firstborn. Laban is an instrument of dramatic irony: his perfectly natural reference to “our place” has the effect of touching a nerve of guilty consciousness in Jacob, who in his place acted to put the younger before the firstborn. This effect is reinforced by Laban’s referring to Leah not as the elder but as the firstborn (bekhirah). It has been clearly recognized since late antiquity that the whole story of the switched brides is a meting out of poetic justice to Jacob—the deceiver deceived, deprived by darkness of the sense of sight as his father is by blindness, relying, like his father, on the misleading sense of touch. The Midrash Bereishit Rabba vividly represents the correspondence between the two episodes: “And all that night he cried out to her, ‘Rachel!’ and she answered him. In the morning, ‘and, . . . look, she was Leah.’ He said to her, ‘Why did you deceive me, daughter of a deceiver? Didn’t I call out Rachel in the night, and you answered me!’ She said: ‘There is never a bad barber who doesn’t have disciples. Isn’t this how your father cried out Esau, and you answered him?’”
31. Leah was despised and He opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. The Hebrew term for “despised” (or “hated”) seems to have emotional implications, as Leah’s words in verse 33 suggest, but it is also a technical, legal term for the unfavored co-wife. The pairing of an unloved wife who is fertile with a barren, beloved co-wife sets the stage for a familiar variant of the annunciation type-scene (as in the story of Peninah and Hannah in 1 Samuel 1). But, as we shall see, in Rachel’s case the annunciation is deflected.
32. Reuben . . . seen my suffering. All of the etymologies put forth for the names of the sons are ad hoc improvisations by the mother who does the naming—essentially, midrashic play on the sounds of the names. Thus “Reuben” is construed as reʾu ben, “see, a son,” but Leah immediately converts the verb into God’s seeing her suffering. The narrative definition of character and relationship continues through the naming-speeches, as, here, the emotionally neglected Leah sees a kind of vindication in having born a son and desperately imagines her husband will now finally love her.
33. the LORD has heard . . . Simeon. The naming plays on shamaʿ, “has heard,” and Shimʿon. It is noteworthy that Jacob’s first two sons are named after sight and sound, the two senses that might have detected him in his deception of his father, were not Isaac deprived of sight and had not the evidence of touch and smell led him to disregard the evidence of sound. Leah’s illusion that bearing a son would bring her Jacob’s love has been painfully disabused, for here she herself proclaims that she is “despised” and that God has given her another son as compensation.
34. my husband will join me . . . Levi. The naming plays on yilaveh, “will join,” and Levi. Once more, Leah voices the desperate hope that her bearing sons to Jacob will bring him to love her.
35. Sing praise . . . Judah. The naming plays on ’odeh, “sing praise,” and Yehudah, “Judah.” The verb Leah invokes is one that frequently figures in thanksgiving psalms. With the birth of her fourth son, she no longer expresses hope of winning her husband’s affection but instead simply gives thanks to God for granting her male offspring.
she ceased bearing children. This may be merely the consequence of natural process, though one possible reading of the mandrakes episode in the next chapter is not that the two sisters had their conjugal turns but rather that Jacob has ceased for a long period to cohabit with Leah.