Jacob Part 16: Laban and Jacob Make a Covenant
Notes
Transcript
Jacob and Laban Make a Covenant
Jacob and Laban Make a Covenant
This is the climactic showdown between Yaaqov and his uncle. Remember all the brothers are there. All the kids are there, all the animals. It's this whole crew. And remember they're up in the hills.
43 Then Laban answered Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters; the children, my children; and the flocks, my flocks! Everything you see is mine! But what can I do today for these daughters of mine or for the children they have borne? 44 Come now, let’s make a covenant, you and I. Let it be a witness between the two of us.”
45 So Jacob picked out a stone and set it up as a marker. 46 Then Jacob said to his relatives, “Gather stones.” And they took stones and made a mound, then ate there by the mound. 47 Laban named the mound Jegar-sahadutha, but Jacob named it Galeed.
48 Then Laban said, “This mound is a witness between you and me today.” Therefore the place was called Galeed 49 and also Mizpah, for he said, “May the Lord watch between you and me when we are out of each other’s sight. 50 If you mistreat my daughters or take other wives, though no one is with us, understand that God will be a witness between you and me.” 51 Laban also said to Jacob, “Look at this mound and the marker I have set up between you and me. 52 This mound is a witness and the marker is a witness that I will not pass beyond this mound to you, and you will not pass beyond this mound and this marker to do me harm. 53 The God of Abraham, and the gods of Nahor—the gods of their father—will judge between us.” And Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac. 54 Then Jacob offered a sacrifice on the mountain and invited his relatives to eat a meal. So they ate a meal and spent the night on the mountain. 55 Laban got up early in the morning, kissed his grandchildren and daughters, and blessed them. Then Laban left to return home.
1 Jacob went on his way, and God’s angels met him.
"And Lavan replied and said to Yaaqov, 'The daughters, they are my daughters. And all these sons, they're my sons. All these flocks, they're my flocks. Everything you see, Yaaqov, it's mine.
But what can I do this day for these, my daughters, or to the sons whom they have born?'" Like, what's the way forward here? You say all this stuff is yours. I think it's all mine.
In Laws
Like, what are we gonna do?
"'Let's make a covenant, me and you, and let this covenant stand as a witness, a witness between me and between you.'"
This is not the first time that we've had sibling rivals who can't find a way forward and the only way forward is through a covenant.
So what's, the function of covenants, we'll do the quick little trace through all the covenants in Genesis up to this point. But the covenants come into play in the melody when the crisis has escalated. And what's the way forward? There's no good way forward. So let's just declare a ceasefire, and we'll formalize the relationship.
Covenants actually only appear in the post-exile-from-Eden world.
There's always been a lot of debate about whether or not the Eden relationship between God and humans was like a covenant, but it's just not mentioned.
When the word covenants and covenant-making ceremonies are mentioned, it's almost always a part of a ceasefire.
It's the only way forward when we're outside of Eden to keep us all from killing each other.
Covenants come into play in the melody when things have gotten so bad, the only way forward is to use the let's-stop-killing-each-other trick.
So what's fascinating is the first covenant began its story with Adam and Eve's failure, that is then replayed by their children, Cain and Abel, the innocent blood crying up out of the ground. Cain, the murderer, goes and builds a city. Seven generations later, you get Lemek, and he says, "I'm 77 times worse," right? "Than my ancestor." And he builds the City of Blood. That blood, along with what the sons of elohim do, become the violent events that cause the outcry that rises up to God. So God brings the judgment of the flood, de-creation.
5 When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, 6 the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. 7 Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.” 8 Noah, however, found favor with the Lord.
When God, in Genesis 6, says, decides to bring the de-creation of the flood, it's in Genesis 6 verse 5, "Yahweh saw the ra," the evil, "of Adam, that it was great on the land. And every purpose of the thoughts of the human heart was ra all the time." And so Yahweh had to console himself.
"Man, in this moment I wish I'd never made the humans." And he was pain, he had grief in his heart.
And so he says, "I'm done with these humans. Oh wait, there is one, the tam." The man of wholeness and righteousness. And so because of the righteousness of Noah, he spares the remnant out.
But the whole point is that, when the human family is set on a trajectory of self-destruction and violence, and the outcry comes up to God, he's like, "What options are there? Like, let the whole thing collapse then." Oh, but if there's one, the righteousness of the one will cover for a remnant, and that remnant will be saved through the de-creation.
When Noah gets off the boat, first thing he does is offer sacrifice.
21 When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, he said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.
"Yahweh," this is Genesis 8, verse 21. "Yahweh smells the aroma of the sacrifice." The phrase, "soothing aroma," is spelled with the letters of the name Noah. So he smells the Noah of the sacrifice that Noah gives. "And he says, 'I won't again curse the ground on account of humans, 'cause you know what I know about humans? They're no different.
The purpose of the human heart is ra.'" who's left now? A righteous man and his children.
And what Yahweh knows is, "Okay, okay, the humans, like, they're not gonna change."
So, in other words, the reason why God brought the flood is now the reason why God decides to never bring the flood again.
And that might seem like a contradiction, but it's a narrative. So you gotta ponder, so what is God's ultimate purpose? To rule the world in partnership with these creatures. Problem. These creatures are really messed up.
So there's two options here. Either call the whole project off and be done with it, or put up with them and find a way forward.
And so part one of put up with them is, "Okay, I won't let the cosmos collapse again, 'cause that would mean no more humans ever." And so what God does is he blesses the evil humans, and then he makes a covenant.
The first covenant with the Bible is God admitting that this is a less-than-ideal circumstance. But instead of making the humans robots, he will work with the humans as he finds them, which is violent, evil, and selfish. And so the covenant ensures, and what God says is, "I'm never gonna let the cosmos collapse again." And so the covenant is not ideal, 'cause the ideal would be the garden. Where I don't have to negotiate for you to hear what I want. And when I hear what you want, that's what I want too. It's like our wills can all work together in a way that brings Eden. But when outside of Eden, when our wills and definitions of good and bad, we can't trust, now we gotta negotiate a deal. And that's what a berit (Covenant) is in the story. So berits are the best thing we've got.
And God's the first one to make it. And so, right on through. So God makes the first covenant with humans. The next covenant is after Avraham and Sarah sexually abused Hagar.
And all of a sudden it becomes clear that Avraham's gonna have lots of kids. That was not a part of what God wanted for them, but God's able to turn evil into good. So he brings an act of judgment and an act of mercy.
And that judgment and mercy is the covenant of circumcision, which chops off a section of the body part that Avraham just used to abuse Hagar, but also is the body part that holds the future of the family that God is gonna use to bless the nations. So the flood was both a judgment, but then a mercy as he spared the remnant.
Now the circumcision is a judgment and a mercy of the future remnant.
Then Avraham and Avimelech made a covenant, that they would be unified as brothers. We read the story about Yitskhaq and Avimelech, that same guy, making a covenant to do nothing but good to each other. And they had a big party by the Well of Seven.
This is the fifth covenant in Genesis.
And so we're watching this theme develop, where covenants are the way forward here. I mean, and is this an important theme in the Bible? This is a mega-important theme. And the Genesis story gives us the categories to understand what covenants mean in the Bible.
31 “Look, the days are coming” —this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—my covenant that they broke even though I am their master”—the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them” —this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.
This is surely why, when the prophets sitting in the Babylonian exile, when Jeremiah chapter 31 anticipates a new covenant that Yahweh will make with Israel and Judah. But then he's super clear. He's like, "No, no, no, no, this is not like the covenants of the past."
They broke that covenant. Here's the covenant. He's gonna redefine the category. "Here's the covenant. God's Torah in the heart, written on the heart." And so in that covenant, no one has to inform each other of the terms of the covenant. Like, nobody has to teach their brother.
everybody will just know, they'll know Yahweh.
So Jeremiah dreams of a day when like, we don't need the paperwork.
We'll just know each other.
An Eden covenant .An Eden, that's exactly what he's talking about.
So the word "covenant," yeah. I mean, it's the word that's available at this point in the story, but what he's describing isn't a covenant, it's like the thing, it's the end to all covenants, as it were.
A major theme in the story of the Bible. And yeah. Thoughts, questions, clarifications?
So this is an interesting surprise in Lavan's character. He's just like, "'Look, I give up. What are we gonna do, just trick each other the rest of our lives? So let's make a covenant and let's let that covenant stand as a witness, so that from this day forward, what we're about to do, it will be the judge of my actions and it will be the judge of your actions.' So Yaaqov, he took a stone and he set up a pillar."
this is not the first time he's set up a pillar. Remember his dream at Bethel? And he set up a pillar. That was at the beginning of his exile. Here he is in the final moments of his exile, about to end, and he sets up another pillar.
"And Yaaqov said to his brothers, 'Everybody gather stones.' So they all gathered stones and they made a gal, a heap, and they ate there." They had a meal on the high place of the covenant, where the brothers decide to make peace. We've been been here before.
"Now Lavan," you know, he's an Aramean, so he called it, and here is the one Aramaic phrase in the whole scroll of Genesis, "He called it Jegar-sahadutha," which means "Pile of Witness" in Aramaic. "And Yaaqov," being a Semite using Hebrew, "called it Galeed," which means, in Hebrew, "Heap of Witness." So two phrases, same meaning.
"And Lavan said, 'This heap is a witness between me and between you this day.' That's why, when it became incorporated into the tribal territories, it's called Galeed to this day.
you should also know that you're gonna meet this place later in the Hebrew Bible, and it's called Mitzpah. And that's because Lavan also said, 'May Yahweh mitzpah,'" it's, the words for mitzpah spell the name of the Hebrew word, or the letters of the Hebrew word, "to watch over." "'May Yahweh watch between me and between you, when each man hides from his companion. If you oppress my daughters, if you take any more wives beside my daughters,'" whose deception is the result of Jacob having these wives in the first place? It's his. "'And there's nobody with us, Elohim will be a witness between me and between you.' And Lavan said to Yaaqov, 'Look at this heap. Look at this pillar that I've thrown down between me and between you. The heap is a witness. The pillar is a witness. I'm not gonna pass by this heap, and you won't pass by this heap to do evil to me.
The Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Nahor,'" that's Avraham's brother. "'The Elohim of their father,'" that's Terah. "'May they judge between us.'"
Notice the plural Elohim. He's not a monotheist,
So he's speaking like an Aramean. "'May those Elohim judge between us.' And so Yaaqov, he swore an oath by the fear of his father, Isaac. Yaaqov offered a sacrifice on the mountain. He called his brothers to eat bread, and they ate bread and spent the night on the mountain of covenant in peace and witness." Where the brothers decide to become one, or at least decide that they're not gonna kill each other.
"Lavan got up early in the morning, he kissed his daughters." Excuse me, "Kissed his sons, kissed his daughters, he blessed them, and he went home."
So they set up a border at Mitzpah.
And he promises, "No Arameans. Me and my people will never come back and do harm to you, as long as you don't come over and do harm to us."
this is a great example where little seeds in the Torah, in Genesis are being planted there for the reader of the TaNaK as a whole, in the Torah and the Prophets. So both Galeed and Mitzpah will be, you'll encounter these stories in Samuel and Kings later.
What's also interesting is that, you know, it said multiple times that Lavan is an Aramean He speaks in Aramaic, like, conspicuously in this story. And he says, "Hey, me and my people, we're never gonna cross, come over and hurt you. You don't come over and hurt us." One of the main hostile opponents of Israel in the earlier parts of the book of Kings, First and Second Kings, are the Arameans. And they're constantly breaking this treaty.
So it's another example of how you're watching the ancestors strike a deal, and when you see their descendants later in the Torah and Prophets break the deal, it's all supposed to echo back in your mind.
a covenant between two deceivers. Like, can you even trust that?
53 The God of Abraham, and the gods of Nahor—the gods of their father—will judge between us.” And Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac.
The fear of his father Isaac
The fear of Yitskhaq is a title for Yitskhaq's God.
The God that Yitskhaq fears
Jacob Builds an Ark
Jacob Builds an Ark
Bibliography
Bibliography
https://bibleproject.com/classroom/jacob
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