Mesopotamian Exodus
Notes
Transcript
Mesopotamian Exodus
Genesis 31:1-55
Jacob’s exodus from Mesopotamia is framed by redemptive history. Looking back, it has parallels with Abraham’s leaving the city of Ur in obedience to God’s call (Genesis 12:1–9). Then Abraham took all his people and possessions and left for the land of Canaan.
In Genesis 31 his grandson Jacob took all his people and possessions and returned to Canaan. Jacob’s departure thus parallels Abraham’s initial obedience.
Looking forward, Jacob’s exodus from Mesopotamia provides a prophetic outline of Israel’s exodus from Egypt.
· Here Jacob’s large family flees from Laban; there a multitude of his descendants will flee Pharaoh.
· Here his family plunders Laban; there they will plunder Pharaoh and his people.
· Here Laban is forced to let Jacob’s family go; there Pharaoh will be forced to let Jacob’s descendants go.
The driving point of the narrative of Jacob’s escape here in Genesis 31 is that God did it all, through his multiple interventions and constant protection. God would later do exactly the same in Moses’ escape from Egypt.
One of the good things about Jacob’s exodus is that we see that Jacob has made progress. He actually appears in a favorable light! He is now utterly faithful to God. He begins obediently and does not waver. Here this old deceiver is honest and rightly declares his integrity before Laban.
Significantly, this chronically self-sufficient man gives all the credit to God. Jacob’s spiritual progress would also have its parallels in Moses’ spiritual development preceding his leading Israel in its great exodus. Christ, the head of the ultimate exodus, was, as we know, perfect in every way.
Now as we look at Jacob’s exodus from Mesopotamia, everything is in place. He now has a people—some four wives and eleven children—the genesis of a vast people. His possessions are such that he is remarkably rich. He knows that his people and possessions are from God. God sees that he is ready.
Jacob Enlists His Wives
Jacob Enlists His Wives
Laban’s ugly mood did not bode well for Jacob. So, when God spoke to Jacob, his response was unhesitating.
Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.”
But because the Mesopotamian legal code stipulated that he could not take his wives away without their consent, Jacob summoned them to the open field where he was shepherding, a place where they could not be overheard, and there he made his case.
In the subsequent exchange in verses 4–16, Jacob and his wives reference God by name seven times, because God and his work was the controlling factor in their decision. Jacob began by reviewing for them Laban’s unfair dealings, which God had just then nullified by making Laban’s plain-colored flocks bear multicolored offspring.
Jacob’s conclusion was:
Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me.
Clearly God, not Jacob’s machinations, was the reason for the transfer of wealth. And more, Jacob recounted how God had confirmed this in a dream during breeding season that concluded with this divine directive:
I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred.’ ”
This called to Jacob’s mind his sacred vow made in Bethel (amidst the promised land) that in response to God’s faithfulness, the Lord would be his God.
Here for the first time, we see Rachel and Leah in agreement. The two sisters, at once victims and victimizers, were in concert.
Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, “Is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father’s house?
Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money.
All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. Now then, whatever God has said to you, do.”
Particularly grievous to Laban’s daughters was the ugly fact that their father had sold them and devoured the proceeds. The price of the bride (Jacob’s fourteen years of wages) was supposed to be held in trust in the event that they were abandoned or widowed. But Jacob’s long labor had benefited their father alone.
Hence the chorus of indignation, “Go for it, Jacob! What was his is now yours, which means ours. Do whatever God has said.”
Jacob’s Flight
Jacob’s Flight
Sheep-shearing in Mesopotamia was a springtime activity in which large flocks necessitated large shearing crews that would labor for extended periods away from their home. One of the famous Mari tablets record three to four hundred men working for a three-day period to complete a shearing. Others describe much longer periods. Laban’s wool-gathering absence provided a perfect time to escape.
So Jacob arose and set his sons and his wives on camels.
He drove away all his livestock, all his property that he had gained, the livestock in his possession that he had acquired in Paddan-aram, to go to the land of Canaan to his father Isaac.
Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s household gods.
And Jacob tricked Laban the Aramean, by not telling him that he intended to flee.
He fled with all that he had and arose and crossed the Euphrates, and set his face toward the hill country of Gilead.
There is a wordplay here in verses 19, 20 that indicates the deep mutuality of Jacob and Rachel in their actions. The word “tricked” in verse 20 is literally “stole the heart of,” which is an idiom for “tricked” or “deceived.”
So, the Hebrew text reads, “And Rachel stole her father’s household gods. And Jacob stole the heart of Laban the Aramean,” which brilliantly “shows Rachel and Jacob to be of a kindred spirit.” Such solidarity. Watch out, Laban!
The teraphim or “household gods” that Rachel pilfered from her father were likely small, carved human figures. On a later occasion one of King David’s wives took a life-sized image, put a wig on it, and placed it in David’s bed to fool Saul’s murderous representatives (1 Samuel 19:13).
Here the teraphim were small enough to hide in a camel’s saddle cushion. As to why Rachel stole them, the Nuzi tablets suggest that the possession of the family gods strengthened your claim to an inheritance.
Another possibility is that Laban used them for divination, and that Rachel was thwarting his ability to detect Jacob’s escape. Perhaps it was just spite—so Rachel could demonstrate her contempt for Laban’s gods. Significantly, the whole incident was bathed in alienation. Laban was now called “Laban the Aramean” emphasizing his ethnic identity. The alienation was becoming complete.
Two distinct peoples were forming.
The tension began to peak. Rachel’s secret theft had put both herself and unknowing Jacob in mortal danger.
Laban Attacks Jacob
Laban Attacks Jacob
Once Laban catches up to Jacob when he reached the hills of Gilead one thing is sure: Laban’s posse thundered after Jacob with murderous intent. The verbs in verses 22–25, “fled,” “pursued,” “overtook,” “pitched tents” are militaristic. Laban was on the warpath.
But God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream by night and said to him, “Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.”
If God had not come to Laban in a dream there would have been violence.
Jacob’s long night awaiting Laban’s confrontation must certainly have been terror-filled, notwithstanding God’s promises to him. The meeting was charged with uncertainty. What a relief for Jacob when the only things Laban hurled were words. And what a phony cascade it was as Laban played the part of the loving, wounded father who had come in injured innocence, a good man who had been sorely wronged.
And Laban said to Jacob, “What have you done, that you have tricked me and driven away my daughters like captives of the sword?
Why did you flee secretly and trick me, and did not tell me, so that I might have sent you away with mirth and songs, with tambourine and lyre?
And why did you not permit me to kiss my sons and my daughters farewell? Now you have done foolishly.
It is in my power to do you harm. But the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, ‘Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.’
And now you have gone away because you longed greatly for your father’s house, but why did you steal my gods?”
Laban’s buffoonery rings hollow and ineffectual, except for the final line—“But why did you steal my gods?” Jacob was not ready for this, and his concluding rejoinder unknowingly put his beloved Rachel under a sentence of death:
Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not live. In the presence of our kinsmen point out what I have that is yours, and take it.” Now Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them.
Ignorance is bliss. So, Jacob confidently watched Laban as he stormed through his tent and then Leah’s and then the tents of Bilhah and Zilpah and then back through Leah’s and then into Rachel’s, where he met his match.
Now Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel’s saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about the tent, but did not find them.
And she said to her father, “Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me.” So he searched but did not find the household gods.
We must understand that the reason that wildly suspicious Laban never suspected that Rachel was sitting on his household gods is that he could not imagine such a sacrilege. Among the ancients “the way of women” was considered to be a state of impurity and thus contaminating. Rachel’s recline was therefore a calculated act of withering contempt for the gods of Mesopotamia. She treated them as worthless and unclean.
In doing this, Rachel foreshadowed the despoiling of Egypt’s gods during the plagues of Egypt. This passage also announces future Israel’s contempt for pagan gods.
Jacob Rebukes Laban
Jacob Rebukes Laban
Laban had ransacked Jacob’s tents from top to bottom. And from Jacob’s innocent viewpoint that was only a cheap pretext to search for other things that Laban suspected Jacob had stolen from him. Moreover, Laban offered no apology. So, in an explosive moment all Jacob’s pent-up anger over twenty years of deception and mistreatment erupted to give Laban the tongue-lashing of his life.
According to Mesopotamian law, Laban’s fruitless search of Jacob’s tents constituted presumptive proof that Jacob was innocent. Consequently, with the leverage of wholehearted innocence, abused Jacob unloaded.
Then Jacob became angry and berated Laban. Jacob said to Laban, “What is my offense? What is my sin, that you have hotly pursued me?
For you have felt through all my goods; what have you found of all your household goods? Set it here before my kinsmen and your kinsmen, that they may decide between us two.
“Let’s have a court right here and find out who’s the real thief!”
The rustic, romanticized thoughts of the pastoral life have always been myths. Jacob’s years had been filled with hardships and losses, and Jacob furiously described how he bore it all.
These twenty years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks.
What was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it myself. From my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night.
There I was: by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes.
Indeed, he had been a good shepherd. That is why Laban, by his own admission, had prospered by his association with Jacob.
“Me dishonest? You’re the cheat.”
These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times.
If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night.”
God had rebuked Laban in the dream when he warned Laban not to harm Jacob. Laban was so low; he would have been content to rob his own daughters and grandchildren. Again, Jacob credited God for everything. It was all the grace of God. Jacob’s grateful spirit honored God alone.
This was pure triumph! Jacob, the man to whom God had given a people and possessions, stood high above Laban the Aramean. How sweet it was!
A Nonaggression Pact
A Nonaggression Pact
Exposed for what he was, Laban tried to cover himself with bluster.
Then Laban answered and said to Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine. But what can I do this day for these my daughters or for their children whom they have borne?
Laban indulged in legal fictions, filial posturing, and feigned benevolence. Empty words from a hollow man.
Abashed and off-balance, Laban needed to do something. So he proposed a mutual covenant of nonaggression.
Come now, let us make a covenant, you and I. And let it be a witness between you and me.”
So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar.
And Jacob said to his kinsmen, “Gather stones.” And they took stones and made a heap, and they ate there by the heap.
Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha, but Jacob called it Galeed.
Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” Therefore he named it Galeed,
and Mizpah, for he said, “The Lord watch between you and me, when we are out of one another’s sight.
If you oppress my daughters, or if you take wives besides my daughters, although no one is with us, see, God is witness between you and me.”
Then Laban said to Jacob, “See this heap and the pillar, which I have set between you and me.
This heap is a witness, and the pillar is a witness, that I will not pass over this heap to you, and you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, to do harm.
This was an amazing about-face for the tightfisted, dominating Mesopotamian. In reality, Jacob did not need a treaty because God had already protected him from Laban. However, a treaty would officially keep them apart—and for that it was well worth it. The treaty would recognize Jacob as a separate, independent people by its dual representations: two stone memorials, two meals, two names for the memorials, two names of deity, and the delineation of two ethnic groups.
Jacob’s new stone pillar recalled for him the presence of God at Bethel. He remembered the angel-freighted ladder and the eternal promises of the Lord of the ladder of a people, possessions, and a place.
The heap of stones was formed to bear witness to their mutual covenant.
Interestingly, the careless reading of God’s Word as it is represented in the King James Version (“The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another,” v. 49) has given rise to the popular so-called “Mizpah benediction” that has been used on Christmas cards, inscribed inside wedding bands, and even used as a title for an organization! The Mizpah benediction was ignorantly interpreted to invoke union, fellowship, and trust.
But this was the declaration of two men who neither trusted nor liked each other: “Because I don’t trust you out of my sight, may God watch your every move.”
In solemnizing the treaty, Laban invoked two separate deities and then multiple deities:
The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us.” So Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac,
and Jacob offered a sacrifice in the hill country and called his kinsmen to eat bread. They ate bread and spent the night in the hill country.
Laban was a pagan indeed! But Jacob ignored Laban’s formula and swore by the true God. The final covenant meal was sacrificed. Symbolically they bound themselves to keep it before their divine host.
Early in the morning Laban arose and kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. Then Laban departed and returned home.
Jacob was looking good, better than he ever had. He still had a considerable way to go, but this was not the heel-grabbing supplanter who double-dealt his brother and duped his father. Jacob was becoming a man of character who kept his word. His exodus from Mesopotamia had been characterized by his faithful obedience to God’s word.
Jacob understood that his entire deliverance had been wrought by God. Repeatedly he credited God with his success. His placing a stone pillar alongside the heap of stones declared his faith in the God of Bethel and his constant provision. Though far from perfect, Jacob had grown in grace, by God’s grace.
And for any who have eyes to see, here is the work of an awesome, sovereign God who works amidst the compost of human sin to do his will. Amidst the swirl of deception and intrigue he birthed a people who would become the twelve tribes of Israel. God took a poor man who had been repeatedly enslaved and exploited and made him rich. And now God led him in a glorious exodus as a run-up to his return to the land of promise.
And all of this is merely a shadow of what Christ does for his people in the exodus of the cross. The shorthand for what we see in the history of redemption (in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all true Israel) is this:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
What comfort for those who desire to grow in grace. Our part is to faithfully follow him.