Commentaria in Genesim
Second, properly and precisely, Laban changed Jacob’s covenant and wages ten times; for Jacob upbraids Laban with the same in verse 41. For, as is plain from verse 41, Jacob served Laban 20 years.
1. HATH TAKEN.—In Hebrew lakach, that is, he took, he stole. It is a calumny: for through envy they accuse Jacob of theft, and call theft the just wage and riches given him by God.
3. AND I WILL BE WITH THEE.—“What can he lack,” says St. Ambrose, “to whom the fullness of all things is present,” nay the ocean, namely God?
7. HE CHANGED MY WAGES TEN TIMES.—“Ten,” that is, many, so that a definite number is put for an indefinite; for the number ten signifies multitude and perfection. So Origen, Eusebius, Diodorus and Procopius. So rich men often deal with the poor, that they keep neither covenants nor promises, except so far as is to their own advantage; hence Terence: “I know,” he says, “those words of yours: I will, I will not, I will not, I will: what was just now ratified, let it be void.”
namely 14 years for both wives, and 6 years for the flocks and sheep; but twice a year the sheep bore, and each time by the covenant, through a singular providence of God, Jacob was enriched. Laban, seeing this, each time rescinded and changed the covenant; in five years therefore he changed the covenant ten times; whence in the sixth year Jacob, weary of this changing, fled. The Septuagint, for ten times, render “ten lambs,” that is, some say, ten seasons in which lambs are born; for so Virgil says:
Seeing my realm after some harvests, I shall marvel at the ears of corn;
signifying by ears, harvests, and by harvests, years. So St. Augustine, Question xcv.
But it is truer that the Septuagint is corrupted here, and that for “ten lambs” should be restored “ten minas”; for the Septuagint seem to have wished to retain the Hebrew word maneh and to explain it by minas. So Eugubinus, as if to say: With ten, that is many, minas of gold, at great price your father defrauded me, by changing and inverting my wages.
Tropologically, Laban is the world; he afflicts this Jacob, that is, the faithful, whom before, in hope of his own advantage, he had loved and advanced; because he afterwards sees himself frustrated of that hope.
12. SEE ALL THE MALES VARIOUS.—By this vision and symbol the angel signified that many-coloured young would be born to Jacob, and at the same time, as it seems, taught him the way of doing it by peeled rods, though Scripture does not express it here, content with the narration of the whole matter which it gave in the preceding chapter.
FOR I HAVE SEEN ALL THAT LABAN HATH DONE TO THEE.—“Here we learn,” says St. Chrysostom, homily 57, “that when injury is done us, and we have been meek, mild and patient, we enjoy a greater and more abundant divine help. Let us not therefore struggle against those who oppress us and wish to calumniate us; but let us bear it generously, knowing that the Lord of all will not despise us, only let us acknowledge his benevolence. For to me, he says, vengeance, and I will repay.”
13. THE GOD OF BETHEL,—who appeared to thee leaning on the ladder in Bethel, chap. xxviii.
AND MADEST A VOW.—God remembers the vow of Jacob, to signify that it was pleasing to him, and that on account of it he blessed Jacob and enriched him; and to make him mindful of following up and fulfilling his vow.
14. HAVE WE ANYTHING?—Hath not our father made us as it were disinherited? First, in that he gave us to thee as wives without dowry. Second, in that he appropriated wholly to himself our price, with which thou didst buy us as wives, namely the labour of 14 years of thy servitude, so that he seems not so much, as a father, to have placed us in marriage with a dowry assigned, as to have sold us like slaves.
17. HAVING SET HIS CHILDREN.—For they were tender: for the eldest, Ruben, was 13 years old, the youngest, Joseph, was six.
Tropologically learn hence, when envy has arisen, that the just man ought to withdraw from it: for it is better to depart without strife than to remain with quarrelling, says Ambrose, book ii On Jacob, chap. v. Again, God permits his own here to be harassed by adversities, calumnies, exiles, that they may pant for the heavenly country, says Rupert: for the evils that press us here drive us to go to God.
(1) In the Hebrew, the word for sheep with the whole body dotted seems to be opposed to that for sheep whose legs, nay ankles only, were dotted.
18. GOING ON TO ISAAC HIS FATHER.—Thither Jacob was tending, but on the journey he spent nearly ten years, dwelling in Sichem and in Bethel. So Abulensis.
19. SHE STOLE THE IDOLS.—You will ask, why did Rachel do this? First Aben Ezra answers that she stole her father’s idols lest her father, by consulting them or divining by inspecting them, might learn by what road Jacob with his people had departed and fled, so that he might not be able to pursue them.
Second, St. Basil, at the beginning on Proverbs; Nazianzen, oration 2 On the Pasch; Theodoret and Pererius, think she did this to take from her father the occasion of idolatry.
Third, and more likely, St. Chrysostom, hom. 57, Gennadius, Rupert, Cajetan and Oleaster think that she carried off the idols not so much her father’s as her own, as household gods, because she was devoted to them, and hoped from them a happy journey and every good; for her father Laban and his house, and consequently Rachel also, worshipped, along with the true God, idols too, after the custom of their nation, as is plain from chap. xxxv, verse 2, where at last Jacob destroyed these idols.
Fourth, Rachel stole these idols because they were precious, namely of gold: and so she stole gold, that is, secretly took it; but justly, as her own dowry, and as the wage owed to her husband. So Pererius.
IDOLS.—In Hebrew teraphim, which signifies human statues, or having human form, as is plain 1 Kings xix, 13; hence Aquila renders, figurations; the Chaldee renders, images.
Second, the name teraphim by usage is appropriated to those statues which by the working of demons gave responses, as is plain Judges xviii, 18; whence interpreters commonly render idols. So the Septuagint, our own version, and others, nay even Calvin himself. Foolishly therefore does the same Calvin say: Teraphim, he says, are images, such as the Papists have: for Papists neither have nor worship images as idols, or as gods, as Laban had and worshipped these teraphim, as is plain from verse 30. Of the Teraphim I shall say more at Judges xviii.
20. AND JACOB WOULD NOT CONFESS.—In Hebrew it is, Jacob stole the heart of Laban: the heart, that is the riches which were as it were Laban’s heart, and which he loved as his own heart, says Lipomanus.
But I say it is a Hebraism: “He stole the heart of Laban,” that is, without Laban’s knowledge and ignorance, he fled secretly and clandestinely, as if he had carried off with him the heart, that is, the knowledge and consciousness, of Laban. Whence the Chaldee renders, he concealed; the Septuagint, he hid. So Seneca in Agamemnon says:
Brother, I will steal thy looks with my garment, I will steal, that is, I will hide.
Cajetan adds that Laban resolved in his heart not to suffer Jacob to carry away from Haran the riches he had gained there. Whence in verse 42 Jacob says to him: “Perhaps thou hadst sent me away naked”; and because Jacob, departing thence secretly, made this counsel of Laban void, hence it is said that his heart was stolen, in which that counsel lay hidden, and that he carried it off secretly with him: it is a metonymy.
21. THE RIVER BEING PASSED;—the Euphrates, which surrounds Haran and Mesopotamia: Jacob did this not by miracle, as the Jews feign, but by an ordinary boat.
23. IN THE MOUNT OF GALAAD,—which afterwards, verse 48, was called Galaad: it is a prolepsis; for Galaad see Adrichomius in the Holy Land.
25. BRETHREN,—with a strong band of kinsmen, servants and citizens.