“Every Speckled and Spotted Animal…Such Shall be my Wages”
After serving Lavan for 14 years for his two daughters, Jacob is finally ready to return to his homeland in this week’s parsha (v. 30:25). But, Lavan is able to convince Jacob to stay and continue pasturing Lavan’s flocks; his “wages” for the rest of his service will be “every speckled and spotted animal – every dark-colored sheep and every spotted and speckled goat” (Genesis 30:32). Lavan deceives Jacob by removing the streaked, spotted, and speckled goats from his flocks, leaving Jacob with hardly any left as a wage for his service. Jacob’s response to this trickery is his own form of trickery:
Jacob then got fresh
shoots of popular, and of almond and plane, and peeled white stripes in them,
laying bare the white of the shoots. The
rods that he had peeled he set up in front of the goats in the troughs, the
water receptacles that the goats came to drink from. Their mating occurred when they came to
drink, and since the goats mated by the rods, the goats brought forth streaked,
speckled, and spotted young. But Jacob
dealt separately with the sheep; he made these animals face the streaked or
wholly dark-colored animals in Lavan’s flock.
And so he produced special flocks for himself, which he did not put with
Lavan’s flocks. Moreover, when the
sturdier animals were mating, Jacob would place the rods in the troughs, in
full view of the animals, so that they mated by the rods; but with the feebler
animals he would not place them there.
Thus the feeble ones went to Lavan and the sturdy to Jacob. So the man grew exceedingly prosperous and
came to own large flocks…. (Bereishit 30:37-43)
The
first thought that comes to mind when reading this is incredulity at the
seemingly absurd way in which Jacob created speckled and spotted flocks for
himself. But I recall a similar concept
in Medieval/Renaissance Christian Theology (from a college art class) that lead
to the patronage of many baby and child paintings in wealthy and even average
households (it was very rare at the time for non-wealthy families to commission
paintings but this shows the prominence of the belief was not limited). They believed that if a husband and wife were
to look at a painting of an angelic child when the child was conceived, their
children would become angelic, church-going children. This idea has obviously been discredited and
removed from official church theology (To my recollection this was only
Protestant theology, to which the Catholic Church did not subscribe to).
Did
our Patriarch, Jacob, really believe that unique goats and sheep could be
conceived if they looked at stripped rods or dark sheep? We know that Jacob became prosperous, but did
this action have any effect? Jacob later
attributes the prominence of speckled and spotted flocks to God, but this is
only after the fact. And if it was in
fact due to God that these flocks produced speckled and spotted animals, why
did Jacob need to place stripped rods by their watering troughs?
“When
morning came, there was Leah”
When
Jacob first came to Haran and was taken in by Lavan, he made a deal to serve
him seven years for his daughter, Rachel’s, hand in marriage. At the end of the seven years, Jacob said to
Lavan: “Give me my wife, for my time is fulfilled, that I may cohabit with
her” (Bereishit 29:21). The
deceitful Lavan, however, tricked Jacob into marrying his oldest daughter,
Leah, instead of Rachel. “What is
this you have done to me!? I was in your
service for Rachel! Why did you deceive
me?”, Jacob asks Lavan when he discovers that he was tricked.
Much
attention has been paid by the Rabbis to the cunning way in which Jacob was tricked
by Lavan and to Jacob’s reaction, and this situation has been used to explain
the way in which fate works itself out sometimes. But what I wonder is, what was Leah
thinking? It was not just Lavan but also
Leah that deceived Jacob. Leah knew that
she was marrying a man who had just worked seven long years for her sister,
Rachel. What makes the story even more
odd is that the Midrash tells us Jacob and Rachel expected this trickery
and had developed special signals that Rachel could use under the Chuppah (wedding
canopy) to let Jacob know if it was really her.
When it came time for Leah to go the Chuppah, however, Rachel told her
of these secret signals so that Leah would not be ashamed or embarrassed (if
Jacob realized she was the wrong sister and refused to marry her). Here I am left wondering why Leah let it get
to this point; why she didn’t refuse to go under the Chuppah?
On
the point of Leah actively being involved in Jacob’s deceit, Genesis Rabbah
states:
[Jacob asked Lavan], “Why are you extinguishing the lamps?” They answered, “What do you think, that we
are disgraceful like you (to engage in relations by the light of a lamp)?” All that night he called her “Rachel,” and
she answered him. In the morning, “there
was Leah!” He told her: “What is this,
you are a deceiver, the daughter of a deceiver!” She retorted: “And is there a scribe
[teacher] without pupils? Did not your
father call you ‘Esav,’ and you answered him?
You, too, called me ‘Rachel,’ and I answered you.”
In this response, Leah was following Jacob’s model
– and Jacob was falling into the same trap of his father Isaac in not
recognizing what was demanded of the present reality (in this case, that Leah
was meant to mother some of the 12 tribes).
(I wrote of Jacob/Esav and Isaac here last week.) It could
be that Leah recognized she was destined to be one of the matriarchs and
therefore was comfortable deceiving Jacob, knowing it was ultimately for the
best. [Aside: Wait, has a soap opera
been made out of this script yet? I
think it’d be a hit….]
But we are still left wondering about Leah’s state
of mind. When Leah has her first son she
says “she named him Reuven, for she declared, ‘the Lord has seen my affliction;
it also means: now my husband will love me’ (Bereishit 29:32), even though ‘he
loved Rachel more than Leah’” (29:30). Later
when Rachel asks for some flowers that Reuven picked for Leah, Leah retorts:
“Was it not enough for you to take away my husband, that you would also take my
son’s mandrakes” (Bereishit 30:15). How
quickly she forgot that it was she who took away Rachel’s husband, not vice
versa. Based on the rough married life
she seemed to have – which should easily have been predictable given the
situation – I am still left wondering why Leah went to the Chuppah, supplanting
her sister. By reading classic
commentators, it is made to seem as if only Lavan was the progenitor of
deceit. But why didn’t Leah speak
up? Rebecca spoke for herself in saying
she would leave to marry Isaac; was Leah not able to speak for herself in the
same way? Or was her action one of
self-sacrifice for the future of the Jewish nation?
“…the
Lord shall be my God”
To
begin Vayeitze, Jacob has a dream on his journey to Haran. Through this dream (which I discussed here
last year.)
God comes to Jacob and he awakes to the startling realization that “Surely the
Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it” (Bereishit 28:16). This stimulates Jacob to pray as follows:
Jacob then made a vow,
saying, If God remains with me, if He protects me on this journey that I am
making, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safe to
my father’s house – the Lord shall be my God.
And this stone, which I have set up as a pillar, shall be God’s abode;
and of all that You give me, I will set aside a tithe for You. (Bereishit 28:20-22)
This
prayer is full of conditions…Jacob making conditional deals in his prayer to
God. Yet God has just revealed to Jacob:
“Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you
back to this land. I will not leave you
until I have done what I have promised you” (v. 28:15). So why did Jacob need to make conditions if
he already had been assured of God’s protection and that he would return to his
father’s land?
The
simplest response is summed up by Rabbi Dr. Raymond Apple (Great Synagogue,
Sydney): [Jacob’s] ‘if’ is not conditional, but a prayer: ‘Please, God, may
it be thus, that You will be with me, guard me and be my God.’
I
can certainly relate, as I have also used “ifs” in my own prayers but intend
them more along the lines of how Rabbi Apple interprets Jacob’s prayer. But why would the Torah expect us to
interpret Jacob’s words differently than the way they are actually
written?
Rabbi
Ira Stone provides one of the most satisfying responses: Jacob did indeed start
his prayer with uncertainty, a tentative faith.
But his prayer does not contain an “if…then” statement. Jacob is transformed by his prayer encounter
with God. He recognizes the foolishness
of placing conditions upon God, recognizes that he must take responsibility for
what happens in his own life, and also recognizes that he is not alone as God
is always present. This is why the
direct translation of the text is “if I return safe to my father’s house and
the Lord shall be my God…the “and” conveys the transformation Jacob
undergoes from the start of his conditional prayer until the conclusion of his
prayer. It doesn’t say “if this…then the Lord shall be my God” but
rather declares that “Yes…I have come to the realization that the Lord is my God.”
But
this leaves the question of the timing of Jacob’s prayer. Since God has just approached him in a dream
and promised him so many blessings, shouldn’t his prayer be one of thanks? Why does his prayer begin as a conditional
one and only later turn to a conviction that God is with him? Jacob realized in the previous verses he was
surrounded by God’s awesome presence…did this feeling of God depart so quickly? Or was Jacob (who declared “How awesome is
this place! This is none other than the abode of God.”) unsure if God would be
with him in other places as well, but then realized that God’s presence was not
limited to any one location?
Thoughts
and responses are always welcome.
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