Genesis 31

1. And he heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, Jacob hath taken away all that was our father’s; and of that which was our father’s hath he gotten all this glory. And Jacob be- 3 held the countenance of Laban, and, behold, it was not toward him as beforetime. And the Lobo said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred; and I will be 4 with thee. And Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field unto his flock, and said 5 unto them, I see your father’s countenance, that it is not toward me as beforetime; but the 6 God of my father hath been with me. And ye know that with all my power I have served 7 your father. And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God 8 suffered him not to hurt me. If he said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages; then all the flock bare speckled; and if he said thus, The ringstraked shall be thy wages; then bare all 9 the flock ringstraked. Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to 10 me. And it came to pass at the time that the flock conceived, that I lifted up mine eyes, and saw in a dream, and, behold, the he-goats which leaped upon the flock were ringstraked, 11 speckled, and grisled. And the angel of God said unto me in the dream, Jacob: and I said, 12 Here am I. And he said, Lift up now thine eyes, and see, all the he-goats which leap upon the flock are ringstraked, speckled, and grisled: for I have seen all that Laban deeth unto 13 thee. I am the God of Beth el, where thou anointedst a pillar, where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy nativity, 14 And Rachel and Leah answered and said unto him, Is there yet any portion or inheritance for 15 us in our father’s house? Are we not counted of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and 16 hath also quite devoured our money. For all the riches which God hath taken away from our father, that is ours and our children’s; now then, whatsoever God hath said unto thee, do, 17 Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives upon the camels; and he carried away 18 all his cattle, and all his substance which he had gathered, the cattle of his getting, which he 19 had gathered in Paddan-aram, for to go to Isaac his father unto the land of Canaan. Now Laban was gone to shear his sheep; and Rachel stole the teraphim that were her father’s. 20 And Jacob stole away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not that he fled.

21. So he fled with all that he had; and he rose up, and passed over the River, and set his face toward the mountain of Gilead. 22 And it was told Laban on the third day that Jacob was fled. And he took his brethren with him, and pursued after him seven days’ journey; and he overtook him in the mountain of Gilead. And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream of the night, and said unto him, Take heed to thyself that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And Laban came up with Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the mountain; and Laban with his brethren pitched in the mountain of Gilead. And Laban said to Jacob, What hast thou done, that thou hast stolen away unawares to me, and carried away my daughters as captives of the sword? Wherefore didst thou flee secretly, and steal away from me; and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth and with songs, with tabret and with harp; and hast not suffered me to kiss my sons and my daughters? now hast thou done foolishly. It is in the power of my hand to do you huts: but the God of your father spake unto me yesternight, saying, Take heed to thyself that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And now, though thou wouldest needs be gone, because thou sore longest after thy father’s house, yet wherefore hast thou stolen my gods? And Jacob answered and said to Laban, Because I was afraid: for I said, Lest thou shouldest take thy daughters from me by force. With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, he shall not live: before our brethren discern thou what is thine with me, and take it to thee. For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them. And Laban went into Jacob’s tent, and into Leah’s tent, and into the tent of the two maidservants; but he found them not. And he went out of Leah’s tent, and entered into Rachel’s tent. Now Rachel had taken the teraphim, and put them in the camel’s furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban felt about all the tent, but found them not. And she said to her father, Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise up before thee; for the manner of women is upon me. And he searched, but found not the teraphim. And Jacob was wroth, and chode with Laban: and Jacob answered and said to Laban, What is my trespass? what is my sin, that thou hast hotly pursued after me? Whereas thou hast felt about all my stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? Set it here before my brethren and thy brethren, that they may judge betwixt us two. This twenty years have I been with thee; thy ewes and thy she-goats have not cast their young, and the rams of thy flocks have I not eaten. That which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep fled from mine eyes. These twenty years have I been in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy flock; and thou hast changed my wages ten times. Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the Fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now hadst thou sent me away empty. God hath seen mine affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked thee yester night. And Laban answered and said unto Jacob, The daughters are my daughters, and the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks, and all that thou seest is mine; and what can I do this day unto these my daughters, or unto their children which they have borne? And now come, let us make a covenant, I and thou; and let it be for a witness between me and thee. And Jacob took a stone, and set it up for a pillar. And Jacob said unto his brethren, Gather stones; and they took stones, and made an heap; and they did eat there by the heap. And Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed. And Laban said, This heap is witness between me and thee this day. Therefore was the name of it called Galeed: and Mizpah, for he said, The LORD watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another. If thou shalt afflict my daughters, and if thou shalt take wives beside my daughters, no man is with us: see, God is witness betwixt me and thee. And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold the pillar, which I have set betwixt me and thee. This heap be witness, and the pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for harm. The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge betwixt us. And Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac. And Jacob offered a sacrifice in the mountain, and called his brethren to eat bread: and they did eat bread, and tarried all night in the mountain. And early in the morning Laban rose up, and kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them: and Laban departed, and returned unto his place.

Jacob was now commanded in a vision by “the God of Bethel” to return to the land of his birth; and he fled secretly from Laban, who had not concealed his envy, to go back to his father Isaac, after twenty years spent in Laban’s service—fourteen for his wives, and six for his cattle. Jacob, having passed the Euphrates, struck across the desert by the great fountain at Palmyra; then traversed the eastern part of the plain of Damascus and the plateau of Bashan, and entered Gilead, which is the range of mountains east of the Jordan, forming the frontier between Palestine and the Assyrian desert. Laban called his kindred to the pursuit, and overtook Jacob on the third day in Mount Gilead. P. S.

Jacob was now ninety-six years of age. It has become manifest that he cannot obtain leave of Laban to return home. He must, therefore, either come off by the high hand, or by secret flight. Jacob has many reasons for preferring the latter course. 1, 2. His prosperity provokes the envy and slander of Laban’s sons, and Laban himself becomes estranged. 3. The Lord now commands Jacob to return, and promises his presence to protect him. 4-13. Jacob opens his mind fully to Rachel and Leah. Rachel, we observe, is put first. Several new facts come out in his discourse to them. Ye know—Jacob’s appeal to his wives on this point—that with all my might I served your father. He means, of course, to the extent of his engagement. During the last six years he was to provide for his own house, as the Lord permitted him, with the full knowledge and concurrence of Laban. Beyond this, which is a fair and acknowledged exception, he has been faithful in keeping the cattle of Laban. Your father deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; that is, as often as he could. God suffered him not to hurt me. Jacob left his hire to the providence of God. He thought himself bound at the same time to use all legitimate means for the attainment of the desired end. His expedients may have been perfectly legitimate in the circumstances, but they were evidently of no avail without the divine blessing. And they would become wholly ineffectual when his wages were changed. Hence he says, God took the cattle and gave them to me. 10-13. Jacob seems here to record two dreams, the former of which indicates the result by a symbolic representation, which ascribes it rather to the God of nature than to the man of art. The second dream makes allusion to the former as a process still going on up to the present time. This appears to be an encouragement to Jacob now to commit himself to the Lord on his way home. The angel of the Lord announces himself as the God of Bethel, and recalls to Jacob the pillar and the vow. The angel, then, is Jehovah manifesting himself to human apprehension. M.

The dream first related (in v. 10) seems to have occurred near the commencement, if not before, of his final and successful arrangement with Laban. It may have suggested his devices, or have been suggested by them; or the same train of waking thoughts may have suggested both. The second dream is of higher significance, and occurred near the close of his connection with Laban; see the last sentence of v. 13. In relating this to his wives, to account to them for his successful competition with Laban, he says nothing of the means by which he himself sought to insure it. The dream implies no judgment on these means; and only reminds him that it was the divine favor that thwarted and punished the grasping and cruel avarice of Laban. Whatever judgment may be formed of Jacob’s own conduct, the reader of the narrative will admit the justice of his complaint when he says (in v. 42): “Thou wouldst now have sent me away empty.” T. J. C.

Jacob’s reasons for departing were, that God had commanded him to return; that he had been very badly treated by Laban, whom to the best of his power he had faithfully served; and that now the increase of wealth which God had given to him was viewed with jealous eyes by Laban and his family. 14-16. The wives’ reasons lay, first, in their assent to Jacob’s own reasons. But, beside this, they had special reasons of their own. They had clearly, they said, nothing to expect from their father, who treated them as strangers, belonging to Jacob rather than to himself. And, furthermore, by selling them for Jacob’s services, he had appropriated all the advantages to himself; for if he had been paid for them in goods or money, custom would have required him to have employed some part of it in gifts to them; which, in the way he had proceeded, was avoided, whereby they were left without the separate means to which they were, by their rank in life, entitled. Kit.

The whole speech of Jacob is inconsistent with the view that he had cheated and overreached Laban throughout. And vv. 7, 8 reveal to us another contribution to our judgment on this matter. Laban had done all he could to overreach on his side: he had frequently (ten times is used to signify very often) and capriciously changed the form of Jacob’s hire; but all to no purpose: God defeated his schemes and turned them against himself. Alf.—These words contain a clear vindication of Jacob from the charge brought against him by Laban’s sons (v. 1), of having despoiled their father of his wealth. In whatever form his wages were to be paid to him, God, and not he, had so ordered the course of things that it should turn to his advantage, and this he would gratefully acknowledge. Bush.

12. The providence of God had taken notice of the hardships that Laban had put upon him, and took this way to right him; for I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee. There is more of equity in the distributions of Divine Providence than we are aware of, and by them the wronged are righted really though perhaps insensibly.

13. I am the God of Bethel. That was the place where the covenant was renewed with him. Worldly prosperity and success are doubly sweet and comfortable when we see them flowing not from common providence, but from covenant-love; to perform the mercy prom sed; when we have them from God as the God of Bethel, from those promises of the life which now is that belong to godliness. H.—For more than twenty years the voice of God has been silent; but now in the sky at Mesopotamia the light ariseth in darkness. That one declaration, “I am the God of Bethel,” awakens a series of beautiful memories and joyful expectations; and when the pilgrim’s staff is resumed, Jacob is at least assured he shall not return to the land of his fathers unaccompanied or unprotected! Is it marvel, amid all changes of times and circumstances, that the name “God of Bethel” has for ages been treasured in many a believer’s heart? This name, when well considered, has the same significance to us as that of Jehovah: it is a covenant designation, and makes us know the Almighty as the unchanging, faithful Guide of His people on their earthly pilgrimage. Van O.

14. The answer of his wives is the only loyal one they could make, and is again entirely against the idea of guilt on Jacob’s part. It is simply founded on the facts which have gone before in the history. Their father had sold them to Jacob: they were entirely severed from him, and he spared no pains to show them this; Jacob’s earnings, which were theirs also, their father was endeavoring to defraud them of. So that their consent is freely given to do that which God had commanded their husband. Af.

18,19. It was honestly done to take no more than his own with him, the cattle of his getting (v. 18). He took what Providence gave him and was content with that, and would not take the repair of his damages into his own hands. Yet Rachel was not so honest as her husband, she stole her father’s images (v. 19), and carried them away with her. H.

The teraphim of her father. These images, which are mentioned through the whole history up to the Babylonish captivity, were a kind of household god, images in the likeness of men (so Michal put such an image in the bed, and pretended it was David, 1 Sam. 19: 13). From several passages we gather that they were consulted and gave oracles in some way, though we do not now know how. Gerl.—Teraphim were small images, kept as domestic idols or household gods. This was one of the practices of heathen superstition often met with in the Old Testament. Among the Hebrews, it was not so much a form of idolatry as a corrupting superstition engrafted on the true religion. Laban, in * 30, calls these images his gods; and in ch. 35: 4, “strange gods” are spoken of, in connection with another superstitious observance, as being in Jacob’s family after his return to his home in Palestine. It is not necessary to suppose that they were strictly objects of worship. They were held in superstitious veneration as dispensers of good fortune, and as a protection against evil influences. They were also consulted as oracles (Zech. 10: 2); properly, “the teraphim have spoken vanity.” T. J. C.—These were a sort of “family-idols,” figures of human shape, borrowed from the heathen world around him, which Laban probably used as a kind of oracle, to discover the future, or the fortunate issue of any undertaking. Such teraphim also appear from time to time in Israel, until, under Josiah, they were rooted out as “abominations.” C. G. B.

21-30. The story of his final flight to Canaan is perfect in its Oriental coloring. At the head of his flocks and herds; with his wives, children and slaves, he strikes away, across the Euphrates, at the utmost speed so cumbered a march allows, for Mount Gilead, the outpost of “his own country.” His flight remains unsuspected for three days, but, then, Laban, hearing of it, sets off on swift camels in pursuit; overtaking the fugitives on the seventh day, while they were still among the richly wooded and watered hills of Gilead, which mark off the fertile land from the desert, east of the Jordan. The five tents of Jacob and his wives had been pitched on the slope of the hills, apparently where they reach their highest elevation of 5000 feet, not far from the Jabbok, the camels and flocks lying around, and now those of Laban are set up on a neighboring hill, specially known as Mount Gilead. It is a moment of real danger to Jacob, for Laban’s kinsmen, as the men of his tribe with him are called, are much the stronger. He had given his daughters no inheritance, and had treated Jacob with the utmost duplicity and harshness, but with true Arab dissimulation he chides Jacob for having stolen away without giving him an opportunity of dismissing him and his wives with a parting feast, or even letting him give his daughters a farewell kiss. That he was thus placable, was due, we are told, to a dream he had had overnight, warning him to do Jacob no harm. But the fugitives had done him the terrible wrong of stealing his “gods,” and these must be given back. Geikie.

Gilead, or Mount Gilead, signifies “rocky region,” and was a name given to the range of mountains extending from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, in contrast with the “Mishor,” or plains and downs of Bashan. Southward, Gilead gradually blends with the highlands of Moab, while eastward there was no defined boundary, as it melts insensibly, first into plains, then into the great Syrian desert. From north to south its extent was about sixty miles. It is first mentioned here. H. B. T.

24. The very night before he came up with him, God interposed in the quarrel, rebuked Laban and sheltered Jacob, charging Laban not to speak unto him either good or bad, that is, to say nothing against his going on with his journey, for that it proceeded from the Lord. Laban, during his seven days’ march, had been full of rage against Jacob, but God comes to him, and with one word ties his hands, though he does not turn his heart. The safety of good men is very much owing to the hold God has of the consciences of bad men, and the access he has to them. God sometimes appears wonderfully for the deliverance of his people, then when they are upon the very brink of ruin. H.

26-30. Throughout his address Laban means to insinuate that Jacob had no cause to leave him on account of anything he had done; that where there was so much secrecy, there must be something dishonorable; and that in pursuing him he was moved only by affection for his children. But his words are obviously full of hypocrisy. However he may talk about his regard to his children and grandchildren, that which lay nearest his heart was the substance which Jacob had taken with him, and which he no doubt meant in some way to recover. But he acts the part of thousands, who, when galled by an evil conscience, endeavor to ease themselves of its reproaches by transferring the blame from themselves to the persons they have wronged. He reproaches Jacob with a conduct which he well knew had resulted entirely from his own harshness and severity; and with the utmost self-complaisance talks of the liberal and generous things which he intended to have done, after the call and occasion are over, and when his generosity is in no danger of being put to the test. Bush.—It is remarkable that Laban, in his complaint, says not a word about the property; but having been prevented from the proceedings he contemplated, he makes the offence rest upon the unfriendly distrust evinced by this secret departure. He complains that his daughters had been carried away like captives taken with the sword. And again, he had not been suffered to kiss his daughters, before what was meant to be a final separation. The poor man is full of his daughters; for whom, according to their own account, he has no real regard at all. Kit.

The entire scene is eminently rich in allusions to Oriental manners and customs. The behavior of Laban is true to life, and every expression is familiar to my ear “as household words.” Laban says: The God of your father spake unto me yesternight, saying, Take thou heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. Now we should think that Laban was uttering his own condemnation, and it appears strange that Jacob did not retort upon him by asking, Why, then, have you followed me? You have disobeyed the command of God, according to your own admission. Jacob, however, knew very well that such a plea would avail nothing. Laban believed that he fulfilled the intent of the divine command merely by refraining to injure Jacob, and so the latter understood it. The terms of the order were most comprehensive and stringent; but the real intention was to forbid violence, and this sort of construction must be applied to Oriental language in a thousand cases, or we shall push simple narratives into absurdities. W. M. Thompson.

32. Knew not. Jacob acted with perfect honesty toward Laban. Henceforth we perceive no further trace of his former craftiness. The dealings of God’s providence had removed his old characteristics; and the genuine trust in God, which had from the first lain dormant in his heart, is now called forth. Gerl.

33. A saddle, so constructed as to be easy and comfortable for women on a journey, would be a convenient seat for their use in the tent, while halting for the night or for a few days’ repose. Such are now in use in Eastern countries. T. J. C.—35. The stratagem succeeded to her wish, and Laban departed without suspicion. It seems natural to suppose that Rachel did believe that by the use of these teraphium Laban could find out their flight and the direction they took, and therefore she stole them, and having stolen them, she was afraid to acknowledge the theft, and probably might think that they would be of some use to herself. Therefore, for these two reasons, she brought them away.

36-42. And Jacob was wroth, and chode with Laban. The expostulation of Jacob with Laban, and their consequent agreement, are told in this place with great spirit and dignity. Jacob was conscious that though he had made use of cunning to increase his flocks, yet Laban had been on the whole a great gainer by his services. He had served him at least twenty years, fourteen for Rachel and Leah, and six for the cattle. Twenty years of a man’s life devoted to incessant labor, and constantly exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, deserve more than an ordinary reward. Laban’s constitutional sin was covetousness, and it appears to have governed all his conduct, and to have rendered him regardless of the interests of his children so long as he could secure his own. That he had frequently falsified his agreement with Jacob, though the particulars are not specified, we have already had reason to conjecture from vs. 7, and with this Jacob charges him. A. C.—In ignorance, and under the strong impulse of indignation at such a charge, Jacob bids Laban search through all the camp for anything that he could claim as his; and as to the gods alleged to be stolen, “with whomsoever thou findest them, let him not live.” Had Rachel not shared her father’s and husband’s skill in deceit, it had fared ill with her and Jacob; but she succeeded in concealing the images, and stopping the search. Laban having thus openly failed to substantiate the charge, Jacob’s lips are angrily opened, and in the language almost of poetry and rhythm, he upbraids his father-in-law for all his conduct toward him during the past twenty years. We go so fully along with him in the eloquence of his wrath, that our only regret is in the remembrance that it is founded on the fiction of Rachel’s innocence. W. H.—There is a deal of nature in this free and indignant outbreak of Jacob’s—restrained by the fear of a detention that might have involved some of his family; but when that fear had passed away, and its operation as a check was removed—then the sense of injury, kept under till now, comes forth in loud and open remonstrances against him who had inflicted it. It is this trueness to humanity which stamps an authentic character on the whole narrative. T. C.

42. Except the God of my father.** With exemplary humility, and a devout sense of his dependence on the blessing of heaven, Jacob here refers his prosperity to its true source; and in so doing he administers a keen reproof to Laban. He gives him plainly to understand that, notwithstanding this specious talk about his regard for his children, and his sending him away with songs, with tabret and with harp, yet it was owing to a special interposition of the Almighty that he was not stripped of everything he had. Laban had made a merit of obeying the dream, but Jacob was not to be imposed upon by such a pretence. He therefore construes the divine visitation into an evidence of his evil design, one by which God intended expressly to rebuke him, and thus plead the cause of the injured. As to the twofold title which he here applies to the Most High, “The God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac”—the reason assigned for it by Adam Clarke strikes us as extremely plausible, viz. that “Abraham was long since dead, and God was his unalienable portion forever. Isaac was yet alive in a state of probation, living in the fear of God; not exempt from the danger of falling, therefore God is said to be his fear; not only the object of his religious worship in a general way, but that holy and just God, before whom he was working out his salvation with fear and trembling—fear, lest he should fall; and trembling, lest he should offend.” Bush.

44-49. Laban, despite his hypocritical professions of how affectionate their leave-taking might have been if Jacob had not “stolen away,” stood convicted of selfishness and unkindness. In fact, if the conduct of Jacob, even in his going away, had been far from straightforward, that of Laban was of the most unprincipled kind. However, peace was restored between them, and a covenant made, in virtue of which neither party was to cross for hostile purposes the memorial pillar which they erected, and to which Laban gave a Chaldee and Jacob a Hebrew name, meaning “the heap of witness.” Hypocritically as in the mouth of Laban the additional name of Mizpah sounds, which he gave to this pillar, it is a very significant designation to mark great events in our lives, especially our alliances and our undertakings. For Mizpah means “watchtower,” and the words which accompanied the giving of this name were: “Jehovah watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” A. E.

53. That when Abraham was with Nahor and Terah they were idolaters is clearly intimated (Josh. 24:2). “The God of Abraham, of Nahor, and of Terah,” therefore, were words capable of a very ill construction. It is, in fact, little else than swearing by the idols of his Chaldean ancestors, and a virtual reproach of Jacob for having forsaken the religion of his forefathers. Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac. Jacob seems evidently aware of Laban’s design in thus referring to their early ancestors, and therefore, that he might bear an unequivocal testimony against all idolatry, even that of Abraham in his younger years, he would swear only “by the Fear of his father Isaac,” who had never worshipped any other than the true God. Bush.

55. And Laban rose up. There is something that restraineth men from doing some evils, to which they have not only a natural proneness but an actual desire and purpose. When we behold Laban, who had pursued seven days after Jacob in an hostile manner, upon overtaking him to no more than expostulate with him, and then kiss him and bless him and return to his place; and when we behold Esau, who had vowed the death of Jacob, and who went forth to meet him with four hundred men, armed as it should seem for his destruction, yet run to meet him on his approach, and embrace him and fall on his neck and kiss him; it cannot be imagined that such a stop should be made but by the restraint of some overruling hand; nor may we doubt that every such restraint, by whatsoever second and subordinate means it be furthered, is yet the proper work of God, as proceeding from his irresistible providence. It was God that turned Laban’s revengeful thoughts into a friendly expostulation; it was the same God that turned Esau’s inveterate malice into a kind, brotherly congratulation. Bp. Sanderson.

Laban departed, and returned unto his place. That is, to Haran. This parting proved final. We hear no more of Laban, or of the family of Nahor. They might for several ages retain some knowledge of Jehovah; but mixing with it the superstitions of the country, they naturally would, as there is little doubt they did, sink into gross idolatry and be lost among the heathens. Bash.—In Laban and his tribe, as they sweep out of sight into the Eastern Desert, we lose the last trace of the connection of Israel with the Chaldean Ur or the Mesopotamian Haran. A. P. S.

Laban is the man who appreciates the social value of virtue, truthfulness, fidelity, temperance, godliness, but wishes to enjoy their fruits without the pain of cultivating the qualities themselves. He is scrupulous as to the character of those he takes into his employment, and seeks to connect himself in business with good men. In his domestic life, he acts on the idea which his experience has suggested to him, that persons really godly will make his home more peaceful, better regulated, safer than otherwise it might be. But he never for one moment entertains the idea of himself becoming a godly man. In all ages there are Labans, who clearly recognize the utility and worth of a connection with God, who have been much mixed up with persons in whom that worth was very conspicuous, and who yet, at the last, “depart and return unto their place,” like

Jacob’s father-in-law, without having themselves entered into any affectionate relations with God. Dods.

One cannot help thinking that this family at Haran must have been a wily, politic, deceitful set. Laban was characterized by it all over. Rebekah had her full share; and we can detect no small spice of it in their descendants, as in Jacob on the one hand and Rachel on the other. There seems to have been a very unformed morale among them; and, besides this, there was a great avarice in Laban, who was altogether of a very harsh and repulsive character. T. C.—When we reflect upon Rebekah’s conduct in the mode of obtaining Isaac’s blessing for Jacob; when we consider Jacob’s own proceedings in securing the birthright and the blessing; when we regard Laban’s scandalous deceit in respect of Jacob’s marriage—in which his daughter Leah took part; and when we look to the various proceedings of the two sisters as rival wives; with the theft of her father’s images by Rachel, and her readiness at lying and deception to conceal that theft—we have, taken altogether, about as full an amount of immorality and lack of truthfulness as it would be easy to find in any one family. Dr. Chalmers remarks: “Altogether, our notion is very much confirmed with regard to the low standard of virtue in those days—not that we have a higher morality, but a higher rule of morality, than in the patriarchal ages of the world. They had a worse system of virtue in those days, even though at present we should fall short of them in practice. They had an inferior schooling to what we now have—a dimmer moral light—whether they were before or behind us in actual observances.” All this is admirably just and true, and we cannot do better than bear these ideas in mind in considering the doubtful conduct of some personages in the early scriptural history. KV.

Writers unfriendly to revealed religion, starting with the notion that the Mosaic narrative is uniformly exemplary, not historical, have enlarged with malicious triumph on the delinquencies of the patriarchs and their descendants. Perplexity and triumph surely equally groundless! Had the avowed design of the intercourse of God with the patriarchs been their own unimpeachable perfection; had that of the Jewish polity been the establishment of a divine Utopia, advanced to premature civilization, and overleaping at once those centuries of slow improvement, through which the rest of mankind were to pass, then it might have been diffi-

cult to give a reasonable account of the manifest nature. So far from this being the case, an ulterior purpose is evident throughout. The patriarchs and their descendants are the depositaries of certain great religious truths, the unity, omnipotence, and providence of God, not solely for their own use and advantage, but as conservators for the future universal benefit of mankind. Hence, provided the great end, the preservation of those truths, was eventually obtained, human affairs took their ordinary course; the common passions and motives of mankind were left in undisturbed operation. Superior in one respect alone, the ancestors of the Jews and the Jews themselves were not beyond their age or country in acquirements, in knowledge, or even in morals; as far as morals are modified by usage and opinion. They were polygamists, like the rest of the Eastern world; they acquired the virtues and the vices of each state of society through which they passed. Higher and purer notions of the Deity, though they tend to promote and improve, by no means necessarily enforce moral perfection; their influence will be regulated by the social state of the age in which they are promulgated, and the bias of the individual character to which they

are addressed. Neither the actual interposition of the Almighty in favor of an individual or nation, nor his employment of them as instruments for certain important purposes, stamps the seal of divine approbation on all their actions; in some cases, as in the deception practised by Jacob on his father, the worst part of their character manifestly contributes to the purpose of God; still the nature of the action is not altered; it is to be judged by its motive, not by its undesigned consequence. Allowance, therefore, being always made for their age and social state, the patriarchs, kings, and other Hebrew worthies are amenable to the same verdict which would be passed on the eminent men of Greece or Rome. Excepting where they act under the express commandment of God, they have no exemption from the judgment of posterity; and on the same principle, while God is on the scene, the historian will write with caution and reverence; while man will judge with freedom, justice, and impartiality. Milman.

in prayer, is, what he has said to us. God’s promises, as they are the surest guide of our desires in prayer, and furnish us with the best petitions, so they are the firmest ground of our hopes, and furnish us with the best pleas. H.