Laban

Scripture: Genesis 24:29–31; 27:43–31:55

Laban son of Bethuel (לָבָן, "white"; Aramean from Paddan-aram) appears first as a young man running to meet Abraham's servant, who had come to find a wife for Isaac and had arrived with gold rings and bracelets for Rebekah. The narrator is direct about what moved him: "As soon as he saw the ring and the bracelets on his sister's arms, he ran to the man" (Genesis 24:30). The greeting and the motive arrive in the same sentence. "Come in, O blessed of YHWH", the language of hospitality animated by the sight of wealth. This is the establishing shot. Everything Laban does in the next sixty years of narrative follows from it.

When Jacob arrived, a generation later, he came as a man with nothing, fleeing Esau, carrying only his staff (32:10). Laban ran to meet him too, embraced him, kissed him, brought him to his house, heard his story. "Surely you are my bone and my flesh" (29:14). Jacob loved Rachel and offered seven years of labor for her. "They seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her" (29:20). When the seven years were complete and Jacob said "Give me my wife," Laban gathered the men of the place and made a feast. On the wedding night, he brought Leah. The morning came. "And behold, it was Leah!" (29:25). Jacob to Laban: "What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?" Laban: "It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn" (29:26). The man who had convinced his blind father that the younger was the elder, who had put goatskins on his arms and neck, who had worn Esau's garments to steal the blessing, had just been given the older in place of the younger by his own uncle, and had not recognized her until morning. The principle of substitution, of the elder and the younger reversed, had been turned back on him. Laban offered Rachel after the bridal week for another seven years of service. Total: fourteen years for the two wives he came for one.

After the fourteen years and the children, Jacob asked to leave. Laban pressed him to stay: "I have learned by divination that YHWH has blessed me because of you" (30:27). They negotiated wages, the speckled and spotted animals from the flock would be Jacob's. Laban promptly removed all the streaked and spotted animals and put three days' journey between them and Jacob (30:35–36). YHWH appeared to Jacob in a dream and showed him the breeding: the streaked and spotted were mating with the flock (31:10–12). "I have seen all that Laban is doing to you" (31:12). Jacob's wages changed ten times (31:41). After twenty years, fourteen for the two wives, six more for his flocks, YHWH told Jacob to return to the land of his fathers. Jacob gathered his wives and children and all his livestock and fled without telling Laban. Rachel stole her father's household gods, the teraphim. Laban pursued for seven days and caught up in the hill country of Gilead.

The night before Laban reached Jacob, YHWH appeared to him in a dream: "Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad" (31:24). Even in his anger, Laban was held. He caught up with Jacob and accused him, "What have you done?... If it had been my will, I could have sent you away with mirth and songs, with tambourine and lyre... Now you have done foolishly" (31:26–28). He searched for the teraphim. Rachel had hidden them under her camel's saddle and sat on them, claiming she could not rise "for the way of women is upon me" (31:35). He found nothing. Jacob's anger broke loose: "What is my sin, that you have hotly pursued me?... 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... I was there: the heat consumed me by day, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes. 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" (31:36–42). Laban's answer: "The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine" (31:43). They made a covenant, a heap of stones as a witness and boundary marker, the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor (the God of their father) as judge between them. Laban's words over it: "YHWH watch between you and me, when we are out of one another's sight" (31:49). This is the Mizpah benediction in its original context. Not a blessing. A surveillance agreement between two men who did not trust each other and were separating permanently. Laban rose early the next morning, kissed his grandchildren and his daughters farewell, and returned to his place. Jacob went on his way.

Laban is the Sanctum's figure of instrumental providence, the man through whom YHWH shaped Jacob's twenty years of exile and forged the twelve patriarchs, who never himself entered covenant relationship with YHWH, who acknowledged divine blessing on Jacob's account, and who was stopped from doing Jacob harm not by any virtue of his own but by a divine word in a dream. The Sanctum reads him as a study in how YHWH works through, around, and despite the fully self-interested man.