After Leah’s four kids, Rachel, still unable to have a baby, gives her maidservant to Isaac to produce some sons. Once Rachel ups the stakes, Leah then sends her maidservant to also sleep with Isaac. Then Leah manages to get pregnant again and finally, and I’m sure there’s some lesson in this on morality but I honestly can’t imagine what it might be, Rachel herself gives birth to a son, Joseph, who ends up being the one who progresses the plot later on.
While all of Jacob’s family is growing, so too are Laban’s flocks. He learns through divination that Jacob is a blessing to the farm and practically begs him to stay. Laban tells him to name his price, and Jacob cooks up some scheme about keeping all the speckled animals from Laban’s flocks. Once Laban agree Jacob stacks the deck by making all the best sheep and goats have sex in front of some poplar and almond trees that make the animals give birth to speckled offspring.
Word got back to Laban that Jacob was taking all his animals and so he set off to find out what was going on. Jacob, indignant at these completely true accusations, starts saying that God told him to head back home and explained to his wives that God had told him to take all of Laban’s livestock for changing Jacob’s wages several times. He flees the country, but Rachel steals the household God’s from Laban’s house before they go.
When Laban finds all of this out he is understandably angry and sets off to track them down. God tells him right before he catches up to Jacob not to say anything to them, which I think we’re supposed to take as “don’t attack them.” But Laban still lays into Jacob, asking him why he fled with his family in secret. He would have sent them off with a feast, but in stead Jacob slipped out in the night, stealing his Gods on the way. This last accusation Laban can’t actually prove though because he can’t find the Gods when he searches through the camp, so Jacob gets very offended at the suggestion that he or his party might have taken them.
Finally the both of them settle all their gripes with a treaty where Jacob agrees not to mistreat the wives he has or to take any other new wives and both men agree not to cross the Mesopotamian border to do each other harm.
I’m seeing a trend in some of these stories that’s kind of uncomfortable. So the major complaint levied against Jewish culture by white supremacists and other ignorant assholes is that Jews are sneaky and exploit the system to come out ahead at the expense of others. I’m not saying I buy into that, but that sounds exactly like the kind of behavior that seems to be treated as a virtue in Genesis. Abraham and Isaac both keep telling people that their wives are their sisters to keep themselves safe, which is fine, but when Abimelech confronts Abraham what does he say? Not “You’re right, I’m sorry” or even “This is why I did that.” But “well, she’s technically my half-sister too, so I didn’t actually lie to you.”
Now we see Jacob being kind of a dick to Laban, who did certainly mess with Jacob, switching his bride and stuff, but it’s not like he held Jacob captive and forced him to tend his flocks. Even bigger than that was when Jacob swindled Esau out of his birthright, or straight-up stole his blessing from their father.
Abimelech, Esau, Laban, these are not bad guys. These aren’t the villains that we see outfoxed in ancient parables when they try to harm the protagonist. They’re just some innocent bystanders who get screwed over by the heroes of the Bible.
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