Blogging Genesis chapters 29-31.
13 Then it came to pass, when Laban heard the report about Jacob his
sister’s son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him and kissed him, and
brought him to his house. So Jacob told Laban all these things.
14 And Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh.” And he
stayed with him for a month.
15 Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my relative, should you
therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what should your wages be
. . .
18 Now Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, “I will serve you
seven years for Rachel your younger daughter.”
19 And Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should
give her to another man. Stay with me.” 20 So Jacob served
seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the
love he had for her.
21 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled,
that I may go in to her.” 22 And Laban gathered together all
the men of the place and made a feast.
. . . 25 So it came to pass
in the morning, that behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, “What is this
you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you? Why then have you
deceived me?”
26 And Laban said, “It must not be done so in our country, to give the younger
before the firstborn. 27 Fulfill her week, and we will give you
this one also for the service which you will serve with me still another seven
years.”
28 Then Jacob did so and fulfilled her week. So he gave him his daughter
Rachel as wife also. . . And he served
with Laban still another seven years. --- Genesis 29:13-29
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been
reading and re-reading Jacob’s time with Laban in Genesis chapter 29-31. I felt something missing in the typical
summaries of the passage, but I couldn’t find the right framework to explain
it. The usual synopsis is about how
Jacob the trickster is paid back for his life of deception and so he realizes
the error of his ways and runs back into the redemptive arms of God.
But that’s not what actually happens in the
Bible.
Jacob is called usurper and trickster so
we think of him as a usurper and a con man, but those were the names that other
people gave Jacob. Yes, he moved into
the place of the firstborn, but God had promised that to him before he was born. Jacob didn’t decide unilaterally to launch a
family coup. Jacob was known as a
trickster, but lying to his dad was his mom’s idea. Rachel came up with the plan and pressured
Jacob into acting out his part. Who was
the real trickster?
Think about it. Rachel was Laban’s sister.
When Isaac and Rebekah met she was already a
highly socialized young adult raised in the same ethical system as her brother
Laban (Genesis 24). Isaac (Laban’s
cousin) lied about Rebekah being his wife (Genesis 26). Rebekah devised the scheme to defraud her
blind old husband. Jacob’s wives were
raised by Laban. Jacob’s favorite, his
beloved Rachel robbed her dad and pretended to be on her period to hide the
idol statues she’d stolen from him (Genesis
31:19, 34-35).
When Laban and Jacob first met, Jacob told Laban all these things (Genesis
29:13) about buying his brother’s birthright for a bowl of stew; his mom
plotting to deceive his old, blind father; the lies; the death threat from his
brother; and the vision we call Jacob’s ladder.
Laban heard all these things and replied, “Yep.
That sounds just like stuff my relatives would do.”
And Laban said to him, “Surely you are my
bone and my flesh. . . --- Genesis 29:14
Laban’s household was a lying family of liars who lied.
Jacob, was raised by a Laban-ite, but he wasn’t
fully immersed into that world. In fact,
Jacob was actually a geek, a nerd, a bookish mama’s boy who stayed home, cooked
porridge, and didn’t have the survival skills to pack properly for a journey to
Syria. (Read the previous Genesis blogs for those references.)
Now, who remembers Tupac?
Tupac Shakur parents were politically woke
before “woke” was a thing. They named
him after an 18th-century Peruvian revolutionary .
Tupac was an intellectually gifted child who studied acting,
poetry, jazz, and ballet at
the Baltimore School for the Arts.
When his family first moved to California, the settled in the
suburbs. His extended family’s many
Black Panther Party connections turned into connections to convicted
felons. Poverty and crack caught up to
his mother, and his young adult associations were bonafide street
hustlers. But Tupac was just like Jacob,
the real bookish, intellectual, Dear Mama
singing Jacob.
Where there’s a
Jacob, there’s almost always also ----- a Laban. In Genesis 31:22-32, Laban would have killed
Jacob if the Lord hadn’t intervened.
Laban was a hustler for real, an O.G.
Jacob was the confirmed heir to the fortunes
of Isaac and Abraham, the ancient Canaanite equivalent of a Rockefeller. He was the chosen one, confirmed by God at
the pillar of Beth-el to be the father of a nation as numerous as the stars of
heaven.
When Jacob first met Rachel he could have
gone home to his rich daddy and sent for his betrothed. Instead he spent a month working for Laban
for free.
And he stayed with him for a month. Then
Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are
my relative, should you therefore serve me for nothing (Genesis 29:14,15)?
O.K., a month. After that though, Jacob could have sent word
and received a fortune sufficient to cover any bride-price Laban could’ve
named.
But he didn’t. He contracted himself out for 7 years of
indentured servitude as a dowry (Genesis 29:18).
At the end of the 7 years, Laban got Jacob
drunk and married him to the wrong daughter under the lame pretense of some
obscure Syrian marriage tradition that he’d neglected to mention FOR SEVEN YEARS
(Genesis 29:21-26).
THEN, instead of demanding reparations for
Laban’s fraud and breach of contract, somehow Jacob gets tied into a 7 year extension
of his contract to his lying uncle-father-in-law. Because family.
Laban recognized God’s anointing on Jacob’s life made himself rich off the younger man’s talents while repeatedly muscling him out of the rights and compensation he’d earned.
So Jacob said to him, “You know how I have
served you and how your livestock has been with me. For what
you had before I came was little, and it has increased to a great amount; the
Lord has blessed you since my coming. And now, when shall I also provide for my
own house?” (Genesis 30:29,30)
But why did Jacob let Laban run his life and
run over his life for 20 year? How was
Laban able to dominate the more talented and anointed Jacob?
Consistency.
Laban was wrong, but Laban was REAL.
Jacob, on the other hand, let his mother talk
him into lying to his blind father when he really didn’t want to. He received God’s promise at Beth-el, but he
really didn’t fully believe it.
The Lord said, “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever
you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I
have done what I have spoken to you.”
. . . Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If
God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread
to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father’s house in
peace, then the Lord shall be my God.” (Genesis 28:15, 20-21).
Jacob wanted Rachel and only Rachel, but he
accepted Leah, even though the marriage was fraudulent, and he despised Leah,
but he got her pregnant 7 times. Jacob
was the anointed one, but he was inconsistent.
He was more right but less REAL.
The guy who kept it real dominated the guy
who didn’t know who he really was.
John had a vision of Jesus writing to the
church, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you
were cold or hot. So then,
because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My
mouth.” (Revelations 3:15, 16)
Real hot?
I can use you.
Real cold even?
I can use you.
Kinda, sorta, not sure, maybe?
You make me sick.
When God has called you to Himself, the old
sinful ways aren’t REALly yours anymore.
Dipping back in a little doesn’t “scratch an itch” or “take the edge
off.” Backsliding just makes you inconsistent
and susceptible to the attacks of the devil and his fully committed servants.
What fruit did you have then in the things of
which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death (Romans 6:21).
Tupac was an intellectual social justice
warrior who vacillated between thug and activist. He wasn’t
(I know Tupac fans are gonna lose their minds here). Pac wasn’t real.
Not to the calling her really knew in
himself.
Dr. King died young. But he was real. Not perfect.
But consistently committed to a path.
He died but he wasn’t dominated by a Laban.
Malcolm X, one could argue, was dominated by
Elijah (Laban) Muhammad, but he got real in the closing years of his life.
When Jacob got real, he took his wives and
left Laban because that was his calling all along.
So Jacob went on his way, and the angels of
God met him (Genesis 32:1).
If you’re being bullied into someone else’s image of you but you know
deep down that God has called you to be someone different, you need to get
real. Don’t wait for your oppressor to
change; they probably won’t. You have
to change. Or, more accurately, you have to stop changing. Stop modifying the truth of who you are to
appease the Laban, the Shug Knight, or the Elijah Muhammad who is living off
your anointing.
---Anderson T.
Graves II is a
writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural
leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles
Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO);
and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for
Human Development (NIHD).
Subscribe to my personal blog www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .
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