There is scarcely a more poignant human story of love and tragedy in the Bible—if not in all of literature—than that of the Patriarch Jacob and his beloved Rachel. Sent by his father Isaac to find a wife among the daughters of his mother’s brother Laban in Haran, Jacob meets Laban’s daughter Rachel as she comes to water her flocks. Jacob instantly falls in love with the beautiful Rachel and offers to work for his uncle Laban for seven years to earn the right to marry his younger daughter. Laban agrees and “Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her” (Genesis 29:20).
The night of the wedding feast, Laban secretly substitutes his older daughter Leah for her sister Rachel. The unsuspecting Jacob consummates the marriage with Leah, thinking she is Rachel, for whom he has yearned these seven years. 022But, “when morning came, there was Leah!” (Genesis 29:25). Jacob is enraged. The deceitful Laban explains: “‘It is not the practice in our place to marry off the younger before the older. Wait until the bridal week of [Leah] is over and we will give you [Rachel] too, provided you serve me another seven years’” (Genesis 29:27). Defeated, Jacob waits the week, then cohabits with Rachel. “And [Jacob] served [Laban] for another seven years” (Genesis 29:30).
In the years after the marriage, both Leah and Rachel as well as each of their maidservants bear children to Jacob. Leah’s children—six sons and a daughter—come rapidly, nearly one after the other, while Rachel, barren, despairs of ever conceiving. Finally, “God remembered Rachel…and opened her womb” (Genesis 30:22). She names her firstborn “Joseph, meaning, in Hebrew, ‘May the Lord add (yosef) another son for me’” (Genesis 30:24).
After 20 years, Jacob decides to return to Canaan. He takes his wives and children and leaves Laban to return to the land of his father Isaac. Rachel again becomes pregnant, and on the journey she dies in childbirth. Her second son, however, survives the birth and is named “Benjamin” by Jacob. The grieving Jacob buries Rachel, not in the ancestral burial ground at the cave of Machpelah, which Abraham purchased in Hebron from Ephron the Hittite, but on the road to Ephrath near Bethlehem.
For millennia, Rachel’s roadside tomb has symbolized what it means to be exiled—not at rest, not at peace. It may be, however, that not only Rachel herself, but an important part of her story as well, was left at the side of the road. What follows is an effort to reclaim that story, buried deep in Scripture.
A number of puzzling things about Jacob are reported in Genesis. They are all resolved when we recognize two heartrending facts: One, which emerges from a close, careful reading of the text, is that an oath made by Jacob was responsible for Rachel’s death—and that he came to know it. The other fact is more dimly present but also significant: that Jacob believed that by this oath he may have unwittingly doomed both Joseph and Benjamin. Together, let us unravel the ancient tale.
The Dutch scholar Jan P. Fokkelman calls Jacob a “conjurer with stones.”1 Three times in Jacob’s life, stones play important roles. Jacob, still a young man, on his way to find a wife in Haran,a stops at Beth-El for the night and rests his head on a stone (Genesis 28:11)023. There Jacob dreams of a stairway reaching to the sky with angels going up and down, and there God appears, promising Jacob “the ground on which you are lying…. Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth…. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants…. I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land” (Genesis 28:13–15).
Completing his journey to Laban in Haran, Jacob comes to a well where he sees Rachel, the daughter of his uncle Laban, tending her father’s flock. Jacob “rolled the stone off the mouth of the well, and watered the flock” (Genesis 29:10). Once again, a stone marks a critical moment for Jacob.
The third incident marked by stones occurs when Jacob parts from his father-in-law Laban 20 years later and they make a pact. Jacob “took stones and made a mound,” which Laban names Yegar-sahadutha but Jacob calls Gal-Ed (Aramaic and Hebrew respectively for “mound of witness”) (Genesis 31:46–47). Laban declares the mound to be “‘a witness between you and me this day…. If you ill-treat my daughters or take other wives besides my daughters… God himself will be witness between you and me. I am not to cross to you past this mound, and…you are not to cross to me…with hostile intent.’… And Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac” (Genesis 31:47–53).
The stones on these three occasions are surely significant, but no great puzzle. But on four occasions, Jacob also erects a matzevah (plural, matzevot), an upright stone, with an apparently cultic function. Those four incidents actually occur in only three locations, since one is the site of two matzevot. The first takes place at Beth-El where Jacob has his dreams of a ladder and where, as we have seen, he rests his head on a stone. Upon awakening, Jacob “took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar (matzevah) and poured oil on the top of it” (Genesis 28:18).2
Jacob also erects a matzevah when he parts from Laban at Gal-Ed. That is, in addition to making a mound of stones as witness to his pact with Laban, Jacob “took a stone and set it up as a pillar (matzevah)” (Genesis 31:45), as additional witness.
After leaving Laban, Jacob comes again to Beth-El, the place where he had dreamt of the stairway to heaven; God again appears to him. God tells him, “You shall be called Jacob no more, but Israel shall be your name…. And Jacob set up a pillar (matzevah) at the site where [God] had spoken to him” (Genesis 35:10, 14).
After leaving Beth-El for the second time, Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel dies as she gives birth to Benjamin, and the grieving Jacob sets up a pillar (matzevah) at Rachel’s grave at Ephrath near Bethlehem (Genesis 35:20). Thus, the fourth pillar.
What makes these pillars particularly puzzling is that matzevot, or standing stones, have an almost completely negative image in the Bible. Deuteronomy 16:22 admonishes the Israelites not to “erect a stone pillar [matzevah]; for such the Lord your God detests.” Since the earlier patriarchs Abraham and Isaac did not set up matzevot, and since the attitude of the Bible toward matzevot is so unequivocally negative,b we 024must ask why Jacob is reported to have erected them, multiple times, and why in just those three places? The answer to this first question will emerge as we continue to disentangle the text.
Another puzzle about Jacob is his neurotic behavior toward Joseph and Benjamin, his two sons by Rachel. The favoritism he consistently exhibits to both of them is perhaps understandable, given his grief over the death of their mother, the wife he especially loved, but for all that it is still stunningly destructive. Indeed, as one who felt the murderous fury of his brother Esau as a result of Rebecca’s favoring him, Jacob should have foreseen the violence and exile that would be visited on his favorite, Joseph! Jacob is inconsolable after Joseph’s bloody coat is brought to him by his sons as false evidence that their brother—sold by them to Midianite traders—had been torn apart by wild animals. Jacob’s refusal to be comforted about Joseph’s supposed death is, again, perhaps understandable, but it stands starkly in contrast to his almost perfunctory comment “Shimon is no more” (Genesis 42:36) when Simeon (Shimon) is left as hostage in Egypt until his brothers return with Benjamin. Jacob’s inconsolable state has even more startling consequences: He is apparently willing to face possible starvation during a famine and let Simeon languish in a far-off Egyptian prison, rather than send Benjamin, Rachel’s other son, with his brothers to Egypt on a mission of family rescue from the famine in Canaan. How can this be accounted for?
The third puzzle in Jacob’s life story is that on his deathbed, he takes the unusual step of adopting Joseph’s two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Genesis 48:1–12 describes this scene, in which Jacob tells Joseph that the two boys “Ephraim and Manasseh [his 025grandsons] shall be mine no less than Reuben and Simeon [Jacob’s own sons].” This may explain why the twelve tribes of Israel include two of Jacob’s grandsons, but does it make sense in the context of the narrative in Genesis? What prepares us for this adoption; what has transpired that gives it meaning beyond that of a deathbed whim? The New Jewish Publication Society (NJPS) translation attempts an answer by adding bracketed words to the text of Jacob’s explanation in Genesis 48:7, so that it reads: “‘I [do this because], when I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died, to my sorrow, while I was journeying in the land of Canaan, when still some distance short of Ephrath, and I buried her there on the road to Ephrath,’—now Bethlehem.”c The bracketed insertion expresses the thought, common among many exegetes, that Jacob’s adoption of Ephraim and Manesseh was his way of honoring the haunting memory of Rachel. But the connection between that memory and the adoption, and thus the true sense of Genesis 48:7, remains unclear.
All of these peculiarities and anomalies are resolved if we recognize the critical fact: Jacob was responsible for Rachel’s death—and he knew it!
Careful Bible readers have always known that Jacob unwittingly condemned his beloved Rachel to death. For when Jacob gathered his wives and children, his livestock and all of his household to leave Laban to return to his father Isaac in Canaan, unbeknownst to Jacob, Rachel stole her father’s household idols (teraphim). Laban pursued Jacob, caught up with the migrating clan and confronted Jacob concerning his leaving and the theft. Jacob, unaware that Rachel had taken the teraphim, was deeply offended by Laban’s accusation. So as to underscore his innocence, he uttered to Laban the fateful condemnation: “Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not remain alive!” (Genesis 31:32).
Vows or oaths uttered in error or in ignorance are common in biblical literature; inexorably and irrespective of mitigating circumstances, they have their unintended effect.3 The discerning reader thus knows that Rachel’s life is forfeit, and the tension in the text concerns only when and under what circumstances she will die.
Jacob’s condemnation of Rachel is unwitting (“Jacob, of course, did not know that Rachel had stolen them” [Genesis 31:32]) but fairly plain to the reader. But did Jacob know—or learn—that he had condemned his beloved wife to death? That he indeed came to know it can be inferred from, and even corroborated in, the text.
Before leaving the critical scene where Jacob parts from Laban, we need to examine a few more details. When Laban caught up with the departing Jacob and accused him of stealing the teraphim, Rachel was in her tent, where she had secreted the teraphim in a saddlebag on which she seated herself. During the search that Jacob invited him to make, Laban eventually reached Rachel’s tent. She managed to avoid standing up and revealing the stolen idols, saying that she could not rise “for the period of women is upon me” (Genesis 31:35). Rachel, that is, was in her tent, presumably with the infant Josephd (perhaps even holding him in her arms), a fact that will be quite important and to which we shall return. So not only was Jacob ignorant of Rachel’s theft, but Rachel was ignorant of Jacob’s dramatic oath that whoever the teraphim were with should not live. Now let us turn to the next critical scene, the return to Beth-El.
Jacob did not remain ignorant of Rachel’s theft forever, though how he learned about it must be extracted from the text. Readers of Genesis, both ancient and modern, seem to have missed this crucial point, even though a few exegetes have come close to the truth lurking in the shadows of the text.
Jacob returned with his entire household to Beth-El after departing from Laban. Genesis 35:1 recounts that God commanded this stop on Jacob’s travels: “‘Arise, go up to Beth-El and remain there; and build an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.’”
The return to Beth-El certainly required some preparation; Jacob and his entourage would have to be in a state of purity in order to revisit the hallowed site of Jacob’s theophany where he erected his first matzevah. Jacob instructed his household and entourage: “Rid yourselves of the alien gods in your midst, purify yourselves, and change your clothes” (Genesis 35:2). To this end, the people “gave to Jacob all the alien gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the terebinth that was near Shechem” (Genesis 35:4). Suddenly Jacob must have known. “All” the foreign gods must have included the teraphim, the idols we know were in Rachel’s possession. There, on the outskirts of Beth-El, Rachel must have given them to Jacob, without hesitation, because she was unaware of Jacob’s earlier oath before Laban.
Imagine that moment. Imagine the heart-stopping, life-changing effect it must have had on Jacob. There, on the outskirts of Beth-El, in the very shadow of his first matzevah, the stone on which he had rested his head, Jacob discovers what we, the readers, have 026known all along: that he had unwittingly doomed his adored Rachel. What an unbearable agony for Jacob, and for the reader, who now knows, not simply that Rachel will die, but that Jacob also knows—and that he knows his oath was the agent of death.4 Correlatively, what a tragic, innocent ignorance for Rachel!
Mercifully, neither Jacob nor the reader are kept in this state of anticipatory mourning for very long. It is, indeed, in the very next scene, immediately upon leaving Beth-El, that Rachel goes into labor and dies in childbirth. But her second son, Benjamin, lives.
It is clear now why the birth of Benjamin, alone of Jacob’s thirteen children, occurs at such a distance in the narrative from the clustered births of the other twelve. The impact of this powerful tale would have been immeasurably diminished had Rachel died before the return to Beth-El, where Jacob saw her relinquish her hidden teraphim, recognized his tragic error and learned that his oath was Rachel’s death sentence. On the other hand, the narrative art apparently required that Rachel die as soon as possible after Jacob’s recognition, to solidify the connection in the text between Beth-El and Rachel’s death and burial near Bethlehem.
It is not just the sequencing of the text that cements the linkage of these sites. It is the unusual matzevot themselves. Fokkelman notes5 that the various pillars erected by Jacob had different significances, some positive, some negative. That is, the pillars at Beth-El were unequivocally positive, for they represented the ladder of the dream, the theophany and the connection to God in the life of the Patriarch. The pillar at Gal-Ed was essentially neutral, in that it represented Jacob’s covenant of non-aggression with Laban before God. Finally, the pillar at Bethlehem was obviously negative, a monument to the prematurely deceased Rachel. Fokkelman’s assessment focuses solely on the relationship of each matzevah to occurrences at its site; the matzevot, in this view, are vertical pointers, marking watershed events by 027memorializing God’s presence at the site. Fokkelman does not consider the horizontal significance of the matzevot, as markers connecting different places, and calling our attention to an extended drama, enacted in stages, at a number of key locations.
Consider again where the matzevot appear: Beth-El, Gal-Ed, Bethlehem. They do have an intimate connection with one another, precisely with respect to the drama of Jacob and Rachel. For it was at Gal-Ed that Jacob inadvertently condemned Rachel, at Beth-El that he discovered what he had done and at Bethlehem where the condemnation had its dreaded effect. The matzevot are not random monuments at all, and they are all of negative significance. For Jacob’s matzevot are all part of the tragedy of Rachel’s death and Jacob’s part in it.
Jacob’s neurotic and destructive attachment to Joseph and Benjamin, the children of his beloved Rachel who died so young, can now be understood more fully. Rachel’s death has long been deemed sufficient (somewhat implausiblye) to explain Jacob’s behavior. But now we know considerably more. When Jacob uttered his rash vow, Rachel was in her tent. Joseph, still a baby, was undoubtedly with her. Later, when Joseph’s brothers showed Jacob Joseph’s bloodied tunic after they cast him into a pit, might Jacob not have had yet another moment of pained realization, recalling that Joseph was in the tent with the teraphim when Jacob had said, “Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not remain alive”? That would surely have convinced Jacob not only that Joseph was indeed dead, but that he, Jacob, was as surely responsible for Joseph’s death as he had been for Rachel’s. Would that not now fully explain his utter refusal ever to be comforted for the loss of his son? The silent burden of guilt would have made comfort impossible. He had killed his beloved wife with his vow. Now he had killed her firstborn, his favorite.
There is yet more: For though the text is not explicit on the timing of events between Gal-Ed and Bethlehem, it is possible that Rachel was already pregnant with Benjamin at Gal-Ed,f and that Jacob knew or suspected this. If so, Benjamin too, like Joseph, had been in the tent with Rachel. With Rachel dead and Joseph presumed killed by the power of his rash vow, Jacob would naturally have assumed that Benjamin might also be under its spell. How then could he ever let him out of his sight? This fear that Benjamin too would die explains Jacob’s refusal, even at risk of starvation, to allow Benjamin to leave him and journey with his brothers to Egypt. Joseph (in disguise) had told the brothers not to return seeking more food unless they brought Benjamin with them. But Jacob refused: “My son [Benjamin] must not go down with you” (Genesis 42:38). Only when their food was gone and the famine became severe, only after the brothers pleaded with him, saying that the man (not yet known to them as their brother Joseph) warned them, “Do not let me see your faces unless your brother [Benjamin] is with you” (Genesis 43:3), only after Judah gave his own life as surety (Genesis 43:9), did Jacob relent. Only then did he let go of Benjamin so that the sons could free their brother Simeon, held hostage in Egypt, and return with food to Jacob in Canaan.
We have resolved the first two of the three puzzles with which we began this investigation—the meaning of the matzevot and Jacob’s overprotection and fear for the lives of Joseph and Benjamin. The third puzzle, the deathbed adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh, can now be resolved as well.
When Joseph was born, Rachel expressed the wish for more children (Genesis 30:24): “May the Lord add (yosef) another son for me.” As a result of Jacob’s vow, those words turned into a ghoulish, literal prophecy; Rachel did indeed have exactly one more son, for in the birth of Benjamin she died. Having carried the burden of guilt for Rachel’s death all his life, Jacob, on his deathbed, would understandably look for ways to rectify his tragic carelessness with words. One thing he could do would be to provide Rachel with the additional children he prevented her from having in her lifetime. The adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh, even if it did not literally give Rachel more children, at least gave Jacob two more children from her.
This adoption explains Jacob’s statement in Genesis 48:7: “‘I [do this because], when I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died, to my sorrow, while I was journeying in the land of Canaan, when still some distance short of Ephrath; and I buried her there on the road to Ephrath’—now Bethlehem.” This reference to Rachel’s death had seemed out of place in Genesis 48, almost disruptive in the midst of Jacob’s speech to Joseph.6 Now we understand why it is there.
But what is the full meaning of this text? This is the final secret, beckoning from the shadows of the text. Genesis 48:7 is translated: “When I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died, to my sorrow [Hebrew: metah ‘alai], while I was journeying in the land of Canaan, when still some distance short of Ephrath….” The context certainly supports the translation of the Hebrew words metah ‘alai as simply “died to my sorrow.” Indeed, a comparison with Numbers 6:9 would suggest that this verb-adverb combination means something like “to die suddenly,” and Genesis 48:7,028 therefore might be understood as Jacob’s describing how sudden, and thus how sorrowful, was Rachel’s death. But there are two other occurrences of the combination mwt ‘alg in Genesis, and they suggest a quite different reading of these words. Genesis 20:3 describes God’s appearance to the Philistine ruler Abimelekh in a dream, after Abimelekh had brought Abraham’s wife Sarah to his palace, in the mistaken belief that she was Abraham’s sister. God said to the Philistine ruler, “You are to die because of the woman that you have taken, for she is a married woman.” The Hebrew rendered as “die because of” is met ‘al.h Moreover, in the repetition of the wife-sister motif in Genesis 26:9, Isaac responds to Abimelekh’s indignant demand to know why Isaac represented Rebekkah as his sister as follows: “Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.” The Hebrew rendered by “lose my life on account of her” is ‘amut ‘aleha.i In other words, mwt ‘al means not only “to die suddenly” but also (and, in particular, in Genesis) “to die on account of” or “to die because of.”
Genesis 48:7, that strange intrusion into the adoption scene, thus may be rendered as follows: “When I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died on my account while I was journeying in the land of Canaan, when still some distance short of Ephrath….” Why was Jacob adopting Joseph’s children, and posthumously giving Rachel the additional children she never had? Because it was his fault! The final pathos in the life of Jacob is that he cannot die in peace until he can finally unburden himself of the guilt he has carried all these years. And he must unburden himself to Joseph, Rachel’s firstborn.
The literary artistry is astonishing. For the truth is, Genesis 48:7 is equivocal, it is ambiguous, undoubtedly deliberately. Jacob, great as his need is to confess, cannot simply say to Joseph on his deathbed that he killed his mother. So he phrases his confession in a way that Joseph can well be expected to hear metah ‘alai simply as “died suddenly” or “died to my sorrow,” while Jacob actually intends the same phrase to convey his confession, that Rachel “died on my account.” The exquisite ambiguity allows Jacob both to shed his burden before Joseph, and probably to conceal it from Joseph at the same time. Only in this way can we fully understand the enigmatic language of Genesis 48:7. And only thus could Jacob finally go to the rest he never found in life.
(This article is based on a lecture given in October 1993 to the Foundation for Jewish Studies, Washington, D.C.)
21 There is scarcely a more poignant human story of love and tragedy in the Bible—if not in all of literature—than that of the Patriarch Jacob and his beloved Rachel. Sent by his father Isaac to find a wife among the daughters of his mother’s brother Laban in Haran, Jacob meets Laban’s daughter Rachel as she comes to water her flocks. Jacob instantly falls in love with the beautiful Rachel and offers to work for his uncle Laban for seven years to earn the right to marry his younger daughter. Laban agrees and “Jacob served seven years for Rachel, […]
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Jacob is also fleeing from his jealous brother Esau who seeks to kill him because Jacob stole his birthright (Genesis 27:41–44).
2.
In one instance other than the life of Jacob, a matzevah does appear in a positive light. It is in the account of the ratification of the Sinai covenant, where we are told (Exodus 24:4) that Moses set up twelve matzevot at the foot of the mountain. But even here it seems to be connected with Jacob (= Israel), for these matzevot are intended to correspond to the tribes of Israel, that is, to Jacob’s twelve sons.
3.
Other translations often omit the bracketed words.
4.
That Joseph was very young and dependent on his mother can be inferred. First, Genesis 30:25 informs us that Jacob decided to leave Haran right after Joseph’s birth. Jacob seems to have gone through one or two breeding cycles for the flocks before actually departing (Genesis 30:31–43). Thus, Joseph may have been one or two years old, perhaps three. Moreover, in the scene after Gal-Ed, at Penuel, we are explicitly told that Joseph was with Rachel (Genesis 33:2).
5.
That is, he overprotected Joseph because he lost his mother at such a young age. But Jacob’s favoritism was actually destructive, placing Joseph in jeopardy from his brothers. Jacob must have been aware of this. Such illogical behavior must be due to something much deeper than the premature loss of Jacob’s wife.
6.
Her statement to Laban that she was menstruating cannot be an objection to this point, for that statement was a subterfuge to prevent her father from finding the teraphim beneath her.
7.
Mwt is the Hebrew infinitive of the verb “to die,” of which metah is the third-person, female, singular conjugation in the past tense (“she died”). It is standard practice to transliterate infinitives in consonantal form, without vocalization. Thus, mwt represents the Hebrew consonants mem, waw, and taw, which together form the root of the verb “to die.” ‘Al is an uncompleted preposition (functioning here as an adverbial phrase), the translation of which is what is at issue here. ‘Alai completes that preposition with the first-person, singular pronoun.
8.
Met is the second-person, male, singular, present conjugation. The preposition ‘al here is completed in the biblical text by the following word ha-ishah, “the woman.”
9.
’Amut is the first-person, singular, future conjugation. ‘Aleha completed the preposition ‘al with the third-person, female, singular pronoun.
Endnotes
1.
Fokkelman, Jan P., Narrative Art in Genesis, (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975), p. 235.
2.
Fokkelman argues that this matzevah is intended to be a concrete “postfiguration of the theophany” at Beth-El, an eternal vertical symbol of the connection to God first experienced by Jacob as the ladder in his dream. See Narrative Art in Genesis, pp. 66–68.
3.
The Rabbis later read this phenomenon into a biblical verse in Ecclesiastes (10:5), which they understood (more literally than they might have) as speaking of “an error which issues from a ruler.” Although it is not the contextual meaning of the verse, it is true to the biblical mindset. According to this mindset, Jephthah must sacrifice his daughter to fulfill his vow: “If you deliver the Ammonites into my hands, then whatever comes out the door of my house to meet me on my safe return…shall be the Lord’s and shall be offered by me as a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30, 31), and even Ahasuerus’s misbegotten genocidal decree to permit the nations to “destroy, massacre and exterminate” the Jews (Esther 3:13) cannot be revoked, but only counteracted (Esther 8:8). The Rabbis not only understood the biblical point of view here, but themselves subscribed to some version of it, at least to the extent that it appears as a motif in some legends in the Talmud and Midrash (for example, Palestinian Talmud Shabbat 14d and Babylonian Talmud Ketubot 23a).
4.
In the second-century B.C.E. pseudepigraphic book of Jubilees, it is said that “they gave up the strange gods and that which was in their ears and which was on their necks, and the idols which Rachel stole from Laban her father she gave wholly to Jacob” (Jubilees 31:1–3). But the import of this statement seems to have eluded the author of Jubilees. Josephus relates that “while [Jacob] was purifying his company accordingly, he lit upon the gods of Laban, being unaware that Rachel had stolen them; these he hid in the ground beneath an oak…” (Antiquities, (xxi) (2)–(3)). Again, however, the momentous implications of this, given his oath before Laban, are not drawn. Finally, Fokkelman (Narrative Art in Genesis, 1975), in commenting on the purification prior to revisiting Beth-El, states in passing that the Jacob-God relationship “may no longer be clouded by the presence of teraphim and other foreign gods,” and thus that the household gods of Haran must suffer the definitive humiliation of being put underground. How Jacob got the teraphim, and the effect that would have had on him, seems again to have been missed.
5.
Fokkelman, p. 235.
6.
This much has been understood by some, but by no means all, commentators. Many understood the interpolation of 48:7 as an apology to Joseph for not burying Rachel in the ancestral tomb in Hebron, even as Jacob extracted an oath from Joseph that he would bury him there (see, for example, Rashi, Rashbam, ibn Ezra, and Ramban). This explanation fails because Jacob’s instructions to Joseph to bring his body back to Hebron were given in a previous conversation (recorded in chapter 47), and the present conversation concerned only Jacob’s adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh.