Jacob’s Visions: Promises, Proposals, and Sheep!
Sermon preached by the Rev. John Elliott Lein at St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church on July 19, 2020, on the following texts: Genesis 28:10-19a, Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23, Romans 8:12-25, and Matthew 13:24-30,36-43.
Welcome back to our series on the adventures of Jacob, patriarch and scoundrel of the book of Genesis.
Last week, we looked at the conflict and contrast between Jacob and his twin brother Esau in two separate yet interconnected stories. Today’s reading follows immediately afterward, as the tension between Esau and Jacob after the blessing-stealing event was so great that their mother feared they’d kill each other. So Jacob is sent off to find a wife from Rebekah’s family rather than marry a local Canaanite.
Now, this was no minor jaunt. Isaac and his household were staying near Beersheba, in the southern end of what would later be the country of Israel. Harran was a major trading city of the Assyrian empire, and is within the borders of modern Turkey to the north.
On the day we catch up with him, Jacob has come to rest for the night in “a certain place” (maqom). He picks up a stone and puts it “at his head-place”; either as a pillow (ouch!) or a defensive safeguard is unclear. And he dreams.
Have you ever seen the 80’s film The Adventures of Milo and Otis? There Milo the cat finds safe harbor overnight in an owl’s nest, warned only that it is a “dreaming nest—happy or sad, dreams will come.” Well, that’s what’s happened here—Jacob has unknowingly stumbled on a so-called “thin place,” and he’s about to have a divine encounter.
As many of us know from Sunday School lessons at an early age, this is the story of Jacob’s Ladder—although it is neither Jacob’s nor a Ladder. He dreams of some form of path, either as the steps of a Mesopotamian tiered temple called a ziggurat or as the graded path of ascent to a great city. On this path, divine messengers are walking back and forth. And God appears and speaks directly to Jacob.
God confirms the blessing and birthright that Isaac has pronounced on Jacob, accepting the outcome regardless of Jacob’s deceptions in attaining it. God promises not only offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth (1), but also a constant presence beyond these borders and provision for an eventual return.
Jacob awakes, and responds in three ways:
First: He reacts in word and emotion, first exclaiming, “God is here—and I didn’t know it!” And then in fear, he names the place as the house of God—literally “Bet- El”—and the gate of heaven.
Second: He takes the stone placed by his head and sets it up as a pillar anointed as a shrine. Archeologists call these stele, and typical examples from this region are massive—often over 10 feet tall! While Jacob’s trickster side from the last set of stories may remind us of the Norse Loki or Greek Odysseus, this time he’s more of a Thor or Hercules.
And finally: he bargains. That’s right—God has given him an open-ended promise, but Jacob makes conditions. In the verses immediately following our lectionary passage , Jacob “makes a vow, saying, ‘IF the Lord will be with me..keep me...give me’ what I need so that I can return to my home in peace—THEN a) I will have you as my god, b) you can have this stone as your house, and c) I’ll give you a tithe.”
Once again, we see how Jacob’s deceptive nature doesn’t allow him to simply trust. His approach to the world, as a constant battle for his own interests in the face of those who may take advantage of him, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Even though Bethel was still far from his destination, the story skips to his arrival in Harran at a very special well. This is where the servant of his father, sent to find Isaac a wife, first met his mother Rebekah. And in classic biblical style, it is now where Jacob seeks a wife.
As we continue into the first verses of chapter 29, the narrator carefully describes the key parts of the scene. Jacob sees first a well; then three flocks of sheep; and finally the size of the stone covering the top of the well.
Wells like this were vital parts of the ancient economy and society, and they were closely protected from competition. A massive stone was placed over the top which would represent a single shepherd from hoarding the water, or even poisoning it for others. The implication of this set up is that the stone is too heavy for three shepherds to lift on their own, and they were waiting for more to gather before attempting to water their flocks.
Jacob strikes up a conversation with the waiting herdsmen, asking after his relatives and inquiring about the delay as if to emphasize the stone’s centrality. And then the narrator interrupts Jacob’s speech, and his heart.
For lo! The jewel of Jacob’s eye has arrived, and everything is changed. The trouble is, the narrator, who we have seen last week is sometimes intentionally vague in how he forces open room for interpretation in how he tells the story, has done it again—the syntax of the Hebrew is slippery. Here it is in English:
While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep; for she kept them. Now when Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of his mother’s brother Laban, and the sheep of his mother’s brother Laban, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of his mother’s brother Laban. Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and wept aloud. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kinsman, and that he was Rebekah’s son; and she ran and told her father.
It’s clear that Jacob is excited—in fact, he’s so pumped that he runs over to the well and single- handedly lifts away the gigantic boulder in a second display of superhuman strength!
But there’s a more subtle wordplay here by the narrator suggesting some doubt about what exactly has caught Jacob’s enthusiasm so much.
First, Rachel’s name literally means “ewe”—as in, a female sheep. Second, Jacob’s reaction is based on seeing both “Rachel...and the sheep.” And third, the Hebrew verb for watering the sheep and kissing Rachel have the same consonants and make a perfect pun (2). Did he give water to the sheep and kiss his cousin, or did he kiss the sheep and give Rachel a drink? The narrator leaves it open-ended!
This is where we’re ending for today’s storytelling, and we’ll continue on next week.
For today, I want to highlight two larger points in addition to noticing the layers of humor and nuance we often miss in the English.
The first is that Jacob’s character remains the same as it was at home; he’s still self-centered, ambitious, and driven to seek advantage in fear that he will lose in some way if he does not. When he’s given a divine promise backing up his father’s blessing and granting of birthright, he insists that his loyalty will be subject to proof of divine provision over time. And when he arrives at his destination in search of a wife, we’re given ample suggestion that, while Rachel may be appealing, so are those sheep that he’d love to take ownership of as part of the family!
The second aspect of these stories that I’m reflecting on today is again on how fate, divine appointment, and choice & consequence interplay in the narrative. Remember, our narrator left open the idea that Jacob and his mother made their own fate in seizing the patriarchal legacy—yet God seems to honor this in spite of Jacob’s somewhat unsavory character. At the same time, as we saw in contrast with Esau, Jacob’s choices come with consequences and we’ll see some of those come out in very negative ways next Sunday.
There’s some comfort in this story for me, as well as warning. It comforts me that God works with this flawed character and makes an open-ended commitment to him and a promise for a great legacy even knowing that Jacob won’t respond in kind or “deserve” what he’s given in ordinary human terms. But it’s also clear God leaves Jacob to suffer through the consequences of his choices. Jacob’s deceit is returned in kind, and his life is a constant self-generating struggle.
It’s good to know that our flaws are not barriers to God, and that God’s promises both for us and for what we might contribute are not dependent on our performance. Yet God also lets us experience the consequences of our flaws—we’re not going to be able to mistreat others and avoid the repercussions in our inner soul and outer relationships.
And so in reflection on these stories of Jacob, let us remember and rejoice in the unconditional promise given as well as soberly reflect and repent as we consider the consequences we’ll be allowed to receive.
AMEN.
NOTES:
The hyperbole goes beyond Isaac’s blessing; in parallel with quantity promised to Abraham but from the opposite direction—“stars” vs. “dust”
Vayashk means “watered”; vayishak means “to kiss.” Since biblical Hebrew was written without vowels until the invention of vowel markers in the 11th century C.E. Masoretic text, those reading it for centuries saw the exact same four letters in both places and could legitimately choose to pronounce them either way.
