An Atheist Explores the Bible Part Seven: Divine masked wrestlers, idol theft and revenge through circumcision. More tales from the life of the family of Jacob (Genesis 31-35)

Genesis 31-35

Divine masked wrestlers, idol theft and revenge through circumcision. More tales from the life of the family of Jacob.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Genesis 35

“And Laban said to Jacob, What hast thou done, that thou hast stolen away unawares to me, and carried away my daughters, as captives taken with the sword?”

I’m not sure that the compilers intended this chapter to be a bit of a knock-about farce, but in places it is. It begins with Jacob deciding to take his wives and all the livestock that he has been paid, and head back to the land of his father Isaac because the sons of Laban are beginning to complain. You’ll recall the discussion on breeding livestock that occurred at the end of Chapter 30, but I don’t think I discussed why this was so. Basically Laban offers Jacob wages, and Jacob says “I’ll take all the livestock with speckled and spotted coats”, and then begins his extensive breeding program to increase the number of piebald livestock and thus his payment. So you can probably see why Laban’s annoyed with him for this rather sharp business practice. (Jacob’s attempts to breed stripy sheep involves some kind of sympathetic magic having them mating in front of stripy sticks, but evidently it works nonetheless).

Jacob and his entourage make off in the night and as they leave Rachel steals her father’s religious  “images”. An interesting point here, in that there’s no suggestion in this chapter that Laban is wrong for owning such items, nothing that he is worshipping false gods, although the implication is strong that Laban’s god(s) are not equal to the God of Abraham, who is referred to in several instances in this chapter that makes Him sound more like a household god than the one and only – presumably this element of the tale is an artefact of a polytheistic Hebrew culture.

Anyway, Laban gives chase and catches up with Jacob where the two give very impassioned cases for their grievances, with Jacob saying that he’s worked all weather for no thanks and Laban saying what have I done that you would run away, and they come to a detente, except for the matter if the religious images. Which Rachel hides in a ... chest? “The camel’s furniture” is the exact description, so maybe like a saddlebag? And then she sits on it. Laban searches and when he mention the chest she is sitting on she answers that she cannot stand for “the custom of women” is upon her. There’s some great farce here.

“What’s in the chest?”

“What chest?”

“That one you’re sitting on.”

“Oh, that. Nothing.”

“Can I see?”

“... I... can’t stand up.”

“Why not?”

“...Women’s things.”

“Oh! Ah, er, right, okay, I’ll er ... I’ll just look, um, over here instead then.” [Laban wanders off embarrassed].

It all ends amicably, with Jacob and Laban building a pillar of stones and making an oath on it which is essentially a border agreement, but Laban rather charmingly also threatens Jacob not to be unkind to his daughters. There’s another hint at polytheism here, with the “God of Abraham and the God of Nahor” being mentioned – it’s not clear from the writing if this is meant as one god for both, or two rival gods.

Genesis 32

“And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the country of Edom.”

With these Jacob chapters the parts that deal with human relationships are actually quite good, and the characters come across as surprisingly well drawn given the writing style, certainly more so than previous biblical figures. They tend to fall a bit flat with the more mystical bits though.

This chapter is a good case in point as it has both. It begins with Jacob preparing to enter the land of his brother Esau, and he’s justifiably nervous about doing so given that he ripped his brother off a few times. He prays for protection (in quite a well-written bit of prose), but he also doesn’t trust entirely to spiritual protection as he prudently splits his group into two (so that one may escape if Esau attacks the other), and also sends servants ahead with lots of livestock as a combination of peace offering/bribe and also a subtle show of wealth and power. Jacob’s a wily sort, not the kind of biblical figure to trust everything to his faith.

Then the wierd mystical bit. Jacob is the last to head into Esau’sland, and spends all night wrestling with a mysterious figure who he cannot defeat until he touches the “hollow of his thigh”. This injures Jacob in the same place, but the figure is revealed to be God, or an angel of God, who blesses Jacob, and changes his name to Israel, and then there’s a bit of origin myth about a taboo on eating the sinews of the thigh. Which all comes across as a bit of a muddle. Is Jacob in the habit of wrestling strange men? This interlude reminds me of sequences in Arthurian myth (which I guess they got from here first), with mysterious strangers who cannot be outfought because they are supernatural – this usually leads to some other test involving hospitality in a nearby castle. I wanted to address a point here which has struck me before but I forgot to bring it up – that the term “angel” (which isn’t actually used for this mysterious wrestler, a biblical luchador) so far seems to be used to imply an “aspect” or “avatar” of God – a direct method of God intervening in human affairs, rather than some kind of servitor race. The only time anything like that is mentioned is back when “cherubim” are placed to guard Eden, and also the “heavenly host” mentioned at the start of this chapter.

Also I’m having a hard time working out what the anatomy is here. Sounds like an ilio-tibial band, I dunno, I think this is one case where the archaic wording obscures the meaning.

Genesis 33

“And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept.”

There’s some more wily antics by Jacob at the start of this chapter where he sends the women and children first, in descending order of expendability, to meet his brother’s four hundred men.

But it’s okay, as Esau is pleased to see him back, and all is well. And that’s about it for this chapter, which ends with Jacob establishing the town of Succoth and the altar of Elelohe-Israel.  There are a couple of verses about protecting the vulnerable which sound almost like New Testament parables.

Genesis 34

“And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brethren, took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males.”

It all suddenly goes a bit Game of Thrones in this chapter, also reminiscent of a Western. I was preparing to hate it at first, but then there’s a twist at the end that brings me back. Sure it’s brutal, but it sticks with the human motivations seen in the Jacob chapters.

It hinges around what is, essentially, the rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah by some little jerkwad by the name of Shechem, Prince of the Hivites. And an obnoxious little shit he comes across as. Having “defiled” Dinah he then claims that he loves her and demands that his father Hamor make it so they can marry. And Jacob’s sons (starring roles here for Simeon and Levi) say okay, you can marry our sister and your men can marry our women but only if they are circumcised. Dick-head Schechem agrees straight away, and then Hamor persuades the other men of their city to do the same.

Whereupon, as they are lying around in pain, Simeon and Levi sneak in and kill them all, rescue their sister and then plunder the place and capture all the women and children of the Hivites. That’s ...  a somewhat disproportionate response, but Jacob actually says so and points out that they’ve just made a lot of people angry, and that they are only a small tribe really.

The implication here is that Schechem rapes Dinah, hence the brutal revenge. To begin with, though, I read it as not so much that she was raped, but that Schechem was of “other people” that angered the sons of Jacob, but then that was partly due to their trick with the circumcision; actually this was a ruse and not anything to do with Dinah’s treatment, and the chapter does repeat that here “defilement” was the cause so once again the bible continues to be less misogynist than I was expecting.

Genesis 35

“And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.”

So far the majority of the Jacob chapters have been quite well written, but I think someone else took over transcription duty at this point as this chapter is terrible. Circular, rambling and repetitive, Jacob wanders around the landscape putting up pillars and naming places three different things before going back to the first one, like somebody has tried to cram every onomastic myth they can find onto one story.  I mean look at that verse above, that’s appalling writing, and besides he’s already been given the name Israel. This chapter see the death of Rebekah and Isaac which, if we still had the author of the last four books, might have been given feeling and pathos, but are instead just plonked square in the middle of some lists. Even the begats were better than this; at least they followed sequentially.