Joseph and His Brothers, page 27
While they ate, almost nothing of importance was said, only such things as concerned the meal. For instance, Adina said to Laban, "Eat, my husband. It all belongs to you." Or she remarked to Jacob, "Help yourself, foreigner, and delight your weary soul."
Or one of the parents might say to one of the daughters, "I see that you are taking the lion's share and leaving nothing for the others. If you do not bridle your greediness, the witch Labartu will turn your innards upside-down and cause you to vomit."
Abdcheba did not fail to provide a precise translation of even
these bagatelles for Jacob, and the latter was already taking part in the conversation, saying to Laban in the local language. "Eat, father and brother, all is yours." Or to Rachel, "Help yourself, sister, delight your soul."
Both Abdcheba and the maid in the loincloth took their meal, though with interruptions, at the same time they served their masters—now and then suddenly squatting down on the floor to quickly devour a radish, alternating this the next time with a drink from a bowl of goat's milk. The maid, who was named Iltani, frequently used the fingertips of both hands to brush crumbs from her long breasts.
When they had eaten, Laban ordered strong drink be brought for him and his guest. Abdcheba dragged over a skin full of fermented emmer beer, and as he filled two goblets from it—and placed straws in them as well, for a great deal of grain still floated on top— the women withdrew from the men, but not until Laban had perfunctorily laid his hands on the head of each of them. They likewise took their leave of Jacob for the night, and he once again gazed into the cordial night of Rachel's eyes—for she was looking into his— and at the white, gapped teeth of her mouth as she said with a smile, "Much pappasu, in spoon, heaped high!"
"Abraham—first father—yours, mine," he replied as if by way of explanation, and once again placed one forefinger across the tip of the other; and they nodded as they had out in the field—while her mother smiled a bitter smile, Leah gazed cross-eyed down her nose, and her father's face retained its blinking, slack gloom. The uncle and his nephew were now alone in the airy upstairs room, with only Abdcheba sitting close by on the floor, still short of breath from serving the meal, and fixing his gaze on the lips first of one and then the other.
Jacob and Laban Strike a Deal
"Speak now, my guest," the lord of the house said after he had taken a drink, "and reveal to me the circumstances of your life."
Thus in considerable detail Jacob reported to him all those matters, truthfully and precisely, just as they had happened. At most he glossed over particulars in his encounter with Eliphaz somewhat,
although here, too, in Hght of his obvious naked and unburdened state, he gave truth its due. From time to time, after having offered a considerable, but still absorbable, quantity of material, he would break off and wave his hand down at Abdcheba, who would translate; and Laban, who drank a good deal of beer in the course of the narrative, gloomily listened to it all, blinking and sometimes nodding. Jacob stuck to the facts. He did not say that what had happened between him, Esau, and his parents was good or bad, but announced it frankly as a god-fearing man. For in the end he could depend on one great and decisive fact, which, however it may have come to pass, retained its full import in any case and even robbed his momentary naked and unburdened state of any higher significance—and that fact was: He and no other was the bearer of the blessing.
Laban listened, blinking gravely. He had sucked so hard at his straw and partaken of so much strong drink that his face was like a waning moon when it rises late for its journey, an ominous dark red; and his body was bloated as well, so that after loosening his belt and letting his coat fall from his shoulders, he now sat there in his shirt, his muscular arms folded across his half-bared, fleshy chest matted with black and gray curls. Bending forward ponderously and rounding his back, he squatted on his couch and, as a skilled practical businessman, countered with questions concerning this asset of which the man opposite him boasted and to which he, Laban, was careful to avoid giving any undue recognition. He deliberately raised doubts. This asset did not seem free of debt to him. Granted, Jacob had sufficiently stressed the point: In the end Esau was the man of the curse, and the blessing rested upon his brother. But even that blessing, given the manner in which it had been gained, came bound up with some curse, the consequences of which, whatever shape they took, were certain. Everyone knew the ways of the gods—and one was no different from the other, whether you were dealing with the local divinities, with whom Laban of course had to maintain good relations, or with the unnamed or, better, vaguely named God of Isaak's people, of whom he knew and whom he likewise conditionally recognized. The gods expressed their wishes and let them come to pass; but the guilt was all man's. The asset on which Jacob was relying was a possession encumbered with guilt, and the question was on whom that guilt would devolve. Jacob assured him that
he himself was free and pure. He had done hardly anything, but simply let happen what was meant to happen, and even that only with the greatest inner reluctance. At most it was energetic Rebekah who was encumbered by guilt, for she had initiated it all. "Let the curse be upon my head," she had said, only just in case, of course—in case, that is, his father had become aware of the deception. But that statement was an expression of her relationship to the enterprise in general, of the responsibility she had taken upon herself, and like a good mother she had held him, the child, to be free of all guilt.
"Yes, like a good mother," Laban said. The beer was making him breathe heavily through his mouth, and his upper body was tipped forward and to one side. He sat up, swayed, and sagged to the other. "Like a mother, a mother and a parent. Like a god." For parents and gods blessed their darlings in the same ambiguous way. Their blessing was power and came from power, for love—in particular—was sheer power, and gods and parents blessed their darlings out of love with a powerful life, powerful in both its happiness and its curse. That was the substance of it; that was the blessing. "Let the curse be upon my head": those were merely fine words and a mother's chatter, spoken out of ignorance that love is power, that blessing is power, that life is power and nothing else. Rebekah was only a woman, but he, Jacob, was the blessed one—the fundamental guilt of deception lay upon what was in his possession. "It will devolve on you," Laban said with a heavy tongue, pointing a heavy arm, a heavy hand, at his nephew. "You deceived, and you shall be deceived—Abdcheba, put your mouth to work and translate that for him, you wretch. I bought you for twenty shekels, and if you nod off instead of translating, I will bury you in the ground up to your lower lip for a week, you ninny."
"Stop. Shame on you," Jacob said, and spat. "Does my father and brother curse me? What do you suppose this is all about—am I your flesh and blood or not?"
"That you are," Laban replied, "you are right in that regard. You have accurately told me about Rebekah and Isaak and Esau, the red one, and you are Jacob, my sister's son, that has been proved. Accept my embrace. But the facts of the case must be examined on the basis of your statements, and consequences drawn both for you and me according to the laws of commerce. I am convinced of the truth of your report, but have no reason to admire your candor, for to
explain your situation you had little choice but to be candid. It is not correct, then, to say as you did before that Rebekah sent you so that she might pay me her respects. It was rather because you could not remain at home, for Esau threatened your life as a result of your and your mother's deed, the success of which I will not deny, but which for the present has made a naked beggar of you. You did not come to me of your own free will, but because you had nowhere to lay your head. You are at my mercy, and I must draw the consequences. You are not a guest in my house, but my servant."
"My uncle speaks justly, but without adding the salt of love to his justice," Jacob said.
"Fancy phrases," Laban replied. "These are the natural rigors of commercial life that I am accustomed to taking into account. The bankers in Haran, two brothers, Ishullanu's sons, likewise demand of me what they wish, because I have urgent need of their water, and knowing I need it, they make whatever demand suits them, and if I cannot meet it, they will sell me and my goods and pocket the takings. I'll not play the fool in this world. You are at my mercy, and I shall fleece you. I am not rich and blessed enough to puff myself up with love of charity and keep an open house for every fugitive. The only strong arm I have to drudge for me is that feeble toad there, plus Iltani, the maid, who is dumb as a chicken and cackles like a hen, for the potter is a journeyman and I have contracted his labor for only ten days, and when the time of harvest comes or of shearing, I do not know where I shall find strong arms, for I cannot pay. It long ago became improper to send my younger daughter, Rachel, to tend sheep and suffer the heat of day and the chill of night. That is for you to do, in return for a roof and provender, but nothing else, for you have nowhere to go and are not a man to set the conditions—those are the facts of the case."
"I shall gladly tend sheep for your child Rachel," Jacob said, "and serve for her sake, that her life may be easier. I am a born shepherd and understand the breeding of sheep and indeed wish to do it well. It was not my intent to play the sluggard, to be a useless mouth for you to feed. But now that I hear I shall exert the full manly strength of my arm for Rachel, your child, I am that much more willing to serve."
"Is that so?" Laban asked, the corner of his mouth drooping, and he stared at him, blinking hard. "Fine," he said. "You must do so
for good or ill, such are the constraints of commercial Hfe. But if you do it gladly, then it is to your advantage, yet with no inconvenience to me. We shall set it in writing tomorrow."
"You see?" Jacob said. "There is such a thing: advantages that serve both sides and ease natural rigors. You wouldn't have thought it. You did not wish to add salt's zest to justice, so I shall provide my own, naked and unburdened though I be at the moment."
"Fancy phrases," Laban concluded. "We shall draw up a contract and seal it in orderly fashion, so no one can contest it by illegal conduct. Go now, I am sleepy and bloated with beer. Douse the lamps, toad," he said to Abdcheba, stretched out on his couch, covered himself with his coat, and fell asleep with his mouth hanging open. Jacob could make his bed wherever he wished. He climbed to the roof, spread a blanket under the awning of a small reed tent erected there, and thought of Rachel's eyes, until sleep kissed him.
Part Five
IN LABAN'S SERVICE How Long Jacob Remained with Lab an
This marked the beginning of Jacob's sojourn in Laban's realm and in the land of Aram Naharaim, which he aptly and privately named Land of Kurungia: first, because from the start and in general it was for him a land of the underworld, to which he had hastily had to emigrate, but second because it turned out that with the passing years this land embraced by rivers held fast to its man, evidently never gave him up again and truly and literally proved to be a Land of No Return. Does "no" mean "never"? And what does "never" mean? It means no return for as long as the self retains its state and form, at least in rough contour, and is still the same self. A return that occurs twenty-five years later no longer affects the same self that, when it departed, expected to return in a half a year, or in three years at most and, with the episode now behind it, to be able to pick up the thread of life again where it had been broken off—for that self there is no return, ever. Twenty-five years are not an episode, they are life itself; they are, when they begin in a man's young years, the core and foundation of life, and though Jacob would live for a long time after his return and experience things most difficult and glorious—for, by our close calculation, he was one hundred and six years old when he solemnly departed this life in yet another underworldly land—one can say that it was while he was with Laban in the land of Aram that he did indeed dream the dream of his life. There he loved, he married, there four women bore him all his children, except for the youngest, twelve in number, there he became weighed down with goods and grew in dignity, and never returned as a young man, but as an aging man of fifty-five years, a nomadic sheik from the East, leading very great flocks, arrived in the western land, more or less a foreign country, and moved on toward Shechem.
That Jacob remained with Laban for twenty-five years is verifi-ably true, the certain result of any fair-minded investigation. In this regard both song and tradition betray the sort of imprecise thinking
that we can excuse in them more easily than we would in ourselves. They would have it that Jacob spent a total of twenty years with Laban: fourteen plus six. In apportioning the time in this fashion they maintain that several years before bursting the dusty bars and fleeing, he had demanded his release from Laban, but having been denied it, had pledged himself to stay on under new stipulations. The point in time when he demanded this is said to have occurred "when Rachel had borne Joseph." But when was that? If only fourteen years had passed until then, all twelve children, including Dinah and Joseph, and excluding only Benjamin, would have to have been born to him within those fourteen or, more correctly, those last seven years—and with four women hard at work that would not have been impossible per se, but given the sequence of births arranged by God it did not happen that way. In that sequence, sweet-toothed Asher, Joseph's senior by five years, was born after the two times seven years had passed, that is in the eighth year of marriage, and as can be shown in detail it is not possible for Rachel to have borne Joseph earlier than two years after the appearance of sea-loving Zebulun, that is in the thirteenth year of marriage or in the twentieth year at Haran. How could it be otherwise? Joseph was a child of Jacob's old age, who therefore must have been fifty years old when his favorite appeared, which means that he must already have spent twenty years with Laban by then. But since of those twenty only two times seven, which makes fourteen, were actually years of service, that leaves between them and Jacob's giving notice and signing on to a new contract, yet another six years without a contract, a period that represents an unspoken continuance of Jacob's relationship with Laban, but that, given his ultimate riches, must be counted together with the final five years spent again under contract. For though those five years may help provide the best and most important explanation of how the man became so rich beyond measure, they would most definitely not have sufficed to create a fortune celebrated with the most opulent particulars in song and saga. Granted, considerable exaggeration has crept into the account—we immediately recognize as untenable the assertion that Jacob owned two hundred thousand sheep. But they did number many thousands, not to mention his holdings in other animals, precious metals, and slaves, and Laban's statement, once he had caught up with his fleeing son-in-law, that he should give back to
him what he had "stolen" by day and "stolen" by night would not have been even vaguely justifiable, would have been totally meaningless, if Jacob had enriched himself solely on the basis of the new contract—that is, if previously, during that intervening period, he had not been engaged in business more or less for himself and thereby established the basis for his later wealth.
Twenty-five years—and for Jacob they passed like a dream, the way life passes as we live it, in yearning and achievement, in expectation, disappointment, and fulfillment, made up of days that are not counted, but each of which gives what it gives, of days completed one by one, in waiting and striving, in patience and impatience, and melting into larger units, into months, years, groups of years, each of which in the end is like a single day. It is debatable which makes time pass better and more swiftly: uniformity or articulating variety—the upshot, in any event, is that we pass our time. Alive, we strive onward, strive to put time behind us, strive in reality toward death, all the while thinking we are striving for life's goals and turning points. And though a man's time be articulated and divided into epochs, it is nevertheless and likewise monotonously uniform as his time, slipping by under the immutable preconditions of his ego, so that as he passes his time, passes his life, both beneficial energies—uniformity and articulation—are simultaneously at work.
Ultimately, apportioning time is a quite arbitrary act, not very different from drawing lines in water. You can draw them one way or another, and even as you draw them it all gathers again into a broad unity. We have already variously divided Jacob's five times five years at Haran into twenty plus five and into fourteen plus six plus five; he himself, however, may well have divided them into the first seven until his marriage, the thirteen during which the children arrived, plus the five supplemental years, much as the five leap days of the sun's year exceed twelve times thirty. In that way or perhaps in some other is how he would have reckoned it. In any case, there were twenty-five in all, uniform not only because they were all exclusively Jacob's years, but also because the external circumstances of one almost monotonously resembled that of another, and variations in viewpoint as they were being lived could not diminish their uniformity as they slipped away.
Jacob and Laban Cement Their Deal
