Paddan-Aramican Idol

One final observation from Genesis concerns Rachel’s theft of Laban’s gods.

Isaac sent Jacob back to Paddan-Aram to find a wife, and there he found not one wife but two, the daughters of his uncle Laban, Rachel and her sister Leah (who, along with their handmaidens taken by Jacob as concubines, engender the heads of the Twelve Tribes of Israel).

After Jacob is rooked by Laban to provide twenty years of servitude in the east of Paddan-Aram, the land of Haran, one-time home of his grandfather Abraham, it is decided that Jacob has had enough and the extended family will pull up roots and head back west to Canaan.

As part of the move, Rachel decides to steal her father’s household gods, which were called the Teraphim.

These were small doo-dads of some sort, graven images or idols that supposedly provided supernatural powers, including fertility and divination.

When Laban confronts Rachel as to her theft of his gods, Rachel lies through her teeth to her dad while she is sitting on the saddlebags she is hiding them in and tells him that she can’t stand up because it’s that time of the month (which sounds like a pretty lame excuse, but Laban falls for it).

Jacob then gets all huffy at Laban for having accused his family of stealing grandpa’s gods (which turns out to have been a legitimate beef), but Jacob and Laban covenant to patch things up over a pile of rocks and things are relatively copacetic thereafter between them.

Laban called the place Jegar-sahadutha in Aramaic and Jacob called it Galeed in Hebrew, both meaning “the heap of the witness”.

The Covenant of the Pile of Rocks

Laban’s gods are eventually ditched by the group at Jacob’s command along the way to Canaan near Bethel.

But I’ve got a weird feeling that the issue of the house of Israel maintaining household gods and idols isn’t over just yet.