Friday, June 27, 2025

George Savran on Why Jacob May have Accepted His Marriage and Work "so passively"

  

Why does Jacob accept his marriage and work circumstances so passively? Is he so smitten with Rachel that he will tolerate even such indignity? The answer resides in Jacob’s identity and status in Paddan-aram. Despite a few brief moments of assertiveness at the well, Jacob is unable to project a clear sense of self in his negotiations here. Is he primarily a hired hand, a son-in-law, or a nephew? Is he a valued relative from afar or a refugee in flight from his family? In some sense he is all of these, but his inability to define himself forcefully as one or the other leads to an extended period of confusion, during which Laban takes advantage of him while his wives struggle for different aspects of his love. Jacob’s passivity is reflected most clearly where he is absent—in his minimal narrative role in the subsequent section detailing the births of his sons. Jacob is certainly sexually active with his wives, but his narrative presence is limited a brief interchange with Rachel (30.1-2) and an even briefer walk-on role (without dialogue) in the episode of the mandrakes (30.14-16). Jacob’s passivity likely reflects a deliberate withdrawal, whether because of his complicated position within Laban’s household or his uncertainty as to the efficacy of the blessing he has received. If Jacob was previously the inferior twin fighting for his place in the nuclear family, he is now the refugee nephew lacking the present he remains submissive to the machinations of his uncle, debilitated amidst the rigors of a foreign environment and encumbered with an additional wife he does not love.

 

In addition, psychological factors and social limitations may contribute to Jacob’s inability to protest Laban’s deception more vigorously. Jacob’s uncertain position in Laban’s household weakens his ability to negotiate for better conditions. His status as a penniless dependent leaves him at Laban’s mercy, and asserting his rights in a direct challenge to his father-in-law would, at this early stage, he socially unacceptable. On a psychological level, Jacob’s sense of himself is deeply compromised by both the past and the present—his early desire to achieve parity with his brother, his anxiety about being a stranger in a new land without the unqualified backing of his family, the shame of his deception by Laban, and the ramifications of his indifference towards Leah despite her yearning for his love. All these facets come to bear on Jacob as a young man who has not yet settled into a clear identity of his own. (George Savran, Jacob: Conflicted Twin, Aggrieved Patriarch [Hebrew Bible Monographs 113; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2025], 126-27)

 

 

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