The craft of Jacob was the cause of his flight to his mother’s family in Padan-Aram. He thus became that ‘wandering Aramæan’ of whom we read in Deuteronomy (xxvi. 5). On his way he rested at the great Beth-el of Central Palestine, and there in a vision beheld the angels of God ascending and descending the steps of limestone that were piled one upon the other to the gates of heaven.[[83]] There, too, he poured oil upon the sacred stone and consecrated it to the deity, and future generations revered it as a veritable Beth-el or ‘House of God.’
The name, in fact, we are told, was given to it by Jacob himself. ‘If I come again to my father’s house in peace,’ he said, ‘then shall Yahveh be my God: and this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that Thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.’ The vow was in accordance with a Canaanitish custom which had originally come from Babylonia. From time immemorial the Babylonian temples had been supported by the tenth or tithe, which was levied on both king and people: it was not thought that the gods were asking too much when they demanded the tenth of the income which had been given to man by themselves. Among the Babylonian contract-tablets there are several which relate to the payment of the tithe as well as to the gifts that were made to a Bit-ili or Beth-el.[[84]]
Jacob’s vow was performed, at least in part, when once more he returned to Canaan. Then again ‘God appeared to him’ and changed the patriarch’s name. Then again, too, ‘he set up a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink-offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him Beth-el.’ This second account of the naming of the place doubtless comes from a different source from that which recorded Jacob’s dream, and is the account which was known to Hosea, the prophet of the northern kingdom. Modern critics have alleged that it is inconsistent with the first, and that consequently neither the one nor the other is historical. The compiler of the book of Genesis, however, thought otherwise; he has made no attempt to smooth over what the European scholar declares to be inconsistencies, and which therefore cannot have seemed inconsistencies to him. The Oriental mode of writing history, it must once more be remarked, is not the same as ours; and as it is with the ancient East that we are now concerned, it would be wiser to follow the judgment of the writer of Genesis than that of his European critics.
At Harran Jacob served his cousin Laban ‘for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep.’ Such contracts of voluntary service are to be found in the Babylonian tablets of the age of Khammu-rabi and his predecessors. It was not at all unusual for a slave to be hired out to another master for a definite period of time; it sometimes happened that the master himself hired out his own services in a similar way.[[85]] In Babylonia the work was partly pastoral, partly agricultural; the semi-Bedâwi Jacob was a herdsman only. His cousin Laban bore a name which was also that of an Assyrian deity; and it may not be a mere coincidence that when Nabonidos, the last king of Babylonia, restored the great temple of the moon-god at Harran, he tells us that he began the task ‘by the art of the god Laban, the god of foundations and brickwork.’[[86]]
The two daughters of Laban bore names which had a familiar sound to the ear of a herdsman. Rachel means ‘ewe’; Leah is the Assyrian li’tu, ‘a cow.’ It is needless to recount the well-known story of the wooing of the younger daughter, and of the efforts made by Laban to retain Jacob in his service and marry both the sisters to him. Craft was met by craft; but in the end the ancestor of Israel proved more than a match for the wily Syrian. His cattle and riches multiplied like the children who were born to him, and a time came when the sons of Laban began to view with envy the poor relative who was robbing them of their patrimony. So Jacob fled, before harm had come to him, carrying with him his wives and children and all the wealth he had accumulated. Laban pursued and succeeded in overtaking the heavily-weighted caravan at the very spot where the frontiers of Aram and Canaan met together. There the cairn of stones was raised in which later generations saw a memorial of the pact that had been sworn between Jacob and his father-in-law. Henceforth the tie with Aram was broken: the wives of Jacob forgot the home of their father and looked to Canaan instead of Aram as the native land of their race. Over the cairn of Gilead the forefathers of Israel forswore for ever their Aramæan ties.
But Rachel had carried with her her father’s teraphim, those household gods on whose cult the welfare of the family seemed to depend. What they were like we may gather from the teraphim of David, which Michal placed on the couch of her husband, and so deceived the messengers of Saul (1 Sam. xix. 13-16). They must have had the shape of a man, and, at all events in the case of those of David, must have also been about a man’s size. Like the ephod and the Urim and Thummim, they were consulted as oracles (Zech. x. 2), and their use lingered among the Jews as late as the period of the Captivity. When Hosea depicts the coming desolation of Israel, he describes it as a time when ‘the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without a sacred pillar, and without an ephod and teraphim’ (Hos. iii. 4).
The final break between Jacob and the Aramæan portion of Terah’s family was marked by a change of name. From henceforth Jacob was to be distinctively the father of the children of Israel. He and his descendants were severed from the rest of their kinsmen whether in Padan-Aram, in Edom, or in the lands beyond the Jordan. Abraham had been the ‘father of many nations’; Jacob was to be the father of but one—of that chosen people to whom the character and worship of Yahveh were revealed.
We read of him in Hosea (xii. 3, 4), ‘By his strength he had power with God: yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed.’ What the Authorised Version translates ‘had power’ is sârâh and yâsar in Hebrew. The story of the mysterious struggle is told in full in the book of Genesis. The long caravan of Jacob had arrived at length at Mahanaim, ‘the two camps’ by the stream of the Jabbok, and from thence he sent messengers to his brother, who had already established his power in the mountains of Seir. In after days the name of the place was connected with the strange occurrence that there befel the patriarch. He was visited by the angels of God, nay, by God Himself. In the visions of the night he wrestled with one whom, when morning dawned, he believed to have been his God. He had seen God, as it were, face to face, and a popular etymology saw in the fact an explanation of the name of Peniel. When Hosea wrote his prophecies, the belief was too well established that man cannot ‘see God’s face and live,’ and the angel of God accordingly takes the place of God Himself. But when the narrative in Genesis was composed, a more primitive conception of the Divine nature still prevailed, and no reluctance was felt in stating exactly what the patriarch himself had believed. It was God with whom he had struggled, and from whom he had extorted a blessing, and a memory of the conflict and victory was preserved in the name of Israel, which Jacob henceforth bore.
The etymology, however, is really only one of those plays upon words of which the Biblical writers, like Oriental writers generally, are so fond. It has no scientific value, and never was intended to have any. Israel is, like Edom, not the name of an individual, but of the people of whom the individual was the ancestor. The name is formed like that of Jacob-el, and the abbreviated Jeshurun is used instead of it in the Song of Moses.[[87]] If the latter is correct, the root will not be sârâh, ‘he fought,’ or yâsar, ‘he is king,’ but yâshar, ‘to be upright,’ ‘to direct’; and Israel will signify ‘God has directed.’ Israel, in fact, will be the ‘righteous’ people who have been called to walk in the ways of the Lord.
While Jacob was keeping the sheep of his Aramæan father-in-law, Esau was making a name for himself among the mountains of the Horites. Half robber, half huntsman, he had gathered about him a band of followers, and with their help had founded—if not a kingdom—at all events a nation to the south of Moab. It is true that the ‘red’ land he had occupied was rocky and barren, but the high-road of commerce from the spice-bearing regions of Southern Arabia passed through it, and the plunder or tribute of the merchants who travelled along it brought wealth to him and his well-armed Bedâwin. What David did in later days, when he made himself the head of a band of outlaws, and with their assistance eventually raised himself to the throne of Judah, had already been accomplished by Esau among the barbarians of Seir.