You will observe by that that it was a terrible crime to steal "gods," and as it is the first offense of the kind on record, you can infer what a reckless, ungovernable female Rachel must have been to do so dreadful an act.
Well, Laban went like a cyclone "unto Jacob's tent" (notice what humiliation and disgrace Rachel subjected her husband to, and what a scandal it must have raised in the neighborhood), and into Leah's tent and into the two maid-servants' tents; but he found them not. Then he entered into Rachel's tent.
Now she had hidden the precious little images in the camel's furniture and sat upon them, and she said she didn't feel very well this morning, papa dear, or words to that effect, and she hoped he would excuse her for not arising; and she probably smiled sweetly, put her arm around his neck, and finally did him up completely by kissing him tenderly; and of course, as in those days men never dreamed of asking a woman to do anything she didn't want to do, papa dear did not insist upon her arising, and so missed his sole and only chance of getting his "gods."
It was a very serious and perhaps terrible loss to her father, and we can gather no idea from the scripture why she did it unless out of pure spite, or else she wanted to use them as bric-a-brac in the new home to which she was going.
In the history of the "beauteous and well-favored" Rachel and the "tender-eyed" Leah, we find hatred, deadly jealousy, anger, strife, dissensions and envy, but none of the forbearance, self-sacrifice, obedience, meekness and submission that we have been taught that the ladies of the Old Testament possessed, and we are almost sorry that we didn't take the preacher's "say so" for it, instead of studying the Bible diligently and intelligently for ourselves.