Hebrew Myths (34 page)

3
. A midrashic passage shrewdly points out that the Mosaic Law governing the inheritance of sons borne to a man by two co-wives, one beloved and one hated (
Deuteronomy
XXI. 15–17) is based on this myth and rejects the precedent set by Jacob.

For Jacob, in his farewell blessing, gave Joseph, Rachel’s first-born son, a double portion and preference over Reuben, Leah’s first-born.

4
. The traditional order of the patriarchs’ birth is that of seniority in the Leah-Rachel federation: later called ‘Israel’, although at first ‘Israel’ properly included only the Rachel tribes. Leah (‘Wild Cow’) and Rachel (‘Ewe’), are titles of goddesses. The wild cow is the variously named Canaanite Moon-goddess; the Ewe-goddess, mother of a Ram-god, will have been worshipped by shepherds settled in Goshen. Leah’s six sons seem to have been Aramaeans, of the earlier Abraham confederacy, who never settled in Egypt, but with whom their Rachel cousins made common cause after returning from Goshen under Joshua. Zilpah’s ‘sons’ were doubtless tributaries of Leah; as Bilhah’s were of Rachel (see 50. 2). Benjamin could not claim to be of Aramaean stock, though titularly a son of Rachel: his was a peculiar tribe, renowned for its accurate and ambidextrous slingers, for its ferocity in war, and for having provided the Israel federation with its first monarchy. The other Israelite tribes used bows, which means that
they were always out-ranged by at least fifty yards when opposed to the Benjamites. David’s use of the sling against Goliath, and his close contact with Saul’s court, suggests Benjamite blood. The other most famous slingers of the ancient world were Greeks—Achaeans, Acarnanians, and Rhodians, with the Rhodianized Balearics. Slings reached Britain about 500
B.C.

Benjamin’s share of food, five times greater than his brothers’ (
Genesis
XLIII. 34—see 58.
c
), probably refers to the inclusion in Benjamite territory of the most important Canaanite shrines: Bethel, Jericho, Ramah, Gilgal, Mizpeh, Jerusalem, Geba, Gibeah and Gibeon. Gibeon was a Hivite city, that is of Achaean origin, and the behaviour of its ambassadors when they came as suppliants to Joshua (
Joshua
IX. 3 ff), was characteristically Greek; and Geba and Gibeah, similar formations, are often confused with Gibeon. The question of Benjamin’s racial origin is complicated by the existence of a people to the north of Palestine, called Benē-jamina, whose chieftain bore the title Dāwidum, possibly the origin of ‘David’. They are described in eighteenth-century
B.C.
documents from Man on the Middle Euphrates, as a savage and predatory tribe, which recalls Benjamin’s characterization in
Genesis
XLIX. 27. Whatever the connexion between these two Benjamite tribes, the ‘Hebrew’ Benjamin was welcomed by Ephraim and Manasseh, the Joseph-tribes, into their confederacy as a Son of Rachel, whose pillar stood on the frontier of the two territories, and was perhaps raised originally not merely as a
massebah
dedicated to their divine ancestress, but also as a memorial to the birth of this new federation. Rachel’s death suggests the discontinuance of sacrificial gifts to the early Ewe-goddess, when her three ‘sons’ adopted the locally predominant Asherah worship.

5
. A constant change of tribal areas complicates this subject. In later days Judah absorbed Benjamin, mentioned by Jeremiah (XXXIII. 13) as one of its provinces; and though in 1
Samuel
X. 2 ff and
Jeremiah
XXXI. 15, which record the older version of this myth, Rachel’s pillar is placed on the northern border of Benjamin, to the north of Jerusalem, yet a gloss on
Genesis
XXXV. 19, followed in XLVIII. 7, equates Ephrath with Bethlehem, David’s birthplace, well inside the Judahite territory as delimited in
Joshua
XV. 5–10, and thus places Rachel’s tomb to the south of Jerusalem. The present so-called ‘Tomb of Rachel’ on the Jerusalem-Bethlehem road, was known already to Matthew (II. 16–18), who equates Ramah with Bethlehem.

6
. That each of the patriarchs, except Joseph, had a female twin whom he married, suggests a compromise in the days of the Judges between patriarchal and matrilineal institutions, and therefore joint worship of a god and goddess.

7
. The forked fleshy root of the Spring Mandrake (
Mandragora officinarum
), black outside, soft and white inside, and about a foot long, resembles a human body with two legs; sometimes a short subsidiary root supplies the genitalia. Its stem is hairy; its flowers cup-shaped and a rich
purple in colour; its apples, which ripen at the time of the wheat harvest, are yellow, sweet, palatable, and still believed by Palestinian Arabs to cure barrenness. The Autumn Mandrake (
atropa mandragora
) is a late importation to Palestine. One of the Ras Shamra Ugaritic texts (fifteenth or fourteenth century
B.C.
), referring to a fertility cult, begins: ‘Plant mandrakes in the earth…’ The Ugaritic word for mandrakes,
ddym
, differs only dialectically from the Biblical Hebrew
dud’ym.
They were called
yabruhim
by the Aramaeans, because they
chased away
demons; and
sa‘adin
by the Arabs, because
helpful
to health; and
dudaim
by the Hebrews, because they were
love-givers
.

8
. That the mandrake shrieks on being uprooted was still a popular belief in Elizabethan times. Shakespeare writes in
Romeo and Juliet
:

Pliny had noted, in his
Natural History
, the danger of roughly uprooting this plant, and recommended diggers to face west, with the wind behind them, and to use a sword for tracing three circles around it. He describes mandragora juice, extracted from the root, stem or fruit, as a valuable narcotic which ensures insensibility to pain during operations. This use is substantiated by Isodorus, Serapion, and other ancient physicians. Shakespeare lists mandragora among the ‘drowsy syrups of the East’. Its anti-spasmodic virtue explains why it was held to cure barrenness—involuntary muscular tension in a woman might prevent complete congress. Whether Rachel ate the grated root or the fruit, is disputed: the
Testament of Issachar
favours the fruit. Her pathetic demand for the roots as ‘little men’, the only sons she would ever get, recalls an old Teutonic custom of converting the root into oracular images known as Gold-mannikins or Gallows-mannikins. The mandrake’s prophetic power refers to babblings under narcotic influence.

9
. A mediaeval midrash finds fictitious names and genealogies for all the patriarchs’ wives. With the exception of Simeon and Judah who, according to
Genesis
, married Canaanite women, and Joseph, who married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest (see 56.
e
), the patriarchs are said to have decently married Aramaean cousins.

(
a
) Joseph was born at the close of his father’s seven years’ service for Rachel; and on the same day, as it happened, Rebekah at last sent for Jacob by her old nurse Deborah. When, however, he gave Laban notice that their engagement had ended, Laban urged him to stay on, promising to pay whatever wages, within reason, he might ask. Jacob said: ‘It pleases me that you value my services. In enlarging your flocks and herds so prodigiously, God has truly blessed you on my account; yet it is high time now for me to enrich myself.’

‘What do you consider a fair wage?’ Laban asked.

He answered: ‘Let me go through your flocks once a year, culling for myself all sheep with brown markings, and all banded or mottled goats.’

Laban agreed, and Jacob having entrusted his sons with the few beasts already so marked, continued to tend Laban’s flocks, grazing them a three days’ journey from his own. But when the tupping season came, he peeled rods of green poplar, almond and plane, so that the sap-wood showed through in white streaks, and set them above the watering troughs where Laban’s ewes and she-goats drank. All those that conceived while facing them would, he knew, bear him banded or mottled lambs or kids. Nevertheless, Jacob took care to display the rods only when the stronger beasts drank, and to remove them from the sight of feebler ones. Soon his flocks consisted wholly of strong beasts, large numbers of which he bartered against slaves, camels and asses.
³⁴⁷

(
b
) Jacob saw that Laban no longer trusted him, and heard his brothers-in-law Beor, Alib and Morash mutter: ‘He is draining our father’s wealth!’ When God Himself told Jacob in a vision ‘Return to the land of your birth, for I am with you,’ he summoned Rachel and Leah, and said: ‘Your father Laban cannot deny that I have served him faithfully, yet he no longer trusts me. He has changed my wages at least ten times: assigning me first the mottled and banded beasts; then the plain ones; then the mottled and banded again; then the plain once more. But God is surely with me, because the flocks always
bear whatever sort your father offers as my wage. He has warned me in a dream to return home.’ Both Rachel and Leah answered: ‘Indeed, our father Laban treats us like strangers now that we are yours, grudging our prosperity; although whatever God takes from him and bestows on you will be his grand-children’s inheritance. Your duty is to obey God!’
³⁴⁸

(c) While Laban was absent at a sheep-shearing, Jacob, without saying goodbye, mounted his family on camels, loaded his treasures on asses, and drove his flocks across the Euphrates towards Canaan.

Laban did not hear of this until the third day. Then he and his kinsmen went in pursuit and, a week later, overtook Jacob among the hills of Gilead. ‘You have carried off my daughters as though they were prisoners of war!’ he shouted. ‘Why such secrecy? If apprised of your intentions, I should have given you a farewell feast with songs to the drum and harp; nor did you let me even kiss my daughters and grandsons goodbye! I would punish you severely for this indecorous behaviour, had not God restrained me in a vision last night. And while I can well understand your longing for home, how dare you steal my teraphim?’

Jacob answered: ‘I went away without notice lest you might prevent Leah and Rachel from accompanying me. About your teraphim I know nothing. If one of my people has stolen it, he certainly merits death! Come, search my baggage in the presence of our kinsmen, and take whatever is yours.’

Laban searched first Jacob’s tent, then Leah’s, then Bilhah’s, and Zilpah’s, but in vain. When he visited Rachel’s, she said: ‘Forgive me, Father, for not rising to salute you; my monthly sickness is upon me.’

Laban searched the tent carefully, but again found nothing. She had hidden his teraphim in a saddle-bag, and seated herself on it.
³⁴⁹

(
d
) Jacob reproached Laban: ‘What stolen goods have you discovered, my lord? Bring them here! Lay them before our kinsmen, who shall then judge between us. In twenty years, have I ever let your ewes or she-goats miscarry? Have I slaughtered and eaten your rams? Whenever wild beasts or bandits preyed on your flocks, who but I bore the loss? By day the heat consumed me, and the frost by night; yet my vigilance never relaxed. I served fourteen years for your daughters, and a further six for your flocks—though you constantly altered our compact and, in the end, would have sent me away empty-handed, had God not seen my misery and delivered His judgement!’

Laban answered: ‘Your children are born from my daughters, your flocks are bred from my flocks, and all that you possess was once
mine! How could I harm my own flesh and blood? Let us swear a covenant of peace, you and I, and set up a pillar to witness it.’

Jacob agreed. He raised a pillar, and Laban’s kinsmen heaped stones into a
cairn of witness
between him and Jacob—at a place now called Jegar Sahadutha by the Aramaeans, and Gal-‘ed, or Gilead, by the Hebrews. The region is named Mizpeh, because Laban said: ‘May the God of my grandfather Nahor and of your grandfather Abraham, his brother,
watch
our deeds while we are no longer living in the same land! If you ill-treat my daughters by making other marriages where God alone can witness their misery, He shall surely judge you. Moreover, let this pillar and cairn mark the frontier between your kingdom and mine; neither of us shall lead armed men across it!’

Jacob took the oath, confirming it with sacrifices. Laban’s people and his then ate together in peace; and early next morning Laban kissed his daughters and grand-children farewell and rode home. The power of this place was such that no Aramaean or Israelite afterwards dared violate the frontier until King David, angered by Hadadezer, King of Aram, broke the pillar in pieces, scattered the cairn, and took away Hadadezer’s kingdom.
³⁵⁰

(
e
) Rachel stole Laban’s teraphim not only to prevent it from disclosing Jacob’s flight, but to rid her father’s house of idols. However, Jacob’s curse on the unknown thief presently caused her death in childbirth; for Rachel had lied in telling Laban that she was still subject to her monthly courses. It is also said that when Laban finished his sheep-shearing and returned to Padan-Aram, he found the city well, which had been brimful ever since Rachel gave Jacob to drink, quite empty and dry—a disaster which told him of Jacob’s flight.
³⁵¹

(
f
) Laban then sent his son Beor, his cousin Abihoreph, and ten others, to Mount Seir, warning Esau of Jacob’s approach. Esau hurried forward vengefully, at the head of his servants and a force of Horite allies. Laban’s messengers, however, visited Rebekah on their journey back to Padan-Aram, and when they gave her this news, she at once sent seventy-two of Isaac’s armed servants to assist Jacob. ‘But,’ she said, ‘beg my son to show Esau the most obsequious humility, to placate him with rich gifts, and truthfully answer all his questions.’
³⁵²