Isn’t that an odd title?
In the book of Genesis, Jacob is an interesting character. Throughout the Old Testament, those men whom God loved were … well, less than holy. Jacob takes the cake. His name, first off, means something like “holder of the heel”, with an implication of ‘deceiver’. He offers his brother a meal in exchange for the birthright (I’d love to know the whole story on that one), then blatantly lies and tricks his blind father in order to get his father’s blessing. Basically, Jacob sees something he wants and he’s not going to let a silly thing like morals get in his way. After that, for good reason, his brother wants to kill him, and so Jacob runs. He goes 500 miles across desert and mountains to the home of his mother’s people and later states that he arrived with nothing except his staff.
When he reaches his mother’s homeland, he meets his young cousin at a well. For no reason other than “Granddad’s servant met Mom at a well” – oh, and the fact that she’s beautiful – Jacob decides he’s in love with her and that she’s meant to be his wife. I see no evidence of prayer, of asking God’s wisdom, of anything. She’s beautiful, she’s at the well, and therefore she’s meant for him. Again, what Jacob sees, Jacob wants.
Jacob’s uncle, the father of the beautiful girl, asks him a very insulting question: “Should you work for me for free? Name your wages.” Jacob was family and this question basically negated that relationship.
Now here’s the part that confuses me. Jacob – the man whose name has apparently come to mean Deceiver in Hebrew. Jacob – who managed to get the birthright for a bowl of vegetable stew and the blessing for a clever lie. Jacob – who somehow managed to travel 500 miles with nothing with which to survive or even to trade.
What does Jacob do? He OFFERS to work for seven years.
Now I grew up hearing this story and thinking “Aw, how sweet.” Our Sunday School teachers said that that was a normal practice and I believed them. Well, they were wrong. A normal bride-price was approximately the same as the cost to buy a healthy female slave, or between 1/2 and 2 shekels of gold. The wage for a hired laborer was about a gold shekel a year. A nephew would have paid a smaller bride-price because of the preference for endogamy.
Seven years later, when Jacob is tricked into marrying the older sister, he agrees to seven more years of labor in order to have the original girl.
– Why would he offer a bride-price worth worth 7 shekels of gold when he should probably have been paying a 1/2 shekel or even less? Ever hear of that rule about buying your fiancee a ring worth 3 months’ income? This was like buying a ring worth 3 1/2 years’ income.
– Why did he agree to 7 more years later? They DID have courts at the time, and laws against breach of contract. If he went to the courts and told them what his uncle did, he would have won the case, the girl, and probably got his 7 shekels of gold.
This guy wasn’t stupid, but he *offered* the seven years of work. This is what confuses me.
