Gen. 30:28-31:16 When Jacob decides to leave Laban and return to his ancestral land, he tells Leah and Rachel that Laban “has cheated me, changing my wages time and again.” But is this accusation a just one, borne out by the facts of the case as provided in the text? Jacob’s main complaint is presumably Laban’s substitution of Leah for Rachel, but while his intent was obviously deceptive, Laban could certainly claim (along with many modern politicians) that his response to Jacob’s request was “legally accurate.” “Better that I give her to you than that I should give her to an outsider. Stay with me,” is, in the words of Etz Hayim , “a statement of consummate ambiguity naively accepted by Jacob as a binding commitment,” and Laban did, indeed, eventually allow Jacob to marry Rachel. Perhaps Jacob, whose previous experience in deception consisted of outright lies like “I am Esau, your firstborn,” can be forgiven for missing the subtlety in his uncle’s more sophisticated technique. However
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