Daily Lesson for January 22, 2020

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 31 verses 19 and 20:

19 When Laban had gone to shear his sheep, Rachel stole her father’s household gods. 20 Moreover, Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him he was running away.

Today’s Genesis reading from chapters 30 and 31 is the long and taxing tale of the manipulative and conniving Laban, his daughters, and his son in-law Jacob. It is fundamentally a story of gaslighting and abuse, and the family’s final need to escape psychological torment.

In the escape, Rachel stole her father’s gods — small she could keep in the well of her camel’s saddle.  But these were just outer symbols of what she was really doing. Her father Laban was himself his own god; when she chose to flee with her family and swiped the idols, she was in fact stealing away with all her father’s power over her. And when Laban caught up with her and her family’s caravan but could not find the gods, she had hidden them in the seat from which she did not rise “because of the way of women” — menstruation. So the god-like power of the patriarchal abuser is in the end felled by the self-empowerment hidden within a woman of his own household.

Let those with need to hear have ears to understand.

NOTE — We’re reading the whole Bible together this year. Tomorrow’s Daily Lesson will come from Genesis chapters 32 through 34.