Page Content (OCR)
252 encounters—continuing, as we shall see, the experiences of the Patriarchs, his grandfather Abraham, and his father Isaac. Meeting Rachel at the water well in the grazing fields of Harran and discovering that she was the daughter of his uncle Laban, Jacob asked Laban's permission to marry her. The uncle agreed if Jacob would in exchange serve Laban seven years; but when he did, Laban made him marry first his older daughter Leah, demanding that he serve another seven years to have Rachel as a second wife. Upon the insistence of Laban, Jacob, his wives, the children they bore him, and the flocks that he managed to amass, stayed on and on—for twenty years. Then one night Jacob had a dream. In the dream he saw "rams leaping upon the flocks, and they were streaked, and speckled, and grizzled." Puzzled by what he was seeing, Jacob then received a divine oracle in the second part of the dream in which an "Angel of the Elohim" ap- peared and called out his name. "And Jacob said, Here I am. And the angel said, Lift up thy eyes and see thou all of the rams that leap upon the flocks; they are streaked and speckled and grizzled because I have seen all that Laban had done to thee. I am the El of Beth-El, the place where tbou didst anoint a pillar . .. Now arise, and get thee from out of this land, and return to the land of thy birth." So, acting on this dream-oracle, Jacob picked up his family and belongings, and seizing the opportunity when Laban was away for the shearing of the sheep, left Harran in a hurry. When the news reached Laban, he was furious. "But Elohim came unto Laban the Aramean in a nighttime dream, saying to him: Take thou heed! Speak neither threats nor sweettalk Jacob." Thus admonished, Laban in the end consented to Jacob's departure, and the two set up a stone to serve as a boundary between them, not to be crossed by either one of them in anger. In witness of the treaty's vows the Elohim were invoked as guarantors. The placing of such a boundary stone conformed to the customs of the day. Called Kudurru, they were rounded at the top; the terms of the boundary agreement were inscribed on them, ending with the oaths and the invoking of the gods of each side as guarantors of the treaty vows; sometimes, the symbols of the celestial counterparts of the invoked deities DIVINE ENCOUNTERS