Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 31-32.

I wanted to base my writing today around Rachel stealing her father’s household gods.  I really had trouble understanding how it fits into the story here, and I am still not sure that I do.  The first thing I will note is that passages like this one are part of why many scholars claim that the Patriarchs and early Israelites were polytheistic.  However, as I read this, it appears to me that the expressions used here to refer to God differ from those used to refer to Laban’s household gods in a way which indicates a category difference.  That is, the words used suggest that God is a different category of being from Laban’s household gods.  I am unable to say whether that category difference belongs to those who take part in these events (Jacob, Laban, Rachel, etc) or only to those who composed the account (I say “composed” here because I believe these accounts were compiled into something close to what we read here long before they were written down).  If I remember, I will touch on this theme from time to time as it crops up in the passages I read this year.  In this case, I think that Laban believed that God was supreme, but felt that He was too powerful and important to call upon, making it necessary for a mere human like Laban to call upon lesser ‘gods’ (somewhat like the view many Roman Catholics have of God and the official Catholic Saints).  Jacob seems to have had a similar understanding, but with a growing awareness that God will respond to his prayers and requests.  Or, perhaps, they all viewed the “household gods” as beings who could be manipulated and/or coerced into serving the interests of the individual, while God would only serve His interests.  In a way, the account in Genesis of Jacob is about Jacob coming to realize that as he aligned His interests with those of God, God would look out for him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.