Genesis29chapter 29

A living Jewish custom is grounded in this chapter by one of its classical readers. Radak, commenting on the feast Laban made at the wedding, writes that the verse "comes to show the custom that was in the world, and still is today, to do a feast and celebration for weddings", the groom or the father of the bride or groom bearing the cost, and that from Laban's answer about fulfilling the week "the Sages instituted the Wedding Meal and 7 days of celebration after a wedding" (Radak on Genesis 29:22:1, the Sefaria Community Translation, CC0). The seven days of celebration after a Jewish wedding are still kept, and the corpus names this chapter as where the classical commentary anchors them.

The commentators read the chapter as Jacob meeting his match in deceit. Rashi takes the lifting up of the feet at the first verse as gladness making the walk light, on the authority of Genesis Rabbah 70:8, and the rolling of the stone as a display of strength, done "as easily as one draws the stopper from the mouth of a bottle" (Rashi on Genesis 29:10:1, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, public domain, citing Bereishit Rabbah 70:12). He gives Jacob's weeping two causes from the same midrash, that he foresaw "by the Holy Spirit that she would not be buried with him in the cave of Machpelah", and that he had come empty-handed where Eliezer had come with ten laden camels (Rashi on Genesis 29:11:1). He reads Jacob's word that he is her father's brother as a warning as much as a fact, that if Laban means to deceive him then Jacob is his brother in deception, and if Laban is honest then Jacob is the son of the pious Rebekah (Rashi on Genesis 29:12:1). Leah's weeping at the seventeenth verse he traces to the common saying that "Rebekah has two sons, Laban has two daughters", the elder for the elder and the younger for the younger, on Genesis Rabbah 70:16. Radak stays with the plain narrative. He explains why Nahor rather than Bethuel is named, notes that Laban's two daughters are introduced early so that the reader can follow the bargain that comes later, and observes that Laban conceded that marriage inside the family was a good thing (Radak on Genesis 29:5:1, 29:16:1 and 29:19:1, translated by Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash, CC-BY). On the night of the substitution he draws a rule of modesty out of the deception itself, that the dark is what made the exchange possible (Radak on Genesis 29:23:1). Ibn Ezra comments here at 29:4:1, 29:9:1 and 29:20:1, and the corpus holds no English of him under a licence permitting quotation, so he stands as a citation.

The corpus records forty rabbinic locators on this chapter, thirty-six of them Midrash and four Talmud. Bereshit Rabbah runs through the scene at the well and the marriages at 70:8, 70:9, 70:10, 70:11, 70:12, 70:14, 70:18, 70:19, 71:3 and 71:4, and Midrash Aggadah comments at Genesis 29:2:1, 29:3:1, 29:3:2, 29:4:1, 29:5:1, 29:5:2, 29:13:1 and 29:29:1. Aggadat Bereshit takes the chapter up at 42:1, 49:1, 49:3, 49:5 and 83:1, Bereshit Rabbati at Parashat Vayetze 10 and 15, and Midrash Lekach Tov at Genesis 29:7:1, 29:8:1, 29:15:1, 29:23:1, 29:26:1 and 29:28:1. Three of the four Talmud locators fall on one page, Bava Batra 123a, at its sections 14, 18 and 20, standing at the verses about the two sisters, the kinship and the giving of Rachel; the fourth is Avot DeRabbi Natan, Recension B 1:3 at the twenty-seventh verse. Rashi hands on his own sayings with their locators, among them Genesis Rabbah 70:8, 70:12, 70:13, 70:14, 70:16 and 70:17.