Family Values (3 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1997 / January-February:

by Farrell Till

Our last quest for biblical family values left us contemplating the public promiscuity, deception, sibling rivalry, parental favoritism, and ethnic prejudice of the family of Isaac and Rebekah. When we left them, Rebekah, fearing that her favorite son Jacob might be killed by his twin brother Esau for having cheated him out of his birthright, had convinced her husband Isaac to send Jacob to live with her brother Laban in Paddanaram, ostensibly to look for a wife among the daughters of Laban but actually to protect him from Esau, who had threatened to kill him.

We find, then, that half-truths were evidently a part of family values in biblical times, for in telling Isaac that her life would be ruined if Jacob married "a wife of the daughters of Canaan" as Esau had done (Gen. 27:46), Rebekah wasn't actually telling a lie, because Esau's Hittite wives had been "a grief of mind" to her (Gen. 26:35), but she used this truth only to conceal her real motives. She didn't want Esau to kill Jacob, and she didn't want Isaac to know about the family rift that her own deception and favoritism to Jacob had precipitated.

By the way, we should notice in passing that when Esau "saw that the daughters of Canaan did not please his father Isaac," he went to Ishmael (his father's half-brother whom Abraham had sired during his escapade with Sarah's handmaid Hagar) and took Ishmael's daughter Mahalath as another wife "in addition to the wives he had" (Gen. 28:8-9). Spite, then, seemed to be another "family value" in biblical times, as was also polygamy, which will be addressed later.

Anyway, Isaac sent Jacob to Paddanaram, where he had the various sexual adventures discussed in "Jacob an Old Geezer?" (TSR, November/December 1996, pp. 8-9,11). From this tale, of course, we can only conclude that polygamy was a family value in those days, because Jacob didn't just marry the two sisters, Leah and Rachel, but also accepted their handmaids as concubines with whom he sired four sons. The fact that Yahweh selected Jacob's sons born of these polygamous relationships to be the tribal heads of his specially "chosen people" must mean that Yahweh didn't consider polygamy to be morally improper. In fact, Yahweh's approval of Jacob's cozy little arrangement was at least implied where the Bible declares that "God remembered Rachel," who until this time had been unable to bear children, "and opened her womb" (Gen. 30:22). Prior to this, Leah had experienced temporary sterility (a contributing factor to the duel of the handmaids, as each sister tried to outdo the other by producing children through their handmaids Bilhah and Zilpah), and "God hearkened to Leah" and ended her sterility (v:18). Apparently, it never occurred to the rivaling sisters that at least part of their "sterility" problems was surely due to spreading the sexual activities of an 85-year-old husband a bit too thin by having him try to sire children by four different women, but who are we to question the inspired word of God? If it says that God hearkened to Leah and Rachel and opened their wombs, then they must have been genuinely sterile, and God must have intervened to remove their sterility. In so doing, God was surely conveying that he didn't see anything wrong with Jacob's cozy little setup and that he even encouraged it by intervening to have the arrangement produce children to become the fathers of his specially chosen people.

Jacob's little love nest in Paddanaram comes about as close to "free love" without actually crossing the line as one can imagine, but the sexual part of Jacob's family life isn't the only "value" that we should look at. During Leah's and Rachel's rivalry for their husband's sexual attention, Leah's eldest son Reuben "found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah" (Gen. 30:14), and Rachel asked Leah for some of the mandrakes. "Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband?" Leah responded. "Would you take away my son's mandrakes also?" Rachel then struck a deal with Leah. She would give up her sexual turn with Jacob that night in exchange for some of the mandrakes (v:15). So when Jacob came home from the field, Leah went out to meet him and said, "You must come in to me, for I have surely hired you with my son's mandrakes." And so Jacob "lay with her that night" (v:16). There always seemed to be plenty of Jacob to go around.

Jacob's sexual prowess, in fact, must have been something indeed. Usually men are the ones who are willing to pay for sexual favors, but even after the 85-year-old Jacob had spent a whole day working in the field, at least one woman in his life was willing to pay for his stud services. At any rate, this deal that Leah struck with Rachel warrants our attention. Mandrakes of the Mediterranean region produced a narcotic effect when they were eaten, and even as late as the Middle Ages, they were used to dull sensitivities in patients undergoing surgical procedures. Mandrakes belong to the family of plants known as Solanaceae(sometimes called Nightshade), and although some of them are popular food plants, many of them, such as jimsonweed, tobacco, morning glory, and mandrake, are sources of powerful and even dangerous drugs.

The mandrake was also superstitiously considered both an aphrodisiac and a charm for pregnancy, so considering the competition for Jacob's sexual attention that dominates the story of his sojourn in Paddanaram, the Genesis writer may have intended readers to understand that Leah and Rachel were using mandrakes as aphrodisiacs or pregnancy charms. Nevertheless, their use for either purpose would have required that they be consumed, and so the sisters still would have experienced the narcotic properties of the mandrakes. In effect, then, Leah and Rachel transacted a drug deal, and those who clamor in today's society for a return to biblical family values would soundly condemn parents who use and traffic in drugs. In Bible classes, however, they honor Leah and Rachel as the mothers of God's chosen people, apparently never recognizing the inconsistency.

Like mother, like son proved to be true in the case of Jacob's relationships with his children, for as his mother Rebekah had shown favoritism to him, Jacob had a favorite son whom he "loved more than all his children" (Gen. 37:3). This was Joseph, of course, whose favored treatment by his father caused such jealousy in his brothers that they threw him into a pit, waited for a caravan of traders to come by, sold him into slavery (vs:23-28), and then dipped Joseph's tunic in goat's blood to make it appear that he had been devoured by wild animals (vs:31-33). What we find in the Bible, then, are three successive patriarchal families that showed favoritism to certain ones of their children. Abraham favored Isaac over Ishmael, Rebekah favored Jacob over Esau, and Jacob favored Joseph over all of his children. It seems safe to conclude, then, that parental favoritism was very much a part of "traditional family values" in biblical times, but for some reason we don't hear Christians advocating it today. They seem to be lost in a sort of biblical limbo, wanting on the one hand a return to family values of biblical times but on the other hand not wanting a return to those biblical values that time and experience tell them are really not good ideas.