Essay sur La Genèse 32:44

The long account of how Yaakov outwits Lavan rounds out the portrait of his personality: he is a man at once clever, successful, and harassed. The text goes to great lengths to describe both men in behavior and thought, and we are given enough dialogue to be able to understand their motivations. The repeating words point to major themes: “serve,” “wages,” “face” (which will become central to the whole cycle by Chap. 32), and a whole vocabulary of trickery: “steal” (with the variations “be stealthy” and “steal the wits”), “take away” (see Chap. 27), “snatch,” and “rob.”