Musar untuk Kejadian 28:11

Therefore, anticipating this, he fled to Shem and Ever and studied Torah there with great diligence for fourteen years. For all of these years he did not once lay down to sleep a full sleep, as Scripture testifies about him (Ibid. 28:11): "And he slept in that place," as Rashi explains there. And, with such learning, though he remained in the house of Lavan afterwards for several years, nothing could harm him. [According to our words, the figure of fourteen years is very apt. For since they were meant to offset the years that he would have to remain in the house of Lavan, and it is known that this would be fourteen years, Jacob knowing that he could not return to his house so long as Joseph had not been born, he [Joseph] being as "flame" and Esav as "straw" [see Ovadiah 1:18], and as it is written (Bereshith 30:25): "And it was, when Rachel bore Joseph, that Jacob said to Lavan: "Send me away, etc.'", (as Rashi explains), and it is known that Joseph was in the fourteenth year, as it is written (Ibid. 31:41): "I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, etc." — therefore, Jacob first learned Torah fourteen years without interruption, so that the merit of these fourteen years would stand for him in the house of Lavan, as mentioned above.]

Bereshit Rabbah 68,10, quotes Rabbi Pinchas in the name of Rabbi Chanin of Tzipporin as offering a strange comment on 28,11, where the Torah reports Jacob camping overnight in an open field, because the sun had set unexpectedly. He claims that Jacob had overheard the ministering angels saying: "The sun has set, the sun has set." When Joseph told his brothers and his father about the dream in which eleven stars, sun and moon bowed down to him (Genesis 37,9), Jacob proclaimed: "Who has told him that my name is "sun"?! This sounds very strange. Why should the fact that Jacob's name was שמש be considered a secret? Considering what I have written, this Midrash makes sense.

We have another allusion to Jacob in the course of the Torah's report of Eliezer's journey, when the Torah describes Eliezer thanking G–d in that verse with the words: אשר הנחני בדרך אמת, "who has guided me on the path of truth." He referred to the קפיצת הדרך he had experienced i.e. the telescoping of the distance from Kiryat Arba to Charan into a single day's journey. Something similar happened to Jacob on his journey to Charan in Genesis 28,11 (see Rashi). Eliezer told his hosts that if they were prepared to do a חסד and אמת for him all well and good, seeing that Jacob would be destined to "redeem," i.e. justify G–d's having saved Abraham from Nimrod's furnace. This is the deeper meaning of חסד ואמת. When Jacob, whose children were all loyal to the tradition founded by Abraham and Isaac appeared on the scene of history, the whole universe became rejuvenated. Jacob personified the purpose of Creation which is intended to be fully good and to continue indefinitely as symbolized by the tree of life in the center of the garden of Eden. Ishmael, who represented the קליפה, the husk, preceded Isaac; it is in the nature of things for the husk to appear before the fruit, the kernel.