Commento su Genesi 31:14

העוד לנו IS THERE YET ANY FOR US? — Why should we prevent you from returning? Can we at all hope to inherit anything belonging to our father together with his sons?

Do we still have a portion. Why do you think it will be difficult for us to part from our father?

העוד לנו חלק ונחלה, "Do we still have a share or an inheritance in our father's house?" When Rachel and Leah mentioned both חלק and נחלה they referred to two things. They referred to their maternal inheritance seeing that their mother had already died; they also referred to a potential inheritance from their father and concluded that they had no prospect of either. They cited as proof the fact that their father had considered them as strangers already at the time he had sold them. Their father had not considered them as his children for some time already. As a result, even though according to the laws of the Gentiles daughters stand to share in the inheritance, they felt they did not have such a chance.

ותען רחל ולאה, here too the younger sister speaks first, just as in Exodus 10,3 ויאמר משב ואהרן, although Moses was the younger. Seeing that Rachel loved Yaakov as intensely as he loved her, she responded first.

ותען רחל ולאה, “Rachel and Leah replied, etc.” I have been bothered by the fact that Rachel did not display courtesy for her older sister and spoke first. In the meantime I have seen a comment in Bereshit Rabbah, 74,4 where the author quotes an opinion that the reason that Rachel died before her sister was that she spoke up before her sister. In that connection Rabbi Yossi questioned the author of that statement by asking him if he had ever seen that when someone calls Reuven that Shimon will answer that call (instead of Reuven?) What did Rachel do wrong? The Torah reports that Yaakov called Rachel and Leah to the field in that order. Why should not Rachel have replied first? Rabbi Yossi must explain Rachel’s death as due to a different circumstance, i.e. Yaakov’s conditional curse of the person who had stolen Lavan’s teraphim.

Unsere feinfühlenden Weisen lassen es schwer gegen Rahel in die Wagschale fallen, dass sie vor ihrer älteren Schwester das Wort geführt, und meinen, deshalb sei sie auch früher gestorben.

When Rachel and Leah added: ויאכל גם אכול את כספנו, "he also consumed our wages," this refers to both the money of the marriage settlement of their mother and the value of the labour Jacob performed for fourteen years in order to marry them.