Comentário sobre Gênesis 31:7

עשרת מנים TEN TIMES — The word מנים never means less than ten (Ruth 4:11).

AND YOUR FATHER HATH MOCKED ME, AND CHANGED MY WAGES TEN TIMES. This was true, even though Scripture did not previously relate it. And so too did Jacob tell Laban: And thou hast changed my wages ten times.¹⁷⁷Further, Verse 41. There are many similar places in the Torah. For example, in this earlier section, Scripture did not relate that Leah gave the mandrakes to Rachel [although the event is referred to later in Verse 16: for I have hired thee with my son’s mandrakes].

מונים, as if the Torah had written מנינים, ten times.

ואביכן התל בי, "and your father deceived me, etc." What precisely was the deception which Laban was guilty of? If it was עברת הדרך, this should be called robbery.

ואביכן התל בי, this is a variation of the root with the same letters but with the dagesh in the letter ת, as we find in Kings 1 18,27 where it describes the prophet Elijah ridiculing the god of the priests of the Baal. Here the root is not used transitively but intransitively in the conjugation kal, hence there is not dagesh.

מונים is no less than ten. מונים is a term of counting, which is [done in sets of] ten. It is written, “Ten מונים,” i.e., 10 x 10 =100. But מונים does not mean “times.”

החל, rad. תלל , wovon תֵל: ein Trümmerhaufen, daher wahrscheinlich ותוללינו שמחה: unsere Zertrümmerer. Verwandt mit טַל .דלל ,טלל :תלל: der Niederschlag, Tau, der erst in die Höhe steigt und dann niederfällt. דַל, der Herab- gekommene, der früher reich gewesen. הָתֵל: jemanden erst hohe Erwartungen bauen lassen und sie dann in Trümmer werfen: täuschen, jemandem sein Versprechen nicht halten.

עשרת מנים, “ten times a minyan”, i.e. ten times ten,=100 times.

מנים signifies sum — the total of enumeration — these are tens: we may infer, therefore, that he changed the conditions of his hire one hundred times (Genesis Rabbah 74:3).

עשרת, the number is not to be taken literally, just as in Leviticus 26,26 the line עשר נשים לחמכם, ואפוdoes not literally mean that ten women would bake their bread in a single oven; rather, seeing that they have so little flour it is a symbol for “many.” The same word “ten” is used as an exaggeration in Job 19,3.

עשרת מונים, ten times. The reason the word עשרת is in the construct mode when we would have expected to read עשרה מונים, is because it is the final contact with the single digit numbers. It actually belongs to them, though in our language it is written as a 2 digit number. The fact is that the first 10 numbers are all part of one group, the number “ten” being the last one of that group. Hence it is treated here as if in the construct mode. To prove that this is correct, note that whenever the number ten appears, such as in ואפו עשר נשים, “ten women will bake” (Leviticus 26,26), where the number of women involved bears no relationship to the ninth or eighth woman preceding her, such a number is not in the construct mode. My late father of blessed memory explained the word עשרת as not being meant literally. It is not a figure of speech meaning “numerous times,” Yaakov had spent 6 years working for Lavan’ in order to amass his own flocks. The sheep give birth twice a year, i.e. 12 times in 6 years. Lavan therefore had opportunity to change Yaakov’s wages 8 times in the intermediate 6 years, and once each in the first year and last year respectively.

We thus learn that he changed his conditions 100 times. Rashi explains it as changing the conditions rather than changing the form of payment because it would cause no loss if Lavan changed the wages. For example, if Lavan owed cash but gave movables, [thereby changing the form of payment,] this would not be a loss. Thus Rashi explains that Lavan changed the actual conditions, as Rashi says on v. 41: “You kept changing the condition between us, from speckled to spotted...”

Perhaps Laban noticed already the first time that it was unusual for most of the flocks to give birth to animals with the skin patterns which he had allocated to Jacob. As a result he tried to be clever and changed the designation of the animals which were to be Jacob's as soon as the animals were in heat, before they actually gave birth. If that is what happened the description of his trick as התול, deception, instead of as robbery would be accurate.