Vayetze – Torah with Joseph

Vayetze [Part 1] – When God Finds You on the Road

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. My name is Joseph Shulam. And together with Brad TV we are doing these series of the weekly portions of the Law of Moses, of the Torah throughout the whole year that we have arrived now to chapter 28 of Genesis verse 10, a very fascinating and very romantic and interesting reading from the law of Moses.

And the first word of this Parasha in the Hebrew is vayetze. Vayetze means and he departed, and he went, and he went out. And he went away. He got out. But the word “now Jacob went,” in the English translation is very interesting. What does it mean now he went? What happened that made it that now he has to leave his homeland, his father, his mother, his friends, his location and go away all by himself?

Well, this is what happened, Rebecca, in the previous portion, previous chapter, hears. From where did she hear? What did she hear? She hears what Esau said in his heart. Esau said in his heart, when my father dies, I will kill my brother Jacob for robbing me of my inheritance. For his deviousness. I'm reading into the text a little bit about this deviousness and robbing him of his inheritance.

But Esau got so filled with anger over his brother, Jacob, his younger brother, Jacob, younger by minutes, not by days. That he decided in his heart to kill Jacob, also because he robbed him of Isaac's blessing, as we saw in the last Torah portion. Rebecca, the mother, engineered it so that Jacob would put fur on his hands, on his smooth lady-like hands and have hands like Esau, furry hands. Esau was an outdoors man and Jacob was a man sitting in his tent. He was a scholar. He was a philosopher. He was one who contemplated the universe, while Esau went hunting.

Rebecca Learns of Esau’s Intentions

So Rebecca engineered this. Esau got full of anger and decided to kill his brother, but he decided in his heart. But the Hebrew text says “and it was revealed.” It was revealed to Rebecca. Who revealed to Rebecca what Esau said in his own heart? The only one that could know what Esau said or what you say, what I say in our own heart is God himself, the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit reveals it to Rebecca, which makes Rebecca a prophetess.

And that's how the rabbis see Rebecca. She's like Sarah, and like later on, the mothers of the nation, Leah and Rachel. They are considered prophetess. They hear from the Lord. So she heard from the Lord what Esau said in his own heart, and she invents a scheme for Isaac to agree to send Jacob to Haran, to their home origin town, Haran, Aleppo, or near, very near to Aleppo in Syria today.

So what was the scheme that Rebecca invents? I don't want Jacob and our children to marry the local girls. Look, this phenomenon is not new. Immigrants, even immigrants to the United States have done that for hundreds of years. When the Jews from Eastern Europe immigrated and came through Ellis Island to New York, they said the same thing about their children. We don't want our boys to marry Gentile girls, American girls. We want them to marry our own kind.

This is the same phenomenon already in the Torah. There's nothing new about this phenomenon. But when Rebecca hears that Esau has a plan that when Isaac dies, he's going to kill Jacob, she wants to have an excuse that Isaac would agree to send Jacob away to Haran, to her brother, Laban. Of course, Jacob must have agreed. Why? Because that's what happened to him. His father sent Eliezer to Haran, to Nahor, to bring him a bride from their hometown, from where they were raised.

And that's where Rebecca comes from. So Isaac couldn't very well say I don't agree, because that's how he got married. They brought him a bride from Syria. They brought him two brides, two sisters, Leah and Rachel for Isaac to a... No, I'm sorry. I mixed up a little bit. They brought him Rebecca, not Leah and Rachel.

Jacob Runs Away on Foot

Leah and Rachel came with Jacob from Haran, from Laban's house to the land that God promised Abraham and his seed forever. So now Jacob is running because his mother and he are afraid that Esau, his brother, will actually fulfill his desire and kill his brother as soon as Isaac dies, but he's running alone. On foot. How do I know that he ran on foot and he didn't take a donkey with him? Because Jacob actually says that, he actually says that in Genesis chapter 32 verse 10, it says, "I crossed the Jordan with my staff. Not on a donkey, not on a horse, with my staff, in other words on foot. And so he's running away on foot, leaving Be'er Sheva.

And he, in our portion of the Torah, he walks until night falls and the sun sets. And he looks for a place to sleep. And the only place you could sleep is outdoors. And he finds a rock as a pillow, and he puts the rock under his head, and he falls asleep in the field outdoors. And then he sees a dream. The dream that he sees, a ladder, a very long, tall ladder that reaches up to the heavens and angels of God are ascending and descending on it.

Now this ascending and descending on it is a very interesting text. Usually if you have a ladder, people come down the ladder and then go up. Specially, if they're angelic beings, heavenly beings, heavenly beings come from up, down. In this ladder, it was the opposite situation. They were ascending, going up first, and then coming down. The rabbis make a big deal out of this.

And the answer, the short answer to this, that these were ministering angels. They were angels that already were sent by God to accompany a saint, a chosen person, somebody who is destined to greatness. So God had already, to protect Jacob on his journey, has already sent angels to accompany him. He didn't know that until he saw the angels going up the ladder and other angels coming down the ladder.

Angels are a fascinating subject altogether. And we're going to have to talk about angels on another occasion. But I do want to get into this very important reading of the Torah, and very important elements in it that is for our edification, for our inspiration, and for our wisdom. So here it is.

Essence of Torah Reading

God sends a dream to Jacob, he sent dreams to Abraham before that. And in this dream, there is a ladder and angels of God go up and down. And in chapter 28, verse 13, we read:

He is leaving the country. He's running away from his brother and all of a sudden God comes and stands over him. Anytime that the phrase to stand over somebody, what does it mean in Hebrew? It means I'm here to serve you. As a waiter stands in a fancy restaurant over you and looks at your table and looks at your action.

And the minute you just raise your eyes in a good restaurant and just look at the waiter, the waiter immediately comes and says, "Can I help you?" "What can I do for you? ”Do you need anything? So you miss this in the translation, but if you follow the Hebrew text, lamod aal means to stand over, it means- I'm here to serve you. God comes to Jacob in the dream and says, "Jacob, you're running away.” “You're afraid.” "You feel the danger,” "but I'm here.” “I'm here for you.” "I'm here to serve you.”

God Renews His Covenant With Israel

And not only am I here to serve you, you are leaving the land that I promised Abraham and his seed forever. But you should know, although you're leaving the land, you're going abroad to another country, hey, this land that I promised your forefathers, Abraham and Isaac, this land I will give to you.

Not only to you, Jacob, but all your descendants. Look, we are here now. My parents came from Bulgaria. I was a year old child in 1947 when they came. I was born in 1946. And most of the people that we have here in the land of Israel are immigrants. They came from somewhere else. We have brothers and sisters in the faith that came from Siberia. Just yesterday I talked to some of them. Came from Siberia.

And we have brothers and sisters that came from Brazil and Chile in our congregation. And we have brothers and sisters that came from the United States, and brothers and sisters who came from Ukraine, and brothers and sisters who came from China, and brothers and sisters that came from Korea. Yes, Israel is a land of immigrants. The state of Israel has only existed 73 years. Not yet even 73, 72 years, soon 73 years, and is a young country. And the majority of the people who live in this land were not born in this land. They were born somewhere else.

God Promises to Return Jacob to the Land

Their parents, if they were born in Israel, then their parents were born somewhere else. Or their grandparents were born somewhere else. So God reassures Jacob in verse 13 of chapter 28, "I will return you to this land "and you and your descendants will inherit the land "that I promised to Abraham and Isaac, your fathers.” Not only that, he repeats the other promises that he made to Abraham and to Isaac. “Your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south.”

“And through your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” just the same as in Genesis, chapter 12, the promises that God gave to Abraham. And repeated in chapter 26 to Isaac. Now he's repeating the same promises to Jacob, to Abraham's grandson. Now, these promises that are repeated at least three times till now, they're repeated again in the book of Genesis, are the core issue of today's establishment of the state of Israel, in the land that God promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Moses and King David.

Yes, this is the most repeated promise in the whole Bible. The seed, the land, and the blessing for all the nations. Now the word seed here is important because we find the word seed in the parables of Jesus, like the seed of the mustard. And we think that Jesus is talking about the plant, the mustard seed, no. Jesus is talking about the seed of Abraham. He's talking about the people, the people are called seed throughout the Bible, much more times than plants and seed of plants are called seed. Seed of Abraham, seed of Isaac, seed of Jacob, seed of Israel.

So God comes down when Jacob is at the lowest point of his life. He's running away for his life from his own brother, alone, to a far country. We are talking about a long way, hundreds of miles from here to Haran, to Northern Syria. It's about 250 miles from Jerusalem to the border with Lebanon and from the border of Lebanon to Aleppo is about another 250 miles. About 500 miles away.

He's has to walk by himself in a hostile land, a land that has the Perizzites and the Jebusites, and the Hittites, and the Philistines, and the Girgashites and the Amorites, all fighting over the land and against each other. So Jacob has to survive that walk. And all of a sudden the dream ends, Jacob wakes up from his sleep. And this is his response, verse 16 of chapter 28:

Hold it Mr. Jacob. Hold it Mr. Issac. Hold it Mr. Abraham. What does it mean I discovered that God is now in this place? I didn't know that this place that has no temple, no sanctuary, no people from my own family, that know that there is one God. And all of a sudden in this desolate pagan place, God is here also.

Pagan View

This is the pagan worldview. That God is local. You have the God of the Jews, the God of the Egyptians, the God of the Amorites, the God of the Hittites, the God of Moabites, and you see this story very well in 1 Kings with the story of Naaman. Naaman gets healed from his leprosy, and what does he want to do? He wants to load carts full of oxen, no, led by oxen, to fill them with earth from the land of Israel, because now he recognizes the God of Israel and he wants to worship the God of Israel on the land of Israel.

Local God, that's pagan. But Jacob said, wow, I realize now that my God is here also, where there is no tabernacle, there is no temple, there is no shrine, there is no altar to God, but he's here. I was afraid because this is an awesome place. There is none other than the house of God and this is the gates of heaven. If God came to me down the ladder with angels ascending and descending and said, I will serve you. I will keep my promises that I gave to Abraham and to Isaac of the land and of the multiplication of the race of the people, and the blessing. Ah, this is an awesome place. Terrible place. Awesome in the sense of terrible, fearful. So there we are folks, Jacob is now on his way north to his uncle's house. But before that, he sanctifies this place by taking a stone, a stela, the professional name, and anointing it with oil, and announcing that this place now is the house of God.

And before that place was called Bethel, the house of God, it was called Luz. The Canaanite name was Luz. Now Jacob names it Bethel, which means the house of God. And he makes an oath, a very interesting oath. And the oath says, essentially, if God... It's not a condition, it's an oath. You could translate it - if or when.

When God brings me back to this place, to this stela, to this pillar of stone that I've anointed, where did he get the oil to anoint? Listen, this part of the country is full of olive trees. He could have had a handful of olives and just rubbed them on the stone, you'll get the oil. So he makes his oath that if God returns him back to the land, to this place, from his long journey, he will make this place a sanctuary, a holy place. And he goes up north, he gets to Haran, he gets to the well. The well is where you meet people. That's like the local bar, they don't have alcohol, but they have water.

And the shepherds and the shepherd girls especially, come to the well to water their sheep. At least in the evening they gather there before they take their sheep back to their folds. They gathered there, and here is the romantic part. It is the last part of this portion that I'm going to teach today, this portion has a lot of wealth, and I suggest you read it yourselves from chapter 28, verse 10, until chapter 32, verse nine.

It's a very interesting portion. Now he gets there, a little bit early, to Haran and to the local well. And there were three flocks already gathered there. And there was a large stone on the mouth of the well, but in order to respect the community and all the shepherds, they waited for all the shepherds to get there and then to take the stone off so that there will be a fair use of the water. A fair sharing of the water and nobody's going to hog the water. So he's there, waiting for the flocks to come and open the well. But what happens?

Jacob Meets Rachel – Love at First Sight

Here comes a beautiful girl. And beautiful eyes, and he sees her eyes and he's impressed by her beauty. And when men see beautiful girls, their instinct is, ah, I've got to show this girl who I am. He doesn't know who she is, but he's got to show her who he is. So what does he do? He goes, and that large stone that it took several men to move out of the mouth of the well, whoa, Mr. Jacob is going to show off. He removes that stone by himself.

Women can motivate you dear brothers to do things that you never dreamt that you were able to do. And he sees this girl, but before that, he talks to the men and he says to them, “Do you know Laban the son of Nahor?” And the man answered him, “Yes, we know him.” And Jacob says, “Is he well?” They say, “Yes, he’s well. Even his daughter, Rachel, coming with the sheep.” So Jacob now meets his first relative, but his first relative is this beautiful woman coming with the sheep to water them.

And he sees that the well is blocked with that stone. He sees that the well is blocked with that stone. And he gathers all of his strength, and without permission takes over the field and moves that stone so that Rachel can water her flocks together with the other shepherds. And then Jacob, when he sees Rachel, and she's already been pointed out by the other shepherds, she is the daughter of Laban, the daughter of his uncle, his mother's brother.

The Eyes Have It

What does he do? Jacob goes and kisses this supposedly strange girl who is his relative. And he lifts up his voice and starts crying. Hey, nothing will move a girl's heart more than a crying man who is crying over her. Hallelujah. Jacob is not only Jacob that sits by the tent, but he is a romantic. And he falls in instant love with Rachel, the daughter of his uncle. His cousin. And I'm going to do a second session of the continuation of this portion of the Torah and continue because it's very important what happens in the rest of the text of this Torah portion. So I'm going to end with this wonderful romantic scene, Jacob tired from walking about 500 miles from here to Haran, falls in instant love with his first cousin, Rachel, and all he saw was her eyes. Instant love, and he goes and kisses her. Hallelujah, for romance in the Bible. Amen.

Vayetze [Part 2] – Love, Labor, and Laban’s Deception

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. My name is Joseph Shulam, and we are doing together with Brad TV, the Torah portions every week. Sometimes the Torah portions are so important and so long that I have to do a second edition to the first broadcast on Brad TV. So, the last edition was Jacob has arrived in Haran. He went to the well. At the well he meets his first relative for the first time, a beautiful girl named ”Rāḥēl”; Rachel in English.

He is so impressed by that girl. And he wants so much to impress the girl and the other shepherds, and he moves that heavy stone by himself off the mouth of the well, so that Rachel can be first to water her flock, the flock of Laban, her father. And she takes Jacob, after watering her flock, to Laban, to the house of Laban. Jacob’s uncle, the brother of his mother, Rebecca. And Laban welcomes Jacob and said:

What’s happening here? Jacob, of course, arrives at the house of Laban, his uncle, and he needs a job, and Laban needs workers, workers that he could take advantage of. And Jacob says: “You’re my relative. You work for me”. And you know, “even though you’re my relative, I’m gonna pay you something. You shouldn’t be working for me for nothing. And tell me, what kind of pay do you expect? How much money do you expect from me?” Jacob is not thinking of money. He’s thinking of Laban’s daughter, Rachel.

But Laban says: “No, I have two daughters. Two daughters. My older daughter is Leah, and my younger daughter is Rachel “Rāḥēl.” And in the text, the Holy Spirit tells us now what’s the problem, right at the onset of this relationship between Laban and his nephew, Jacob. He says: “Leah.” Jacob is not paying attention. “Leah’s eyes are soft, delicate, but Rachel’s eyes are beautiful, beautiful in form and appearance.”

And Jacob loves Rachel. He doesn’t love Leah; he loves Rachel. And he says to Laban, he answers Laban’s question: “What kind of wages, what kind of salary do you want?” And he says: “I will work for you seven years for Rachel, your younger daughter.” Laban answers Jacob like this, (chapter 29, verse 19):

In other words: “come and work.” So, Jacob served 7 years for Rachel. Here is the romantic Jacob. “And they seemed only like a few days for him, for the love he had for her.”

For Rachel. Hey. He worked 7 years. I don’t know what kind of salary he got, but it wasn’t much money. How do I know it wasn’t much money? From the end of the story. And he was waiting 7 years, every day, one more day, counting the days in which he will be able to marry Rachel, Laban’s younger daughter.

Jacob Is Ready to Marry Rachel

And when the 7 years are up, he goes to Laban, his uncle, and says:

In other words, I may go marry her, have sex with her. That’s a part of the marriage process in the Bible. There are 3 things that make a marriage: a purchase, that’s why we give a golden ring, or a diamond ring, or some kind of, something worth more than a dollar. And then a contract, a marriage contract. A ‘Prenuptial Agreement’ as they say in the United States. And then the third, the consummation of the marriage; sex with your wife for the first time. At least in ancient days, that was the case.

Laban Cheats Jacob

And Laban gathers together all the men of the place and makes a big feast. And the evening comes and he takes Leah, his daughter, and brings her to Jacob. And he went into her. Jacob is so mesmerized, so tired, so excited, that he didn’t pay attention of who are you going to go to bed with. It turns out that he gets Leah instead of Rachel. This is why in every Jewish wedding today, the bride comes veiled like in every wedding, in all the ancient world, but before he enters under the canopy to get married, and before the Rabbi says one word in the marriage, he walks up to the bride and looks under her veil to make sure that he’s getting Rachel and not Leah; that the bride wasn’t switched.

Till this day, this custom exists at every Jewish wedding. Interesting. Laban cheated Jacob. Now, the fact is folks, I’m gonna be honest with you. It’s in our Israeli DNA not to cheat, but also not to be cheated, but to have a fair deal, to make a profit. I worked, I invested, I had agreed, I have a contract, verbal or not verbal, and I want to get my goods. Israelis and Jews generally have this attitude. I am worth something and I am worth what we agreed upon, and I want you to keep your word and your promise to what I agreed with you.

Jacob Works Seven More Years for Rachel

So, Jacob is so much in love that he’s willing to work another seven years to get Rachel, the girl that he loves. And again, like he said in the beginning about the seven, “it was just like yesterday.” After he works another seven years to get Rachel, the one that he loved first, he says the same thing. Fourteen years passed and he worked for meager wages for Laban, his father-in-law, his uncle. And he says: “Oh, it was just like yesterday.” Even about the Fourteen years. Very romantic person. In-love person.

And we can learn, from this the man for sure, we can learn so much from Jacob of this idea, of what it means to love. It means to serve for your wife, before the marriage, in this case. And there’s, if you have a Ketubah, a written wedding agreement , what the New Testament calls “a writing of divorcement”; a contract. What you would owe her, your wife, if you divorce, you have this kind of pre-nuptial agreement. Then you could say what Jacob said: “It was just like yesterday.”

Love transcends time. It was just like yesterday. So, Jacob gets his two sisters, his wives, for each wife he gets from Laban, the father, a servant, a maid. For Rāḥēl he gets Bilhah, and for Leah he gets Zilpah. And now he has a household with 2 wives and 2 handmaids to serve his wives. And, verse 31 of chapter 29: “The Lord saw that Leah was unloved. He opened up her womb, but Leah was barren.” No. Leah was not barren. God opened up her womb, the text says. Rachel was the barren one. The one that Jacob loved the most.

Rachel is Barren

He opened, to compensate for the lack of love, God opened Leah’s womb, and later Rachel was barren, couldn’t have children. So, Leah conceived and bore a son. And he called, she called her first son Reuben. And we have the entire story in our portion about all the sons of Leah. And then again, finally, Leah has all these boys.

How many girls she had, we don’t know, but she probably had some. We know she had some because later on, we find out about what happened, when Jacob returns to the land and he has a daughter called Dinah, and she gets raped by Hamor, the prince of Shechem, the city of Shechem in English, Nablus in the Greek, Greco-Roman name, Neopolis. Like Naples in Arabic is pronounced “Nablus.”

And it was a city dedicated by Herod to Caesar. So, Leah has son after son, after son, after son. Ten sons! And poor old Rachel, nothing. Until finally, the Lord opens up her womb. And first she complained to Jacob that she has no children, no sons, no children. She says to Jacob:

And Jacob’s anger was aroused against Rachel. And he said: “Am I in the place of God who held from you, the fruit of your womb?” So she says:

The same thing that Sarah did with Hagar is repeated, repeated here by Rachel and Jacob. And Bilhah conceived a son for Jacob. And Rachel said: “God has judged my case, and he also heard my voice and gave me a son.” So she called that son, Dan. Dan was not the son of Rachel. He was the son of Bilhah; Rachel’s handmaid. But in the end, to make the long story short, God opens Rachel’s womb and she has 2 boys; Joseph and Benjamin. And the Book of Genesis will continue dealing with Joseph and Benjamin.

And, we are now dealing with a large family; 2 wives, 2 handmaids, and 12 children at the end of this Parasha. And we are going to move into the next Parashah that will start with chapter 32. And it will be the beginning of the relationship between the brothers and Joseph, the eleven brothers and Joseph. A whole new chapter, of the development of our patriarchal families that carry on the gene of the Messiah, the gene of salvation for all the nations of the world. May God bless all of you, and continue watching Brad TV, and my analysis of the Torah portions week after week, till the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, and finish the cycle of 54 different readings of the Torah. May God bless all of you. Amen.