And then we find in verse 11, and
this has always been a strange verse to
me, and Jacob kissed Rachel and lifted up
his voice and wept.
And frankly, kissing that girl, and why he
should weep, it's difficult for me to understand,
other than I'm of the opinion that this
boy had had a lonely trip all the
way from the moment he left home.
He spent that lonely night at Bethel, but
he's still trading the next day, and he'd
had a lonely trip.
You must remember that from Bethel he had
to go up by the Sea of Galilee,
he had to go up into Syria, and
he had to cross that desert there.
I suppose he had many experiences along the
way.
And now to find out that he's arrived
at the place he's going, because he knew
nothing about it before.
And when he got there, he becomes very
cocky, of course.
He greets these men in a matter-of
-fact way as if he'd known them all
their life, asks them questions, and then he
rolls the stone away, and whether it was
time, I doubt it, but he did.
And I imagine that he's so welled up
with emotion that when he greeted this girl,
Rachel, and he kissed her, and he wept,
I suppose that that would be the only
way that you could explain it.
But I'm sure the next time that he
did, he didn't weep.
Now verse 12, And Jacob told Rachel that
he was her father's brother.
And you notice father's brother actually means nephew.
The Hebrew does not make a lot of
the distinctions that we make today.
We've got it reduced down to whether a
person is a kissing cousin or not.
Well, in that day, they didn't have it.
If you're related, you're related, and that means
you're a brother.
And that's the way that it's translated here,
and quite properly so.
But he is actually his nephew, that he
was her father's brother, and that he was
Rebekah's son, and Rebekah was the sister of
Laban.
And she ran and told her father.
And it came to pass when Laban heard
the tidings of Jacob, his sister's son, that
he ran to meet him, and embraced him,
and kissed him, and brought him to his
house, and he told Laban all these things.
I imagine that he had quite a bit
to talk about, the trip that he had
made, how he'd left home, and how, I'm
not sure, but what he entertained him at
dinner with the story of how he tricked
his brother, how he got the birthright, and
how he got the blessing, how he used
trickery to do it, and how clever he
was, and probably about that night at Bethel.
Well, he told Laban all these things.
And Laban said to him, Surely thou art
my bone and my flesh.
Laban was convinced now this was his nephew,
and he says, You're my relative, come in,
make yourself at home.
And he abode with him the space of
a month.
Now, he's there for a month.
And what happens?
Well, he's not working.
He's, after all, the nephew that's come from
a far country, and he's come over to
visit his uncle.
And I suppose that he felt like he
ought to have free board there, and during
that time, why, he's been courting this girl,
Rachel.
At least he's certainly been casting his eyes
in that direction.
And I think she was casting her eyes
in his direction.