Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/275

Rh 257

Jacob and Laban

fourteen years must humility and repentance of those first must have welled forth have returned to him. And there of those first years, the additional prayer, the longing couched in the Psalmist's beautiful words: Create me a And renew

clean heart, a

O

God;

steadfast spirit within me.

So Jacob journeyed on

to

meet Esau.

NOTES XXIX

1

"The

children

of

the

east",

i.

e.

nomads or semi-

is evidently northern Mesopotamia. group. this regarded as belonging to itself, and the V ? In the Orient, particularly in the desert consequently and scarce, is water desert, the country bordering on that wells should be it is not uncommon Therefore precious. .-erv

nomads, dwelling

Laban's tribe

in

frequently requires one was, by a great stone, which the to move, in order to prevent men many of etTorts combined the entitled to it, and not those or strangers water from being used by other things, which might otherwise also to keep out the sand and the same well as that from which was choke the well. Whether this

cov'ered, as this

Abraham s servant, the water for the camels of that we 1 seems since not, was it Apparently, however, is not stated. 16), (cf. note to steps of flight a by approached to have been hands the buckets by up while the water of this well was drawn mouth of the well. of the shepherds who stood at the ot call Rebekah the daughter

Rebekah had drawn

XXIV

m

XXII 3 and XXIV, 24 Therefore by "'son of and the granddaughter of Nahor. "descendant'. Nahor" is meant presumably only toward evening, preparatory V. 7. Sheep were usually watered night. to being penned up for the a slow is V 8 Watering manv flocks of sheep from one wellshepherds to these of Therefore the verse pictures the custom task the It is also customary that earlv in the afternoon.

V

5

Bethuel

assemble still first shepherds to arrive

water their flocks first, while the additional reason for these late-comers must wait. Burckhardt, Travels in Syria shepherds coming early to the well. Cf. and the Holy Land, 63. emV 9 Among the nomad Semites girls are very frequently at a well,

This

was an

the flocks of their ployed as shepherdesses, particularly of lies.

own

fami- \n