Gen. 31: 19. ‘Meanwhile Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s household idols.’ (Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. The New Jewish Publication Society Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text).
Reading this biblical verse as a Jewish woman, I recall its traditional rabbinic interpretation, which is that Rachel stole the idols to keep her father Laban from the sin of idolatry. And yet it seems more plausible that, about to leave her father’s home and travel with Jacob to an unknown land, Rachel would have wanted to take the doll-like teraphim with her, hidden under her skirts, because it was these that she still half-believes had kept her safe since she was a child. If she were trying to preserve her father’s religious virtue the narrative’s tragic irony would be lost. For Jacob, not knowing that Rachel had stolen the figurines, makes an oath to her father that whoever is found with them will not remain alive (Gen. 31:32). By the end of Genesis 35, Rachel has died giving birth to Benjamin and is buried by the road to Ephrath (Gen, 35:16-20).
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