Old Testament Tricksters
AM Psalm 97, 99, [100] • PM Psalm 94
Gen. 31:1-24 • 1 John 2:1-11 • John 9:18-41
Our Old Testament story today is the tail end of Jacob’s career tending his father-in-law Laban’s flocks. Jacob’s relationship with Laban is basically one trying to trick the other over and over. First, Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah before Rachel, meaning that Jacob had to work extra years to marry his true love. Then Jacob tricked Laban by using some sort of stick-sorcery to cause the sheep under his care to give birth to striped and speckled babies, which meant that Laban had fewer solid-colored animals to keep for himself. When Jacob firmly took the upper hand with his many wives and sheep, God told him to go back to his ancestral land away from Laban.
Last year was the first time that I critically read Genesis for Education for Ministry. I wrote in week 5 notes that I was bothered by the lack of moral to the Jacob/Laban saga and that it was a lot like Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens, which is a children’s book about a cunning tennant-farmer hare who is able to harvest the good parts of his crops for himself and tricks his landlord the bear into keeping the inedible parts. I didn’t think very deeply about the connection at the time. Today, though, I looked up the story. Tops and Bottoms’ background illuminated the purpose of Jacob’s story in a way that other connections hadn't. Tops and Bottoms is an adaptation of a traditional trickster folk story from Africa which came to America via the slave trade. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the trickster story is centered around how a small, weak, but clever person can overcome a strong, powerful, dull-witted one through cunning.
When I read the Jacob/Laban story in this light, the moral isn’t just that the Old Testament was a Wild West, anything-goes place with wacky things happening all the time. When reading it as a trickster story, I remember that Jacob isn't meant to be the obvious winner from the start. Laban had wives, children, slaves, and sheep when Jacob came to meet him. Jacob was this story’s underdog. But by the end of his servitude to Laban, Jacob was blessed with all sorts of things due to the cunning that God gave him.
Written by Haley Hixson
Has God given a child you know the gift of wit? Tops and Bottoms is a Caldecott-winning book I vividly remember my mom reading me during my childhood. Check it out at Janet Stevens’ website!