Vayeitsei. Lavan – White or Shady?

Why is Lavan’s remark to Jacob that it is “not done in our regions to give the younger before the older” so significant?

Lavan is cited in our rabbinic sources as the prototype of the swindler and the hypocrite. Yet from the above-cited remark of his (Gen 29:26) a halachic dispute is resolved and a moral argument debated.

This should not surprise us. The Torah does not paint its personalities in hues of black and white. The failings of an Abraham, a Jacob, a Moses, a Miriam, are not glossed over but instead are spotlighted. Similarly the positive lessons to be learned from even an Esau, a Bilaam or a Lavan are not ignored.

Firstly the moral debate. Here, as Lavan counters Jacob’s impassioned accusation of deception, he manifests almost as the pricking voice of conscience clouding Jacob’s vision.

Such is how the author of the commentary Tseida la-Derekh sees it. Lavan had heard – probably from his ingenuous nephew himself – how Jacob had obtained the birthright and subsequently the patriarchal blessing at the expense of his older brother. No doubt Jacob, moral perfectionist that he was, would have represented himself to Lavan in an unflattering light. Now Lavan, placed on the defensive, turns Jacob’s scrupulous openness against him. Asked by an outraged Jacob “how could you have done this to me, substituting your older daughter Leah for Rachel for whom I worked for seven years as per our agreement – why have you cheated me?” Lavan retorts: “Here in our country, the shenanigans that you got up to just don’t happen! Here it simply isn’t done to give the younger in marriage before the older, and you don’t change from ‘younger’ to ‘older’ just by making a deal!” Singularly chastened (even though Lavan’s hypocritical ‘moral chastisement’ was merely an attempt to save face), Jacob has no option but to agree to Lavan’s new terms to win the hand of Rachel.

Maharsham goes further. He judges Lavan’s actions here in a positive light. He declares that Lavan did not wish to embarrass or shame his older daughter Leah and it was this as well as a certain sense of propriety and etiquette that led him to pursue the ruse of substitution on the wedding night. (We know that, according to the Midrash, Rachel too was a party to the deception in her compassion for her less-favoured older sister.)

Maharsham goes on to explain that this positive motivation is the reason we derive a halakha from Lavan’s behaviour. Tosafot cite the halachic dispute in question in their commentary to Kiddushin 52a. A question came before Rabeinu Tam (one of the Tosafists) regarding a certain young man who betrothed a woman by saying to her father “your daughter is betrothed to me” without specifying which daughter. Rabeinu Tam decides that in cases such as this it is the eldest daughter who is betrothed because, as Laban says, it is inappropriate etiquette-wise to marry off a younger child before an older one.

However his view is by no means unanimously upheld. And indeed according to halakha, while it might arguably be regarded as desirable it is by no means mandatory that an older sibling be married first.

Finally, Lavan’s use of the royal ‘we’ is interesting, both in the verse captioned and the following one where he declares “Fulfil the marriage week of this one (Leah) and we shall give you the other (Rachel) also…”

Who is “we”? From the context, the explanation of Ramban appears the most plausible. He explains: “we” refers to Lavan along with the anshei ha-makom, the communal identities of the region who, it is implied, would not allow him to give his younger daughter Rachel to Jacob before Leah. “We” is a short but sheltering pronoun behind which Lavan can hide.

Such is the way of the bureaucrat, politician, CEO or company chairman forced to defend an unpopular or bad decision. Often he will seek to eschew responsibility, saying “it wasn’t my choice – the community / committee / corporation forced the issue”. Frequently he will even succeed in convincing himself that he is guiltless.

In Lavan’s case, the Midrash explicitly declares that he goaded the communal leaders into a conspiracy. So at least according to this source, any attempt at self-whitewash in this regard was delusionary and dishonest.