“These twenty years, I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and the rams of your flock I have not eaten” (Genesis 31:38). “I did not bring a mauled animal to you, I bore its loss; from me you could demand it, whether stolen from me by day, or stolen from me by night” (Genesis 31:39). “These twenty years…I did not bring a mauled animal to you” – that was killed. “I bore its loss [aḥatena]; from me you could demand it” – I would betray [hoteh] the lion, as so the Holy One blessed be He decreed for the lion, that it would maul and consume from Laban’s flock each day.
If you say that were another shepherd there he would have saved them, the verse states: “Just as the lion or the young lion will roar over its prey, although a multitude of shepherds will be called against it, it will not be disheartened from their voice and it will not respond to their commotion” (Isaiah 31:4). “Whether stolen from me by day or stolen from me by night” – they call me a thief during the day and a thief at night.22Because there were no sheep missing from your flock, everyone assumed that I stole from the flocks of others to replace those that were missing.
What would he recite?23What did Jacob recite all those nights that he did not sleep? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: He would recite the fifteen Songs of Ascent that are in the book of Psalms.24Psalms 120–134. That is what is written: “Had it not been for the Lord, who was with us, let Israel now say” (Psalms 124:1) – Israel the elder. Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: He would recite the entire book of Psalms: “You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel” (Psalms 22:4) – Israel the elder.
“These twenty years, I” – Rabbi Ḥiyya Rabba said: Each and every matter that Laban would stipulate with Jacob, he would renege upon it ten times retroactively, as it is stated: “Hen lu.”25See subsection 3 above. The Rabbis say: One hundred times, as it is stated: “And changed my wages ten times [monim]” (Genesis 31:7), as a quorum [minyan] is no fewer than ten.26See subsection 3 above.