Jacob Rebukes Laban and the Worth of Torah Over Honor

Rav Safra said: from where do the Persians call a menstruant woman "isolated"? From here: "the way of women is upon me" (Genesis 31:35). (Genesis 31:36-37) "And Jacob was angry and quarreled with Laban." The strictness of the fathers is better than the meekness of the sons. From where do we learn the strictness of the fathers? "And Jacob was angry and quarreled with Laban." Do you suppose there were blows and wounds there? There were only words of appeasement. Jacob appeases his father-in-law: "now that you have felt through all my goods" -- a son-in-law dwelling in his father-in-law's house, is it possible he never benefited from a single vessel, an object, a knife? But here, "you have felt through all my goods" -- even a single needle, even a single fork. And not the meekness of the sons, learned from David: (1 Samuel 20:1) "And David fled from Naioth in Ramah and came and said before Jonathan, What have I done, what is my iniquity, what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life?" -- he mentions bloodshed in his appeasement. (Genesis 31:38-41) "I did not bring you a torn animal" -- one that had been killed. "I bore the loss of it" -- I would be the sinner against the lion, for so the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed upon his flock, that the lion should eat five of them each day. And lest you say that another shepherd would have saved it, Scripture teaches (compare Isaiah 31:4) "as the lion and the young lion growl over their prey." "Stolen by day and stolen by night" -- they called me a thief of the day and a thief of the night. "These twenty years I have been in your house": the study of Torah is greater than honoring father and mother, for all those years that Jacob was in the house of Eber he was not punished for them.