This is one of the most disturbing explanations in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, and it changes how you read Rahel's theft forever. While Laban was away shearing his flock, Rahel stole the teraphim. But what were they?
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells the secret. They had slain a man — a firstborn — cut off his head, salted it with salt and balsams, and written incantations on a plate of gold. They placed the plate under the tongue. They set the head up in the wall, and it spake with them (Genesis 31:19). This was what Laban bowed down to. This was the oracle of the household.
So when Rahel hid the images under her saddle, she was not stealing sentimental heirlooms. She was dismantling her father's necromantic idolatry. She was removing the mouthpiece through which a murdered firstborn was forced to speak.
Rahel's act is reframed as rescue — rescuing her father from a sin too gruesome to name, and rescuing her household from being guided by the words of the dead. The images had to go.
The Maggid teaches: sometimes a theft is an act of mercy. Sometimes the only way to break an idol is to take it with you and let its silence in a foreign tent finish its career.