Lavan (Laban)

לבן


Genesis 24:29 ff names him as the son of Betu-El ben Nachor, Nachor being Av-Ram's brother. In verse 31 it is he who, seeing the rings and bracelets on his sister Rivkah's hands, which denote that she has accepted the offer of betrothal brought by Av-Ram's servant Eli-Ezer, invites Eli-Ezer to the family house and makes him welcome.

Genesis 25:50 describes him as an Aramaean from Padan-Aram.

Genesis 27:43:- Ya'akov (Jacob) is sent to him in Charan by Rachel BUT

Genesis 28:2 ff: he was actually sent to him in Padan-Aram by Yitschak (Isaac). Does Charan therefore mean the town, and Padan-Aram the region (like saying his mother sent him to Charleston in one text, but his father to Carolina in another)?

Genesis 29 ff: Ya'akov in exile, serving Lavan for fourteen years for his daughters, and then a further seven (approximately; the text is not precise about the length of the third seven-year kingship, as Ya'akov fled before its completion). Like Shimshon (Samson) and Herakles and David and Arthur and Siegfried and many others, the tale belongs to the conventional cycle-legend (epic, saga) of the labours of the sacred-king for the right to marry the High Priestess and assume the throne in partnership with her.

Lavan (the name means "white" in Yehudit) is the white god who must originally have been Ha Lavanah (הלבנה), a name for Astarte, or a male moon-god equivalent; but he is also the "white mountain", Mount Chermon (Hermon), whose predominance over that region is the source of the name Levanon (Lebanon).

Le'ah is identified in Jewish lore as meaning "the Cow", and as such is associated with Io/Hat-Hor the Cow-Goddess. But who was Rachel? The answer is: a character from a quite different myth, appended to this tale at a much later stage, in order to ratify the tribal amalgamation of Yehudah and Ephrayim under King David. Which leaves the question open: did Ya'akov serve two terms as sacred-king, one for each wife; or indeed a third, bearing in mind the coronation-myth of the wrestling-match at Penu-El and his other two "concubines", and bearing in mind that the sons of "concubines" do not normally have the same status in a matriarchal cult as do the sons of "wives", and yet the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah were fully accepted as tribes. Or have three different myths been absorbed into one, and in fact he only served one term with Lavan, which is more likely? For a fuller explanation of what the Ya'akov-Lavan stories were really about, see the exegesis of Genesis 29 ff.

Lavan (לבן) = "white"; whence "to clean, purify, purge" etc; also, oddly, LEVANAH (לבנה) = "to make bricks" ( cf Ezekiel 4:1) a word probably derived from the chalky clay with which they were made in Babylon; and indeed in Egypt, as the same word is used for bricks (Levenim - לְבֵנִים) in Exodus 1:14, though that may be an Ezraic anachronism, or it may simply be a coincidence, or the derivation may have come the other way around, as the Yehudit root for "build" is BANAH (בנה), which yields LIVNOT (לִבנוֹת) for "to build", and thereby LEVENIM for bricks.

Ha-Lavanah (הלבנה) – "the white one" - was a poetic name for the moon; Yareyach - ירח - which yields Yericho or Jericho, being the other.

Levanah (לבנה) is also a proper name in Ezra 2:45 and Nehemiah 7:48.

Genesis 30:37 has Livneh (לבנה), the white poplar, sacred to the goddess.

Libnah (לבנה) in the flatlands of Yehudah was a royal city of the Beney Kena'an that later became a priestly city and a refuge city (The Book of Joshua has various references; see also 2 Kings 8:22; 19:8 and 23:31).

Numbers 33:20 makes Libnah (לבנה) a station of the Beney Yisra-El in the desert.

Deuteronomy 1:1 names Lavan (לבן) as a city in the desert of Transjordan; presumably another, smaller moon shrine.

Levonah (לבונה) is incense, and specifically frankincense which is a very pure white (Leviticus 2:1/15; 5:11; 24:7; Numbers 5:15; Isaiah 60:6; Jeremiah 6:20; Song of Songs 4:6 and 4:14). In the Jesus legends, frankincense, along with gold and myrrh, appear in the manger story with the Magi, the priests of Zoroaster (Matthew 2:11).

Lebonah (לבונה) is mentioned as a town near Shiloh (Judges 21:19), probably the modern al-Lubban, though whether Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya (اللبّن الشرقية‎‎) on the Palestinian West Bank just south of Nablus, or Al-Lubban al-Gharbi (اللبّن الغربيّ‎‎), slightly further west, near Ramallah, is uncertain.

Levanon (לבנון): the modern state of Lebanon, incorporating Mount Chermon in its south and divided by the Beka'a Valley (Bikat Ha Levanon/בקעת הלבנון).

Exodus 6:17 and Numbers 3:18 have Libni (לבני) as a son of Gershon ben Levi.

The Laben were King David's choristers, usually castrati (see Psalms), though there is almost certainly a scribal error in Psalm 9:1 - Al mut laben - על מות לבן - whose correct form can be deduced from Psalm 46:1 (Al alamot - על עלמות); the latter meaning "with unbroken voices for the boys", a perfect description of either castrati or countertenor singing; in this case Laben is not linked to Lavan = "white" at all, but is a conflagration of Ben (בן) = a son/boy with the prefix "Le" (ל) = "to" or "for", though a presumed link to Lavan is probably the reason for the error.

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