To STEAL — the verb that rings through Jacob's flight like an alarm. Rachel ganav-steals her father's teraphim (31:19); Jacob ganav-steals 'the HEART' of Laban (31:20) — ganav lev, the Hebrew idiom for hoodwinking, deceiving someone (Absalom later 'steals the heart' of Israel, 2 Samuel 15:6); and Laban throws the word back three times ('you stole my heart… you stole from me… why did you steal my gods?', 31:26-30). The supplanter's whole household turns out to be a household of thieves. It is the plainest word behind the eighth commandment, 'you shall not steal' (Exodus 20:15). ⭐ Deuteronomy 24:7 (now on these pages) is the capital case: a man found stealing a person, gonev nefesh, from among his brothers, trafficking in him and selling him, is ha-gannav, that thief, and dies — and the two verbs, stolen and sold, are the two Joseph uses of himself at Genesis 40:15 and his brothers use at 37:27. A rabbinic reading, reported here rather than adopted, takes the commandment's you shall not steal as this theft in particular, because the commandments on either side of it are capital and stealing an object is not. The modern shelf prints 'kidnapper' (NIV, NWT 1984) where the Hebrew has the ordinary noun for a thief, which the KJV keeps. → first discussed at Gen 31:20