Father-In-Law
The umbrella collects two contrasting portraits of the father-in-law: a hospitable host in Judges 19, and Laban as Jacob's grasping kinsman in Genesis 29 and 31. The same relationship — wife's father to husband — produces two opposite pictures.
Hospitable: The Levite's Father-in-Law
In the Judges 19 narrative, a Levite from the hill country has come to Bethlehem-judah to recover his concubine. Her father receives him with extended welcome. "And her husband arose, and went after her, to speak kindly to her, to bring her again, having his attendant with him, and a couple of donkeys: and she brought him into her father's house; and when the father of the damsel saw him, he rejoiced to meet him" (Jdg 19:3). The father-in-law immediately presses his guest to stay: "And his father-in-law, the damsel's father, retained him; and he remained with him three days: so they ate and drank, and lodged there" (Jdg 19:4).
When the Levite tries to leave on the fourth day, the father intervenes again: "the damsel's father said to his son-in-law, Strengthen your heart with a morsel of bread, and afterward you⁺ will go your⁺ way" (Jdg 19:5). After the meal he urges another night — "Be pleased, I pray you, to tarry all night, and let your heart be merry" (Jdg 19:6) — and "his father-in-law urged him, and he lodged there again" (Jdg 19:7). On the fifth day the same pressure continues — "Strengthen your heart, I pray you, and tarry⁺ until the day declines" (Jdg 19:8) — and finally a plea to stay through evening because the day is far gone (Jdg 19:9). The father-in-law's hospitality is laid out across days, meals, and repeated requests to stay; the term "father-in-law" / "son-in-law" is used by the narrator throughout.
Unjust: Laban to Jacob
The Genesis material gives the opposite picture. The marriage that initiates the relationship is itself the first deception. Jacob asks for his contracted wife — "Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may enter her" (Ge 29:21) — and Laban gathers a wedding feast: "And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast" (Ge 29:22). But the daughter brought to the tent that night is the wrong one: "in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him. And he entered her" (Ge 29:23).
Jacob's later complaint to Rachel and Leah summarizes the whole relationship as a pattern of broken terms. "And your⁺ father has deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God didn't allow him to hurt me" (Ge 31:7). His direct confrontation with Laban returns to the same accounting. He reminds Laban that he absorbed every loss himself — "That which was torn of beasts I didn't bring to you; I bore the loss of it; of my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night" (Ge 31:39) — and labored under brutal conditions: "in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep fled from my eyes" (Ge 31:40).
The total reckoning follows: "These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock: and you have changed my wages ten times" (Ge 31:41). Without divine protection, Jacob says, the outcome would have been theft outright: "Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the Fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty. God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked you last night" (Ge 31:42).