And she said to her father, Let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise up before thee; for the custom of women is upon me. And he searched, but found not the images.
Let it not displease my lord. The Hebrews, instead of addressing a person of dignity in the second person singular, thou and thee, said, "my lord" (Numbers 12:11; 1 Kings 17:18; 2 Samuel 14:9).
For the custom of women is upon me. She availed herself of a notion which seems to have obtained in patriarchal times, and which was afterward enacted in the Mosaic Code as a law, that a woman in the alleged circumstances was unclean, and communicated a taint to everything with which she came into contact. It was a mere pretext, however, on the part of Rachel, to avoid the further researches of her father.