Thus the mythical appellations Jacob, Edom, and Laban appear to be cleared up, and the features belonging to them have discovered to us the nocturnal character of the first-named and the solar of the two latter personages. I have confined myself to the most essential point, the statement of the fact and the identification of the mythic figures in the centre of the story. If we were to use the collateral points also as mythic matter, more abundant results might be attained. But we must limit ourselves to an investigation of the main features, since in the present position of mythological inquiry it would be difficult and dangerous to try to pick out with any confidence from the epic descriptions in the Bible all that belongs to the original myth. It might, for instance, be urged that Jacob is endowed with a _deceitful_ character, since he cheats the one of his blessing and his birthright, and the other of his sheep (Hermes), and this might be treated as characteristic of the _night_, as the figures of the night-sky are credited elsewhere with a thievish nature. ‘Like thieves,’ said the ancient Indian singer, ‘so the nights stole away with their stars, that Sûrya might become visible’ (Rigveda, I. 50. 2). In a legend of the Palatinate the _King of the Night_ residing at the Ice-sea _stole_ the Sun;[449] Rachel steals the household-gods of her father Laban (Gen. XXXI. 19); and Jacob himself, as the Scripture expresses it, _steals_ the heart of Laban the Aramean, not telling him of his intention to fly (v. 20). Now wrapt in mantle, like a thief, the Night is seen, She covers o'er her silver-studded raiment’s sheen. says Arany, in his ‘Gipsies of Nagy-Ida’[450] (Canto I. v. 21). But what I have hitherto explained is only one side of Jacob’s mythical characteristics: we have seen against whom he fought. But Jacob did not only fight: he loved also, loved with tenderness and self-abnegation. He wooed, he married; and the history of his children takes up a considerable portion of the Book of Genesis. The loves of the Night-sky, the names of his wives whom he gained by conquest, and of the children that came out of his loins, must be an important part of the Myth of the Night-sky; and we should be accomplishing our task very imperfectly if we refused to enter on the consideration of these figures of Hebrew mythology.