⁴¹ 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.^(A)

⁷ yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times, but God did not permit him to harm me.^(A)

²⁶ on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters;^(A)

¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.^(A)

³⁸ These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks.

³³ So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.”^{(A) 34} Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.” ³⁵ But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black and put them in charge of his sons, ³⁶ and he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, while Jacob was pasturing the rest of Laban’s flock.

³⁷ Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the rods.^{(B) 38} He set the rods that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, ³⁹ the flocks bred in front of the rods, and so the flocks produced young that were striped, speckled, and spotted. ⁴⁰ Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and the completely black animals in the flock of Laban, and he put his own droves apart and did not put them with Laban’s flock.

¹⁸ Jacob loved Rachel, so he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”^{(A) 19} Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” ²⁰ So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.

²¹ Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.”^{(B) 22} So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast.^{(C) 23} But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. ²⁴ (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.) ²⁵ When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” ²⁶ Laban said, “This is not done in our country—giving the younger before the firstborn. ²⁷ Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.”^{(D) 28} Jacob did so and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife. ²⁹ (Laban gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her maid.) ³⁰ So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. He served Laban^[a] for another seven years.^(E)