Genesis 29-31

Living Bible

29 Jacob traveled on, finally arriving in the land of the East. ² He saw in the distance three flocks of sheep lying beside a well in an open field, waiting to be watered. But a heavy stone covered the mouth of the well. ³ (The custom was that the stone was not removed until all the flocks were there. After watering them, the stone was rolled back over the mouth of the well again.) ⁴ Jacob went over to the shepherds and asked them where they lived.

“At Haran,” they said.

⁵ “Do you know a fellow there named Laban, the son of Nahor?”

“We sure do.”

⁶ “How is he?”

“He’s well and prosperous. Look, there comes his daughter Rachel with the sheep.”

⁷ “Why don’t you water the flocks so they can get back to grazing?” Jacob asked. “They’ll be hungry if you stop so early in the day!”

⁸ “We don’t roll away the stone and begin the watering until all the flocks and shepherds are here,” they replied.

⁹ As this conversation was going on, Rachel arrived with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherdess. ¹⁰ And because she was his cousin—the daughter of his mother’s brother—and because the sheep were his uncle’s, Jacob went over to the well and rolled away the stone and watered his uncle’s flock. ¹¹ Then Jacob kissed Rachel and started crying! ^12-13 He explained about being her cousin on her father’s side, and that he was her Aunt Rebekah’s son. She quickly ran and told her father, Laban, and as soon as he heard of Jacob’s arrival, he rushed out to meet him and greeted him warmly and brought him home. Then Jacob told him his story.

¹⁴ “Just think, my very own flesh and blood,” Laban exclaimed.

After Jacob had been there about a month, ¹⁵ Laban said to him one day, “Just because we are relatives is no reason for you to work for me without pay. How much do you want?” ¹⁶ Now Laban had two daughters, Leah, the older, and her younger sister, Rachel. ¹⁷ Leah had lovely eyes, but Rachel was shapely, and in every way a beauty. ¹⁸ Well, Jacob was in love with Rachel. So he told her father, “I’ll work for you seven years if you’ll give me Rachel as my wife.”

¹⁹ “Agreed!” Laban replied. “I’d rather give her to you than to someone outside the family.”

²⁰ So Jacob spent the next seven years working to pay for Rachel. But they seemed to him but a few days, he was so much in love. ²¹ Finally the time came for him to marry her.

“I have fulfilled my contract,” Jacob said to Laban. “Now give me my wife, so that I can sleep with her.”

²² So Laban invited all the men of the settlement to celebrate with Jacob at a big party. ²³ Afterwards, that night, when it was dark, Laban took Leah to Jacob, and he slept with her. ²⁴ (And Laban gave to Leah a servant girl, Zilpah, to be her maid.) ²⁵ But in the morning—it was Leah!

“What sort of trick is this?” Jacob raged at Laban. “I worked for seven years for Rachel. What do you mean by this trickery?”

²⁶ “It’s not our custom to marry off a younger daughter ahead of her sister,” Laban replied smoothly.^{[a] 27} “Wait until the bridal week is over and you can have Rachel too—if you promise to work for me another seven years!”

²⁸ So Jacob agreed to work seven more years. Then Laban gave him Rachel, too. ²⁹ And Laban gave to Rachel a servant girl, Bilhah, to be her maid. ³⁰ So Jacob slept with Rachel, too, and he loved her more than Leah, and stayed and worked the additional seven years.

³¹ But because Jacob was slighting Leah, Jehovah let her have a child, while Rachel was barren. ³² So Leah became pregnant and had a son, Reuben (meaning “God has noticed my trouble”), for she said, “Jehovah has noticed my trouble—now my husband will love me.” ³³ She soon became pregnant again and had another son and named him Simeon (meaning “Jehovah heard”), for she said, “Jehovah heard that I was unloved, and so he has given me another son.” ³⁴ Again she became pregnant and had a son, and named him Levi (meaning “Attachment”) for she said, “Surely now my husband will feel affection for me, since I have given him three sons!” ³⁵ Once again she was pregnant and had a son and named him Judah (meaning “Praise”), for she said, “Now I will praise Jehovah!” And then she stopped having children.

30 Rachel, realizing she was barren, became envious of her sister. “Give me children or I’ll die,” she exclaimed to Jacob.

² Jacob flew into a rage. “Am I God?” he flared. “He is the one who is responsible for your barrenness.”

³ Then Rachel told him, “Sleep with my servant girl Bilhah, and her children will be mine.” ⁴ So she gave him Bilhah to be his wife, and he slept with her, ⁵ and she became pregnant and presented him with a son. ⁶ Rachel named him Dan (meaning “Justice”),^[b] for she said, “God has given me justice, and heard my plea and given me a son.” ⁷ Then Bilhah, Rachel’s servant girl, became pregnant again and gave Jacob a second son. ⁸ Rachel named him Naphtali (meaning “Wrestling”), for she said, “I am in a fierce contest with my sister and I am winning!”

⁹ Meanwhile, when Leah realized that she wasn’t getting pregnant anymore, she gave her servant girl Zilpah to Jacob, to be his wife, ¹⁰ and soon Zilpah presented him with a son. ¹¹ Leah named him Gad (meaning “My luck has turned!”).

¹² Then Zilpah produced a second son, ¹³ and Leah named him Asher (meaning “Happy”), for she said, “What joy is mine! The other women will think me blessed indeed!”

¹⁴ One day during the wheat harvest, Reuben found some mandrakes^[c] growing in a field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel begged Leah to give some of them to her.

¹⁵ But Leah angrily replied, “Wasn’t it enough to steal my husband? And now will you steal my son’s mandrakes too?”

Rachel said sadly, “He will sleep with you tonight because of the mandrakes.”

¹⁶ That evening as Jacob was coming home from the fields, Leah went out to meet him. “You must sleep with me tonight!” she said; “for I am hiring you with some mandrakes my son has found!” So he did. ¹⁷ And God answered her prayers and she became pregnant again, and gave birth to her fifth son. ¹⁸ She named him Issachar (meaning “Wages”), for she said, “God has repaid me for giving my slave girl to my husband.” ¹⁹ Then once again she became pregnant, with a sixth son. ²⁰ She named him Zebulun (meaning “Gifts”), for she said, “God has given me good gifts for my husband. Now he will honor me, for I have given him six sons.” ²¹ Afterwards she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah.

²² Then God remembered about Rachel’s plight, and answered her prayers by giving her a child. ^23-24 For she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. “God has removed the dark slur against my name,” she said. And she named him Joseph (meaning “May I also have another!”), for she said, “May Jehovah give me another son.”

²⁵ Soon after the birth of Joseph to Rachel, Jacob said to Laban, “I want to go back home. ²⁶ Let me take my wives and children—for I earned them from you—and be gone, for you know how fully I have paid for them with my service to you.”

²⁷ “Please don’t leave me,” Laban replied, “for a fortune-teller that I consulted^[d] told me that the many blessings I’ve been enjoying are all because of your being here. ²⁸ How much of a raise do you need to get you to stay? Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”

²⁹ Jacob replied, “You know how faithfully I’ve served you through these many years, and how your flocks and herds have grown. ³⁰ For it was little indeed you had before I came, and your wealth has increased enormously; Jehovah has blessed you from everything I do! But now, what about me? When should I provide for my own family?”

^31-32 “What wages do you want?” Laban asked again.

Jacob replied, “If you will do one thing, I’ll go back to work for you. Let me go out among your flocks today and remove all the goats that are speckled or spotted, and all the black sheep. Give them to me as my wages. ³³ Then if you ever find any white goats or sheep in my flock, you will know that I have stolen them from you!”

³⁴ “All right!” Laban replied. “It shall be as you have said!”

^35-36 So that very day Laban went out and formed a flock for Jacob of all the male goats that were ringed and spotted, and the females that were speckled and spotted with any white patches, and all of the black sheep. He gave them to Jacob’s sons to take them three days’ distance, and Jacob stayed and cared for Laban’s flock. ³⁷ Then Jacob took fresh shoots from poplar, almond, and sycamore trees, and peeled white streaks in them, ³⁸ and placed these rods beside the watering troughs so that Laban’s flocks would see them when they came to drink; for that is when they mated. ^39-40 So the flocks mated before the white-streaked rods, and their offspring were streaked and spotted, and Jacob added them to his flock. Then he divided out the ewes from Laban’s flock and segregated them from the rams, and let them mate only with Jacob’s black rams. Thus he built his flocks from Laban’s. ⁴¹ Moreover, he watched for the stronger animals to mate, and placed the peeled branches before them, ⁴² but didn’t with the feebler ones. So the less healthy lambs were Laban’s and the stronger ones were Jacob’s! ⁴³ As a result, Jacob’s flocks increased rapidly and he became very wealthy, with many servants, camels, and donkeys.

31 But Jacob learned that Laban’s sons were grumbling, “He owes everything he owns to our father. All his wealth is at our father’s expense.” ² Soon Jacob noticed a considerable cooling in Laban’s attitude toward him.

³ Jehovah now spoke to Jacob and told him, “Return to the land of your fathers, and to your relatives there; and I will be with you.”

⁴ So one day Jacob sent for Rachel and Leah to come out to the field where he was with the flocks, ⁵ to talk things over with them.

“Your father has turned against me,” he told them, “and now the God of my fathers has come and spoken to me. ⁶ You know how hard I’ve worked for your father, ⁷ but he has been completely unscrupulous and has broken his wage contract with me again and again and again. But God has not permitted him to do me any harm! ⁸ For if he said the speckled animals would be mine, then all the flock produced speckled; and when he changed and said I could have the streaked ones, then all the lambs were streaked! ⁹ In this way God has made me wealthy at your father’s expense.

¹⁰ “And at the mating season, I had a dream, and saw that the he-goats mating with the flock were streaked, speckled, and mottled. ¹¹ Then, in my dream, the Angel of God called to me ¹² and told me that I should mate the white female goats with streaked, speckled, and mottled male goats.^[e] ‘For I have seen all that Laban has done to you,’ the Angel said. ¹³ ‘I am the God you met at Bethel,’ he continued, ‘the place where you anointed the pillar and made a vow to serve me. Now leave this country and return to the land of your birth.’”

¹⁴ Rachel and Leah replied, “That’s fine with us! There’s nothing for us here—none of our father’s wealth will come to us anyway! ¹⁵ He has reduced our rights to those of foreign women; he sold us, and what he received for us has disappeared. ¹⁶ The riches God has given you from our father were legally ours and our children’s to begin with! So go ahead and do whatever God has told you to.”

^17-20 So one day while Laban was out shearing sheep, Jacob set his wives and sons on camels, and fled without telling Laban his intentions. He drove the flocks before him—Jacob’s flocks he had gotten there at Paddan-aram—and took everything he owned and started out to return to his father Isaac in the land of Canaan. ²¹ So he fled with all of his possessions (and Rachel stole her father’s household gods and took them with her) and crossed the Euphrates River and headed for the territory of Gilead.

²² Laban didn’t learn of their flight for three days. ²³ Then, taking several men with him, he set out in hot pursuit and caught up with them seven days later, at Mount Gilead. ²⁴ That night God appeared to Laban in a dream.

“Watch out what you say to Jacob,” he was told. “Don’t give him your blessing and don’t curse him.” ²⁵ Laban finally caught up with Jacob as he was camped at the top of a ridge; Laban, meanwhile, camped below him in the mountains.

²⁶ “What do you mean by sneaking off like this?” Laban demanded. “Are my daughters prisoners, captured in a battle, that you have rushed them away like this? ²⁷ Why didn’t you give me a chance to have a farewell party, with singing and orchestra and harp? ²⁸ Why didn’t you let me kiss my grandchildren and tell them good-bye? This is a strange way to act. ²⁹ I could crush you, but the God of your father appeared to me last night and told me, ‘Be careful not to be too hard on Jacob!’ ³⁰ But see here—though you feel you must go, and long so intensely for your childhood home—why have you stolen my idols?”

³¹ “I sneaked away because I was afraid,” Jacob answered. “I said to myself, ‘He’ll take his daughters from me by force.’ ³² But as for your household idols, a curse upon anyone who took them. Let him die! If you find a single thing we’ve stolen from you, I swear before all these men, I’ll give it back without question.” For Jacob didn’t know that Rachel had taken them.

³³ Laban went first into Jacob’s tent to search there, then into Leah’s, and then searched the two tents of the concubines, but didn’t find them. Finally he went into Rachel’s tent. ³⁴ Rachel, remember, was the one who had stolen the idols; she had stuffed them into her camel saddle and now was sitting on them! So although Laban searched the tents thoroughly, he didn’t find them.

³⁵ “Forgive my not getting up, Father,” Rachel explained, “but I’m having my monthly period.”^[f] So Laban didn’t find them.

^36-37 Now Jacob got mad. “What did you find?” he demanded of Laban. “What is my crime? You have come rushing after me as though you were chasing a criminal and have searched through everything. Now put everything I stole out here in front of us, before your men and mine, for all to see and to decide whose it is! ³⁸ Twenty years I’ve been with you, and all that time I cared for your ewes and goats so that they produced healthy offspring, and I never touched one ram of yours for food. ³⁹ If any were attacked and killed by wild animals, did I show them to you and ask you to reduce the count of your flock? No, I took the loss. You made me pay for every animal stolen from the flocks, whether I could help it or not.^{[g] 40} I worked for you through the scorching heat of the day, and through the cold and sleepless nights. ⁴¹ Yes, twenty years—fourteen of them earning your two daughters, and six years to get the flock! And you have reduced my wages ten times! ⁴² In fact, except for the grace of God—the God of my grandfather Abraham, even the glorious God of Isaac, my father—you would have sent me off without a penny to my name. But God has seen your cruelty and my hard work, and that is why he appeared to you last night.”

⁴³ Laban replied, “These women are my daughters, and these children are mine, and these flocks and all that you have—all are mine. So how could I harm my own daughters and grandchildren? ⁴⁴ Come now and we will sign a peace pact, you and I, and will live by its terms.”

⁴⁵ So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a monument, ⁴⁶ and told his men to gather stones and make a heap, and Jacob and Laban ate together beside the pile of rocks. ^47-48 They named it “The Witness Pile”—“Jegar-sahadutha,” in Laban’s language, and “Galeed” in Jacob’s.

“This pile of stones will stand as a witness against us if either of us trespasses across this line,^[h]” Laban said. ⁴⁹ So it was also called “The Watchtower” (Mizpah). For Laban said, “May the Lord see to it that we keep this bargain when we are out of each other’s sight. ⁵⁰ And if you are harsh to my daughters, or take other wives, I won’t know, but God will see it. ^51-52 This heap,” Laban continued, “stands between us as a witness of our vows that I will not cross this line to attack you and you will not cross it to attack me. ⁵³ I call upon the God of Abraham and Nahor, and of their father, to destroy either one of us who does.”

So Jacob took oath before the mighty God of his father, Isaac, to respect the boundary line. ⁵⁴ Then Jacob presented a sacrifice to God there at the top of the mountain, and invited his companions to a feast, and afterwards spent the night with them on the mountain. ⁵⁵ Laban was up early the next morning and kissed his daughters and grandchildren, and blessed them, and returned home.