Genesis 31:1-21

Living Bible

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.^[a] ‘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.