Cheated, Genesis 29-31, Life of Jacob

Cheated - Genesis 29-31

An Exposition by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

Jacob falls in love, marries a cousin or two, begins a family, is cheated by his father-in-law for 20 years, and flees.

The Supplanter, whose cheating forced him to leave his home, now arrives in Paddan Aram (Haran), hundreds of miles away. He is lonely, and eager to see his mother's family, hoping that they will receive him into their home.

Jacob the Servant (29:1-14)

Jacob arrives at a well in the desert, to find three flocks of sheep lying near it, and their shepherds taking their ease.

"Have you heard of Laban?" he asks.

"Yes, we know him."

"How is he?"

"He's fine ... and here comes his daughter Rachel."

Jacob sees a young woman leading a flock of sheep towards the well, looks at the heavy stone over the well, and suddenly he feels a chivalrous impulse towards his cousin.

"Get up," he says to the reclining shepherds, hoping to get them to move the stone. "It's not quitting time. Water the sheep and then take them back in the field. There's still time for grazing before dark."

None makes a move. "We always wait until all the flocks are gathered before we move the stone and water the sheep," they tell him. They don't move muscle. They've always waited for all the shepherds to arrive before they move the stone together. No need to hurry today.

So Jacob goes to the well alone. The God who has promised to be with him gives him power. Single-handedly, by a great feat of strength, he rolls the great stone away from the top of the well. Then he puts down the bucket again and again to fill the nearby trough, until all of Rachel's sheep have been watered. Only when he's finished does the mysterious stranger identify himself. He kisses her in the Eastern custom of greeting and begins to weep.

"I am Jacob," he says, overcome by emotion. "Your father's nephew and Rebekah's son."

She runs home to tell her father of the wonderful man who has helped her water her sheep, a long lost relative. Soon Laban hurries to the well, embraces Jacob, kisses him, and invites him home, inquiring about the welfare of his sister and the rest of the Western branch of the family. "You are my own flesh and blood," he says.

Love is blind … too blind (29:15-30)

And so Jacob enjoys the comfort of his mother's family and helps out with the chores. But Jacob has shown them by his moving of the well stone that he is a doer, a decisive person, a person possessed by supernatural strength. He could be useful, thinks Laban. A month goes by, and one evening Laban brings up the matter of staying.

Laban isn't blind. He has observed how Jacob looks at his daughter and she at him. He sees a man utterly entranced. So he brings up the matter of wages.

"Just because you are kin doesn't mean I shouldn't be paying you for your work," he begins. "Let's determine some basis to pay you wages for watching my flocks."

Jacob has no doubt been thinking about this very thing. He has no money for a bride price, but he must have this enchanting girl, "lovely in form, and beautiful" (29:17)

"I'll work seven years for you in return for your younger daughter Rachel," he ventures.

Laban couldn't have hoped for more. Seven years of labor for just a bride price? That was far too generous. He must love her! But he doesn't let on.

"It'd be better for me to give her to you than some other man," he says with feigned resignation. "Stay with me." And so Jacob stays and works seven years for the love of his life, "but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her" (29:20)

At the end of seven years -- and you'd better believe Jacob has been counting -- he says to Laban, "Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her." That's a pretty direct way to talk to the father-of-the-bride!

And so Laban calls all his friends for a sumptuous feast to celebrate the event. The party goes long into the night. But Laban conducts not Rachel but Leah to Jacob to enjoy a night of intimacy. The scripture is terse: "When morning came, there was Leah!" (29:25, NIV). What a shock!

How could it have happened? Apparently customs of the time required no formal wedding ceremony to precede the consummation. Laban had called a feast (Hebrew misteh, from the root satah - "to drink"), a drinking banquet. Jacob was "deluded by wine and the dark," concluded Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities, 1.19.6, [sec 301]). It isn't the first time in Scripture that this sort of thing occurred; Lot's daughters had become pregnant by their father after getting him drunk (Genesis 19:32-35).

You can't miss the irony. Jacob deceives his blind father into believing he is Esau and giving him the blessing, and so Laban deceives the deceiver into marrying the older sister instead the girl of his dreams.

He comes to Laban in the morning with considerable anger. "What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you tricked me?"

Laban replies evenly, "Didn't you know? Here in Haran it is our custom to marry off the older daughter before the younger." You can almost see him smile wickedly showing yellowing teeth. "But I have a deal for you. Spend the customary bridal week with Leah and at the end of the week you can have Rachel. Only seven years more labor for her. What's a little misunderstanding among kin?"

Jacob is burning inwardly, but he sees his prize in sight. Only a week. He agrees to Laban's offer, and soon Rachel is his. Jacob's story gives new meaning to the saying "Love is blind."

Jacob's children (29:31-30:24)

Why, I wonder, does God allow Jacob to be tricked? I'm sure that the Supplanter needed to taste some of his own medicine. God was building character of integrity in Jacob, and God needed to deal with this serious flaw of deceit. But this is more than just a character building. This is also a time of family building. God is raising up for Jacob the beginnings of the great people that he had promised, as many as the sand of the seashore and the stars in the sky. God begins the people with the gene pool of five individuals, three of them closely related (Jacob, Leah, and Rachel), and two of them completely different, the servant girls (Bilhah and Zilpah).

As a wedding present Laban had given each of his daughters a maidservant as their property. Leah had been given Zilpah (29:24), and Rachel had been given Bilhah (29:29). The Scripture doesn't teach slavery any more than polygamy, but God works with people and cultures and gradually changes them and their values. The Scripture simply reports here.

The passage that recounts each of Jacob's children unfolds a tale of jealousy and competition within the family. Rachel is the favorite wife, but is barren (29:30). She is to give up Jacob to her sister's bed in exchange for mandrakes, reputed to make a woman fertile, but to no avail (30:14-16). She is reduced to giving her servant Bilhah to Jacob to bear children for her (30:1-6), and when Leah's fecundity falters, she reciprocates by giving her servant girl Zilpah to Jacob to bear yet more (30:9). (Bilhah and Zilpah probably don't have full status as wives, since they are clearly acting as surrogates for their mistresses. Notice, for example, who names the babies. They were probably considered concubines.) It is clear that Jacob loves only Rachel, but he ends chapter 30 with eleven sons and a daughter.

We see in this passage an interesting custom of naming of children based on the hopes and dreams and happenstances of the wives. In many cases the derivation of the name is more "sounds like" than true etymological derivation, but in a non-literature culture, who knew or cared? Here are the sons, their name meanings, and mothers.

Name

Meaning

Mother

1.

Reuben

"see, a son"

Leah

2.

Simeon

"one who hears"

Leah

3.

Levi

"attached"

Leah

4.

Judah

"praise"

Leah

5.

Dan

"he has vindicated"

Bilhah

6.

Naphtali

"my struggle"

Bilhah

7.

Gad

"good fortune" or "a troop"

Zilpah

8.

Asher

"happy"

Zilpah

9.

Issachar

"reward"

Leah

10.

Zebulun

"honor"

Leah

11.

Joseph

"may he add"

Rachel

12.

Benjamin

"son of my right hand," Gen. 35:18

Rachel

(We mention Benjamin in this context just for completeness). Leah also had a daughter named Dinah, though no etymology for the name is given (30:21). Weren't there any other daughters among all these children? Probably. "Daughters" (plural) are mentioned in 34:9, 16, but they probably weren't considered important to this story of the origins of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Dinah is mentioned only because she figures in family events in chapter 34. Neither were they counted among the members of Jacob's family that went to Egypt (46:8-27). Women figure much more prominently in the New Testament, as Jesus elevates them to equality and importance.

Jacob's prosperity (30:25-43)

The birth of these children apparently took a total of fourteen years or more (30:25-26). With more than a dozen children, two wives, and two concubines to support, Jacob has nothing but his own labor. He was a hired hand; he owned no flocks. He confronts Laban, asking to be released to return to his homeland, saying, "When may I do something for my own household?" (30:30)

Laban, who likes this sweet deal he's had for a dozen years, doesn't want to let him go. "Please stay, for I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. Name your wages and I will pay them" (30:27-28). Divination (if that is really the translation here) is the heathen practice of gaining understanding about the present or future by means of signs or omens.

Indeed, Laban had been blessed through Jacob's presence in answer to God's promise, "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring" (28:14). Jacob argues this to Laban: "The little you had before I came has increased greatly, and the LORD has blessed you wherever I have been" (30:30).

Laban, feeling at a negotiating disadvantage, presses him for terms: "What shall I give you?"

Jacob asks that after the current striped or spotted sheep and goats are removed from the flock, that he get any striped or spotted animals which are subsequently born. Thus, when Jacob is saying, "Don't give me anything," he means, don't give me anything of the current huge flock; only those variegated animals that may be born in the future. In the Near East sheep are normally white and the goats are black. At most, the variegated animals might constitute 20%.

Laban smiles, and the same day removed all the abnormally colored sheep and goats, and put them in the care of his son whom he sent three-days journey away. Laban would fix him! But Laban hadn't reckoned with God.

Jacob, ever the entrepreneur, seeks to maximize the number of spotted and streaked goats and sheep by state-of-the-art breeding techniques: having the animals mate in front of brown and white striped sticks, on the theory that what they saw at conception would affect the embryo. It sounds like an old wives' tale of a century ago. Did this superstition make Jacob rich? No more than mandrakes made a woman fertile.

Jacob has done what he knew to do, but he fully realized that God's blessing was the real operative power. Laban, seeing how successful Jacob was becoming in developing larger and larger variegated flocks began changing the terms of the deal. Each time he did, God changed the coloration patterns of the kids and lambs that were being born.

As Jacob explained to Rachel and Leah,

"... The God of my father has been with me.... Your father has cheated me by changing my wages ten times. However, God has not allowed him to harm me. If he said, 'The speckled ones will be your wages' then all the flocks gave birth to speckled young; and if he said, 'The streaked ones will be your wages,' then all the flocks bore streaked young. So God has taken away your father's livestock and has given them to me" (31:5-9).

Jacob was under no illusions. He had done all he knew to do, but he attributed the results to God. He knew that peeled poplar sticks couldn't fine-tune coloration patterns. It had to be God himself!

Jacob Flees from Laban (31:1-55)

The more God blessed him, the more Jacob began to feel uneasy. Laban's sons were complaining that Jacob was taking their father's wealth away from him, and when Laban was around there was tension in the air. (31:1-2). But more important than that by far, the Lord spoke to him to go back (31:3) and to leave at once (31:13).

Jacob calls his wives Rachel and Leah away from the encampment into the fields so he can talk to them privately, and makes his case for leaving. If Jacob is to leave with his family and new-found wealth, he needs the active, willing cooperation of his wives. They were on Laban's turf. If Laban decided not to allow them to leave, he and the men he commanded could keep them there by force or intimidation, and if they escaped it would be with what the could carry on their backs only (31:42).

So Jacob shares with his wives about God's material blessings in spite of Laban's constantly changing terms (31:4-9) and Jacob's vision of an angel of God commanding him to return to his native land at once. Rachel and Leah were united in what they should do. There was no inheritance or share of their father's estate left for them. They felt used by their father: he had "sold" them and then used up the money. Legally, the father was to hold and use the bride price only for a time. The money, in whole or in part, was to revert to the daughter at the time her father died or if she were impoverished by her husband's death. (Victor P. Hamilton, Genesis 18-50, NICOT, p. 289; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 1:26-29). But since Laban had used up the "money" (he had traded seven years of labor for the bride in lieu of cash), Rachel and Leah would have nothing coming to them by staying near their father. They, too, were feeling their father's resentment towards Jacob (31:2); "Does he not regard us as foreigners?" they ask rhetorically (31:15). They felt alienated from their family and were ready to go with Jacob.

Once the decision is made, they await an opportune time. When Laban goes to shear the sheep (placed at three days journey from the camp to foil Jacob), the time has come. Jacob puts his children and wives on camels, and drives his flocks ahead of him on their way to Canaan.

When Laban is told "on the third day" (31:22), he gathers his relatives and takes off in hot pursuit. How dare they! It was one thing to grow large herds at his expense. It was even worse to leave before he had a chance to get them back! From Laban's reaction, it's pretty easy to see why Jacob, Rachel, and Leah, who knew him well, decided to leave unannounced. With his controlling attitude toward Jacob and his family, Laban would not have allowed them to leave if he could stop them.

But Laban "the Aramean" is accosted by God the night before he catches up with Jacob, in the hill country of Gilead, northeast of the Sea of Galilee. "Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad," was the divine warning (31:25, 29, 42). In other words, Laban is forbidden "from threatening Jacob with any harm" (Hamilton, Genesis 18-50, p. 299).

Laban is still angry and rails on about how Jacob has deceived him and "carried off my daughters like captives in war." He rhapsodizes about how he would have sent them away "with joy and singing to the music of tambourines and harps." I can see Jacob, Rachel, and Leah looking at one another trying to suppress a smile. They knew what Laban would have done.

Theft of household gods (31:19, 30-35)

But now Laban levels a serious charge: stealing his household Gods (Hebrew teraphim), portable idols, small enough to conceal inside a camel's saddle. Of course, the Hebrews would have thought the charge ludicrous. How could you steal a god? Rachel is guilty of "godnapping." But why? One ancient tablet found at Nuzi seems to indicate that possession of the family gods constituted title to the chief inheritance portion and headship of the family. (See the discussion in Hamilton, Genesis 18-50, p. 294). A simpler explanation was that she stole them for protection on her journey to Canaan. She had been raised believing in their power. She wasn't quite ready to replace her old way with Jacob's new faith -- especially when she was threatened with the greatest change and challenge of her life. She is like many Christians who have made some profession of faith, but haven't fully repented of some of their pagan ways, and in times of crisis fall back to what they know and trust.

Jacob knows nothing about Rachel's theft and vows that anyone found with the gods will be killed. Now Rachel deliberately deceives her father, and succeeds in keeping him from discovering the gods in his search of the tents. Jacob probably didn't know Rachel had them until after Laban had gone home, though not long later he commands his household, "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you and purify yourselves..." (35:2) as Jacob consecrates himself and family before God at Bethel.

The Covenant at Mizpah (31:36-55)

Jacob angrily confronts his father-in-law when Laban doesn't find any proof of the theft. He justifies himself. He took nothing that wasn't his. He had worked 14 years for Laban s daughters, and another six years for the flocks that were now his.

"If the God of my father ... had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you." (31:42)

And Jacob was right in his assessment, for immediately Laban says, "The women are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks. All you see is mine" (31:43). Laban did not recognize Jacob's right to anything, but God had warned Laban sternly and Laban was afraid to take anything by force.

Laban calls for a covenant between them. These are some of the elements of the covenant making in this passage:

A stone pillar, such as Jacob had set up in Bethel;
A heap of stones which they named Mizpah (watchtower) and Galeed or Gilead (witness heap);
Calling on Yahweh as witness and guarantor of the covenant: "May the LORD keep watch between you and me...."
A promise from Jacob not to mistreat his wives, nor to take rival wives to displace them from their status;
A non-aggression pact: "I will not go past this heap to your side to harm you...."
An oath in the name of God; and
A sacrifice and fellowship/covenant meal together.

When I was a boy, I heard the Mizpah covenant said as a parting word between friends: "May the LORD keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other" (31:49). But this was no sentimental saying. It was a threat with divine sanction that meant: If you break this covenant when I can't see you, may God watch you and punish you.

Notice, finally, how Laban took an oath to confirm the covenant compared to Jacob. Laban swears by "the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father" (31:53a). Jacob swears by "the Fear of his father Isaac" (31:53b), or "the One of Isaac who inspires dread" (so Hamilton, p. 310). Does Jacob wonder whether the God of Nahor and Abraham's father Terah (11:26-32) was the true God? Is that why he swears by "the Fear of his father Isaac" instead? We don't know. Many centuries later Joshua recounts, "Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshipped other gods" (Joshua 24:2), so it is possible that Jacob saw a distinction that Laban did not. Or it may have been just a way of reminding Laban that "the Dread of Isaac" who had appeared to him with a warning not to harm Jacob would be watching to make sure he obeyed.

Blessing and Conflict

When you look at Jacob's sojourn in Haran, he's got a lot to complain about. He is tricked into an extra seven years of labor. He has at least one wife -- his true love -- who worships idols. There's an ongoing conflict between Jacob's wives and children. Later he endures constant struggle with Laban who changes his wages ten times, always trying to better himself at Jacob's expense. He has to flee when Laban is away to be able to go home. Do you call that blessing?

But look at it from a larger perspective. Jacob came empty-handed and left with many children and great wealth. Indeed, God has been with him and watched over him (28:14-15), and even blessed Laban on his account (30:27).

Too often when we are experiencing trials we complain. "Nothing seems to be going right." How hard our life is. Too often we can't see the forest for the trees. Blessing always comes amidst conflict. Name one person in the Bible whom God blessed and blessed others through, and I'll show you struggle and suffering. Sometimes we act as if God has "promised us a rose garden." He has promised to bless us and to be with us, but he doesn't promise all sunny skies. "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace," says Jesus. "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

And that is God's word to you today, you who are feeling defeated and beat up and sorry for yourself. Jesus says to you, "Take heart, don't be discouraged, my child. I have overcome the world."