Episode 294 - "Laban's tricks and Jacob's faithfulness" - Genesis 30:25-43

Gen. 30:25 As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. 26 Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” 27 But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you. 28 Name your wages, and I will give it.” 29 Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. 30 For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the LORD has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?” 31 He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it: 32 let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. 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.” 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 the charge of his sons. 36 And he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban’s flock.

Gen. 30:37 Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. 38 He set the sticks 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 sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted. 40 And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban. He put his own droves apart and did not put them with Laban’s flock. 41 Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the sticks, 42 but for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s. 43 Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

The first thing I notice in this story is that Jacob is ready to go home. Clearly, he’s had “success” while working for his uncle Laban. He had eleven sons and a daughter by his two wives and their servants. By what transpires with Laban attempting to do whatever he can to keep Jacob and his family from leaving, we know that he has been successful in shepherding Laban’s sheep and goats. Furthermore, it seems clear to everyone in the story that this success is from the LORD. It would be so easy to just keep on keeping on.

But it appears to me that Jacob, having completed his commitment of service to Laban in return for his two wives, understands that he belongs back in the land of Canaan, which will be his inheritance by virtue of the covenant that God made with his grandfather Abraham and has recommitted to Isaac and to Jacob as he fled from his home in fear of his brother Esau. Yet, at this point, Jacob seems to have no concern about Esau. He simply wants to go back home and take his family and earnings with him. I believe this inclination to return home is not Jacob wanting a change of scenery. It’s the LORD’s sovereign work in Jacob’s life that is leading him to the fulfillment of the blessings that the LORD has promised Jacob.

Now we learn something about Laban. First, Laban learned from “divination” that the LORD had blessed him because of Jacob (v. 27). From “divination?” Why did Laban not understand this from revelation and from observation? Laban had some understanding of the LORD’s blessing upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when Abraham sent his servant to his family to find a wife for Isaac. Laban’s family was blessed by Abraham through that interaction, and now, for these past fourteen years, Laban has had plenty of opportunity to see the LORD’s blessing upon him by having Jacob marry his daughters and work for him. He doesn’t need divination to understand that. This suggests that while Laban knows who the LORD is, it is not evident that he trusts the LORD.

The next thing that we learn about Laban, which has already appeared before, is that Laban is concerned about nothing but Laban. When Jacob agrees to work longer for him, Laban agrees in word, but promptly attempts to cheat the arrangement.

Let’s talk about this arrangement for a minute. If I understand the scholars correctly, sheep in that part of the world are normally white, and goats are normally black. If this is the case, Jacob, through his proposed arrangement, tells Laban that he will keep the unusual sheep and goats. While Laban agrees to this, Laban promptly removes all the unusual sheep and goats from the herd with the assumption that the all white sheep and the all black goats will continue to breed and bring forth offspring that are solid in their respective colors. In other words, he does everything in his power to minimize the number of sheep and goats Jacob would keep, thereby making it necessary for Jacob to continue working for him.

But Jacob does two things. First, as he was shepherding Laban’s flocks, he put peeled sticks (that would appear striped) in front of the flocks in the anticipation that the breeding animals would see them and that, in turn, would cause their offspring to not have a solid color wool according to their breed. Now, I grew up in an area with sheep, goats, and other livestock. I have never heard of anyone doing this, and I have no evidence that this would work for anyone. But the point is that Jacob did believe this would work because he believed the LORD would bless him. The second thing that Jacob did was he only put the sticks in front of the breeding animals who were the strongest and healthiest. That makes sense.

Verse 43 informs the reader that his flocks became great and he was very successful.

This story is really about the contrast between a man (Laban) who recognizes who the LORD is but does not trust him and only works to serve himself, and a man (Jacob) whom the LORD is leading to a life of faith and blessing as he demonstrates his trust in the LORD.

I am not a “prosperity gospel” person. I don’t read the Scriptures in such a way that the interpretation means that God will provide me with wealth in this life. In fact, Jesus told the disciples that the poor would still be among them and that they themselves would suffer for his name’s sake. But the Scriptures do tell us that God cares for the flowers and the birds, and cares for us even more so. The Scriptures also affirm an eternal life of abundance in all our needs. In this life and this time, the followers of Jesus must not focus on ourselves. We must trust the LORD and be instruments of God’s blessing to others.

Episode 267 - "Sarai 'helps' God" - Genesis 16:1-6

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!” 6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.

Let’s cover this story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar over the course of a few episodes. We’ll observe how the problem or conflict created by Abram and Sarai’s actions, apart from God’s promise to them, complicate things. While this story is about a specific situation with specific people to a particular audience, we can glean a principle that is valuable to us today.

This story begins with another reminder that Abram and his wife Sarai still have no children despite the LORD's promise that Abram’s descendants would be innumerable. The reader is next told that Sarai had a female Egyptian servant named Hagar. In all likelihood, Hagar was given as a servant to Sarai when Abram and Sarai traveled to Egypt, and the pharaoh took Sarai into his house to marry her. This detail should interest the intended audience of Israelites who had been in servitude to the Egyptians. The Egyptians were descendants of Ham through his son Mizraim. (See Gen. 10:6) Of course, Ham was the one who dishonored his father, Noah. Abram had risked compromising the LORD’s plan for him by telling the Egyptians that Sarai was his sister and allowing the Egyptian Pharaoh to take her into his house. Now, Abram is the one lying with an Egyptian.

As tragic stories unfold, sometimes the details seem a bit humorous. In this case, the humor is in how Sarai asserts fault in everyone in the story except for Sarai, who instigated this train wreck of a plan to give Abram a descendant. First, it is the LORD’s fault for preventing Sarai from having children. She told Abram to have sexual relations with Hagar in order to have children by her. The story seems to echo the Adam and Eve story, where Abram, like Adam, did not appear to question the wisdom of this opportunity. He just did it. When Hagar conceived, we’re told that “she looked with contempt upon her mistress” (v. 4). Sarai, understandably, could not deal with that but blamed Abram and treated Hagar harshly.

While I’m tempted just to shake my head and chuckle at this mess, I find myself more inclined to empathize with the pain each individual must have felt at some point. If we stop and think about it, Sarai must have been pained over her inability to have a child. The LORD’s promise of many descendants to her husband must have added fuel to that fire when it wasn’t happening, and her biological clock was ticking or perhaps had “tocked.” Abram likely shared that pain to some degree and mostly empathized with his wife’s concern. The LORD’s delay or perceived failure in giving them a child as they were getting older led to his pondering how that promise might be fulfilled. So, when Sarai came up with the plan, he just went along with it. Hagar was a servant to Sarai, a second-class citizen. When she was able to have a child by Abram, it seems to have evoked her pride because she finally had one thing over her mistress. But this backfired on her. It wasn’t her fault in the first place because she was at the mercy of Sarai and Abram’s will.

What it comes down to is that Abram and Sarai decided to help the LORD by devising their own plan to bring about God’s promised descendant. They are successful in producing a descendant of Abram. But was this the promised seed to Abram? Is this the “seed of the woman” who will crush the head of the serpent? We’ll see how this plays out in our next episode.

The theological principle coming to light already is that when God makes a promise, our attempts to make it happen through our own devices will likely create a bigger mess for ourselves. As Abram and Sarai will learn, we need to trust the LORD and wait on him. God can and will bring about every single promise he has made.