and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
I will curse those who treat you
with contempt,
and all the peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
When the Lord told Abraham that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him, he was talking about our salvation. Jesus Christ our Savior would be born through the descendants of Abraham.
However, when they arrived in Canaan, Abraham and his wife Sarah were already old and were not able to have any children. They made an ill-advised attempt to correct that through Sarah’s Egyptian servant Hagar, and as a result, Ishmael was born. However, the Lord told Abraham that it would be through Sarah that his descendants would be counted. When Abraham was 100 years old, Sarah gave birth to Isaac. (Isaac means Laughter, by the way.) Isaac was not born in the normal way, but as the result of a promise—God’s promise. Ishmael and Hagar were sent away.
When Isaac became a young man, God tested Abraham. In chapter 22, he told him to take Isaac to a place that he would show him in the land of Moriah and there to offer him as a burnt offering. The Lord referred to Isaac as “your only son whom you love”. “Take Isaac, your only son whom you love and offer him as a burnt offering.” Abraham took him. And you know, Abraham knew, that even if he did sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering, that God would raise him from the dead. It doesn’t say that explicitly in chapter 15, but only hints at it. (It’s actually in the New Testament.) But Abraham knew that the Lord had promised that his descendants would be counted through Isaac, so he knew that he would return with Isaac alive. Abraham believed the Lord and he did return with Isaac alive. Abraham had said that God himself would provide the lamb for the burnt offering, and so he did. …And so he has! God told Abraham to take his only son whom he loved and sacrifice him. And God took his only Son whom he loved and in whom he was well pleased and sacrificed him for our sins, a perfect, spotless Lamb of God, Abraham’s descendant through whom all nations are blessed.
When Isaac was 40 years old, Abraham arranged for him to have a wife. He knew that it would not do for Isaac to marry a Canaanite woman, so he sent to Haran, where his family had remained, for a bride for Isaac. Rebekah came back and married Isaac. But, as in the case of Abraham and Sarah, they had no children. After twenty years (Isaac would have been 60) he prayed and Rebekah became pregnant with twins. Esau and Jacob were born.
When the boys grew up, Esau was an outdoorsman who loved the field, but Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home. Isaac favored Esau, but Rebekah favored Jacob.
When Isaac was old, he wanted to pronounce a blessing on Esau. (This was a serious thing too—not just something that would make Esau feel good, but something that would have the power of God behind it.) He told Esau to go out and hunt some game and bring it back and prepare a delicious meal for him to eat and then he would bless him.
Esau went out. But Rebekah had overheard them talking and believed that Jacob should have the blessing. (Actually, God had determined that Jacob would have the blessing and that the nation that he was going to establish would come through Jacob, but Rebekah apparently didn’t trust him to be able to carry it out without help.) Anyway, she told Jacob that she would prepare some food for Isaac and that he should take it in to him and pretend to be Esau and then receive the blessing. Jacob would be able to fool Isaac, she thought, because Isaac was just about blind.
When Jacob brought the food in, Isaac was suspicious, but in the end his desire to eat the food won out and he convinced himself that it was really Esau. The result was that he blessed Jacob instead of Esau. (Incidentally, Jacob’s name means deceiver.)
When Esau got back and found out what had happened, he begged Isaac to bless him, but Isaac told him there was no blessing left for him (and this wasn’t just because Isaac’s stomach was full, it was because it was God’s will that the blessing go to Jacob). Esau was devastated.
Well, some time later, Rebekah found out that Esau was talking about killing Jacob because of the stolen blessing, so she arranged for Jacob to run away to her relatives back in Haran. She told Isaac that Jacob needed to go there to get a wife so that he wouldn’t marry a Canaanite woman (a little more at least partial deception). Jacob left and headed for Haran alone. It was a trip of several hundred miles.
On the way to Haran, Jacob met God (or rather, God met him). Let me read the passage. It’s from Genesis 28:11-15 (I’m reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the HCSB):
11He reached a certain place and spent the night there because the sun had set. He took one of the stones from the place, put it there at his head, and lay down in that place. 12And he dreamed: A stairway was set on the ground with its top reaching heaven, and God’s angels were going up and down on it. 13The Lord was standing there beside him, saying, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your offspring the land that you are now sleeping on. 14Your offspring will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out toward the west, the east, the north, and the south. All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15Look, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:11-15)
(Remember God’s promise to bring Jacob back. We’ll see that he kept it.) When Jacob woke up from his dream, he took the stone that had been near his head and anointed it with oil. He named the place Bethel—House of God—and made this vow:
“If God will be with me and watch over me on this journey, if He provides me with food to eat and clothing to wear, 21and if I return safely to my father’s house, then the Lord will be my God. 22This stone that I have set up as a marker will be God’s house, and I will give to You a tenth of all that You give me.” (Genesis 28:20b-22)
Then Jacob continued on and arrived at the house of Rebekah’s brother, Laban. One of the first people he met was Laban’s daughter, Rachel (his cousin, in fact). He fell in love with her and wanted to marry her.
Now, after Jacob had been in Haran for a month, Laban saw how hard he was working taking care of his flocks and wanted to make a contract with him—probably so that he wouldn’t be in danger of losing his services. So he said to Jacob, “Tell me what your wages should be. Why should you work for nothing?” Jacob told Laban that he would work for him for seven years in exchange for his daughter Rachel.
Now, Jacob was called deceiver; that was his name, but Laban was sneakier than he was, and I think he had observed Jacob and Rachel and suspected that Jacob would be willing to work for him for a long time in exchange for Rachel. Well, I won’t go over the details, but, as a result of the deal he made, Jacob wound up with a somewhat dysfunctional family consisting of four wives, 11 sons and a daughter. And he wound up working for Laban for 20 years instead of seven.
The 11 sons that Jacob had, as we come up to the beginning of today’s passage, became 11 of the 12 patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel. I’ll give you there names in order of their birth: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun and Joseph. Jacob’s daughter was named Dinah. His wives were Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, Leah’s slave and Bilhah, Rachel’s slave. And that brings us up to the beginning of today’s passage.
Today’s passage starts at Genesis 30:25 and continues through Genesis 31:21. We’ll just read part of it, the part in chapter 31. What leads up to this part of the passage, the part in chapter 31, is Jacob’s becoming very rich during the last few years of his stay with Laban. Here’s how it happened.
After 14 years of serving Laban to pay the price for his two daughters, Leah and Rachel, Jacob figured he had met his end of the agreement (the agreement he had been snookered into) and it was time to leave. But Laban recognized that the Lord had blessed Jacob’s work and had made him prosperous through Jacob. He didn’t want to lose Jacob’s services and told him he wanted him to stay longer and to name his wages. Jacob told him that, if he would just let him separate out all the speckled, spotted and dark-colored sheep from the flock, those would be his pay. That would be all the pay he would need. Laban agreed to this—but immediately had his sons take all the speckled, spotted, streaked goats and dark colored sheep and move them a three-day journey away. So, at that point, it looked as though Jacob would have no wages!
However, Jacob did some magic tricks by peeling the bark from some branches to make them striped. When he placed the striped branches in the watering troughs where the flocks drank, the sheep that bred in front of the branches produced speckled, streaked and spotted young. He separated these young from Laban’s sheep and started his own flock. In that way, Jacob became very rich. (And I might comment at this point that I don’t really understand what the peeled branches did and nobody else seems to either. Maybe it was something that people believed worked back in those days. But we’ll see as we read the first part of chapter 31 that it was really the Lord who made it work. It’s really the Lord who makes everything work!) Anyway, Jacob became very rich and the results were that Laban’s sons were jealous.
So let’s read the word of God. I’m going to start at chapter 31, verse 1:
Jacob Separates from Laban
1Now Jacob heard what Laban’s sons were saying: “Jacob has taken all that was our father’s and has built this wealth from what belonged to our father.” 2And Jacob saw from Laban’s face that his attitude toward him was not the same.
3Then the Lord said to him, “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your family, and I will be with you.”
4Jacob had Rachel and Leah called to the field where his flocks were. 5He said to them, “I can see from your father’s face that his attitude toward me is not the same, but the God of my father has been with me. 6You know that I’ve worked hard for your father 7and that he has cheated me and changed my wages 10 times. But God has not let him harm me. 8If he said, ‘The spotted sheep will be your wages,’ then all the sheep were born spotted. If he said, ‘The streaked sheep will be your wages,’ then all the sheep were born streaked. 9God has taken your father’s herds and given them to me.
10 “When the flocks were breeding, I saw in a dream that the streaked, spotted, and speckled males were mating with the females. 11In that dream the Angel of God said to me, ‘Jacob!’ and I said: Here I am. 12And He said, ‘Look up and see: all the males that are mating with the flocks are streaked, spotted, and speckled, for I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you. 13I am the God of Bethel, where you poured oil on the stone marker and made a solemn vow to Me. Get up, leave this land, and return to your native land.’”
14Then Rachel and Leah answered him, “Do we have any portion or inheritance in our father’s household? 15Are we not regarded by him as outsiders? For he has sold us and has certainly spent our money. 16In fact, all the wealth that God has taken from our father belongs to us and to our children. So do whatever God has said to you.”
17Then Jacob got up and put his children and wives on the camels. 18He took all the livestock and possessions he had acquired in Paddan-aram, and he drove his herds to go to the land of his father Isaac in Canaan. 19When Laban had gone to shear his sheep, Rachel stole her father’s household idols. 20And Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean, not telling him that he was fleeing. 21He fled with all his possessions, crossed the Euphrates, and headed for the hill country of Gilead. (Genesis 31:1-21)
Now, you see, God did not forget about Jacob. He was with him the whole time he was with Laban. And he specifically brought up the vow that Jacob had made at Bethel when he saw the vision of the stairway to heaven: “I’m the same God that met you at Bethel and have been with you right along all these past 20 years.” And God gave Jacob a command. “Get up, leave this land and return to your native land. (verse 13) Rachel and Leah agreed to leave with Jacob. They felt that they were no longer part of their father’s family. They all packed up and they left.
Verse 20 says that Jacob deceived Laban by not telling him they were leaving. Some of us might not consider that deception, but that’s what God calls it. (It’s the Hebrew word from which Jacob’s name is derived.) Why is it deception? I think it’s because Jacob withheld some information from Laban that he needed to know—that Jacob was departing with Laban’s daughters and grandchildren. Jacob hid that information from Laban and let him believe that he was not leaving.
It’s also mentioned in the passage that Rachel stole Laban’s household gods. I tried to find out what they were—what are household gods. Nobody seems to be exactly sure. The word is teraphim and is used in several other places in the Bible. They are apparently some sort of images. Laban should not have owned them and Rachel certainly should not have stolen them. Later, when God told Jacob to return to Bethel, he buried them along with all the other pagan items that his people had had in their possession.
Well, that’s all for today. We’ll see next time that Laban didn’t just let Jacob run away, but went after him, apparently with the idea of doing great harm to him. But God warned Laban not to harm Jacob. He protected Jacob, and Laban and Jacob parted in peace. God chose Jacob, even though he was far from perfect and kept Jacob in spite of himself. He gave Jacob a lot of possessions and a lot training and as we’ll see, there’s still more to come.
The Lord chose Jacob and the Lord chooses us also. He chooses us because it was his will to bless all peoples on earth through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Lord made the nation of Israel. Through the nation of Israel he gave us his word. And through the nation of Israel, he gave us his one and only Son, whom he loved, to teach us and to then receive the punishment we deserved. God loves us. Jesus loves us. Let us be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live lives of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Let us love our brothers and sisters in Christ.