Study Desk

You will live by your sword but you will serve your brother. When you grow restless, you will tear off his yoke from your neck."

Then Jacob woke up and thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place, but I did not realize it!"

Leah's eyes were tender, but Rachel had a lovely figure and beautiful appearance.)

So Jacob worked for seven years to acquire Rachel. But they seemed like only a few days to him because his love for her was so great.

Then Rachel said, "I have fought a desperate struggle with my sister, but I have won." So she named him Naphtali.

But Leah replied, "Wasn't it enough that you've taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes too?" "All right," Rachel said, "he may sleep with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes."

But Laban said to him, "If I have found favor in your sight, please stay here, for I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me on account of you."

Indeed, you had little before I arrived, but now your possessions have increased many times over. The Lord has blessed you wherever I worked. But now, how long must it be before I do something for my own family too?"

So Laban asked, "What should I give you?" "You don't need to give me a thing," Jacob replied, "but if you agree to this one condition, I will continue to care for your flocks and protect them:

But Jacob took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond, and plane trees. He made white streaks by peeling them, making the white inner wood in the branches visible.

Jacob removed these lambs, but he made the rest of the flock face the streaked and completely dark-colored animals in Laban's flock. So he made separate flocks for himself and did not mix them with Laban's flocks.

But if the animals were weaker, he did not set the branches there. So the weaker animals ended up belonging to Laban and the stronger animals to Jacob.

There he said to them, "I can tell that your father's attitude toward me has changed, but the God of my father has been with me.

but your father has humiliated me and changed my wages ten times. But God has not permitted him to do me any harm.

If he said, ‘The speckled animals will be your wage,' then the entire flock gave birth to speckled offspring. But if he said, ‘The streaked animals will be your wage,' then the entire flock gave birth to streaked offspring.

Hasn't he treated us like foreigners? He not only sold us, but completely wasted the money paid for us!

But God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream at night and warned him, "Be careful that you neither bless nor curse Jacob."

I have the power to do you harm, but the God of your father told me last night, ‘Be careful that you neither bless nor curse Jacob.'

So Laban entered Jacob's tent, and Leah's tent, and the tent of the two female servants, but he did not find the idols. Then he left Leah's tent and entered Rachel's.

(Now Rachel had taken the idols and put them inside her camel's saddle and sat on them.) Laban searched the whole tent, but did not find them.