Genesis 29:15-35
The story of Jacob is one of chastening, in other words, of the school through which God makes His own to pass. It is a hard school, for Hebrews 12:11 declares — and our own experience confirms it — that no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous! But God’s objective is "our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness" . The class that Jacob enters is going to last twenty years which he will go through in conditions close to slavery. And how will God teach him His lessons? He is going to allow the same thing to happen to Jacob as Jacob did to others. Jacob, whose name means "supplanter", a name well justified, is going in his turn to be cheated and deprived. He had deceived his father in that being the younger one, he passed himself off as the elder. He now has dealings with a father who deceives him by passing off his elder daughter as the younger! How many times we only discover the annoyance or wickedness of our actions when we suffer the same thing from someone else (Judges 1:7). The only happy subject which is brought before us in this chapter is Jacob’s devoted love for Rachel. We think of the love of the One who, in order to win us, has become the Perfect Servant.