Study Desk

Then Leah gave birth to another son. She named him Judah, because she said, "Now I will praise the Lord ." Then Leah stopped having children.

When Rachel saw that she was not having children for Jacob, she envied her sister Leah. She said to Jacob, "Give me children, or I'll die!"

Jacob became angry with her and said, "Can I do what only God can do? He is the one who has kept you from having children."

Leah saw that she had stopped having children, so she gave her slave girl Zilpah to Jacob as a wife.

Then God remembered Rachel and answered her prayer, making it possible for her to have children.

Give me my wives and my children and let me go. I have earned them by working for you, and you know that I have served you well."

God took all this wealth from our father, and now it belongs to us and our children. So do whatever God has told you to do."

So Jacob put his children and his wives on camels,

Laban said to Jacob, "These girls are my daughters. Their children belong to me, and these flocks are mine. Everything you see here belongs to me, but I can do nothing to keep my daughters and their children.

Please save me from my brother Esau. I am afraid he will come and kill all of us, even the mothers with the children.

You said to me, ‘I will treat you well and will make your children as many as the sand of the seashore. There will be too many to count.'"

Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and with him were four hundred men. So Jacob divided his children among Leah, Rachel, and the two slave girls.

Jacob put the slave girls with their children first, then Leah and her children behind them, and Rachel and Joseph last.

When Esau looked up and saw the women and children, he asked, "Who are these people with you?" Jacob answered, "These are the children God has given me. God has been good to me, your servant."

Then the two slave girls and their children came up to Esau and bowed down flat on the earth before him.

Leah and her children also came up to Esau and also bowed down flat on the earth. Last of all, Joseph and Rachel came up to Esau, and they, too, bowed down flat before him.

But Jacob said to him, "My master, you know that the children are weak. And I must be careful with my flocks and their young ones. If I force them to go too far in one day, all the animals will die.

So, my master, you go on ahead of me, your servant. I will follow you slowly and let the animals and the children set the speed at which we travel. I will meet you, my master, in Edom."

They took every valuable thing the people owned, even their wives and children and everything in the houses.

God said to him, "I am God Almighty. Have many children and grow in number as a nation. You will be the ancestor of many nations and kings.