Study Desk

"Is he well?" he asked. "He is well," they answered. "Look, here comes his daughter Rachel with his flock."

When Jacob saw Rachel with his uncle Laban's flock, he went to the well, rolled the stone back, and watered the sheep.

and when he heard the news about his nephew Jacob, he ran to meet him, hugged him and kissed him, and brought him into the house. When Jacob told Laban everything that had happened,

(Laban gave his slave woman Zilpah to his daughter Leah as her maid.)

Jacob agreed, and when the week of marriage celebrations was over, Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as his wife.

(Laban gave his slave woman Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maid.)

When Leah realized that she had stopped having children, she gave her slave Zilpah to Jacob as his wife.

During the wheat harvest Reuben went into the fields and found mandrakes, which he brought to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, "Please give me some of your son's mandrakes."

But that day Laban removed the male goats that had stripes or spots and all the females that were speckled and spotted or which had white on them; he also removed all the black sheep. He put his sons in charge of them,

Jacob kept the sheep separate from the goats and made them face in the direction of the streaked and black animals of Laban's flock. In this way he built up his own flock and kept it apart from Laban's.

Jacob heard that Laban's sons were saying, "Jacob has taken everything that belonged to our father. He got all his wealth from what our father owned."

So Jacob sent word to Rachel and Leah to meet him in the field where his flocks were.

So Jacob got ready to go back to his father in the land of Canaan. He put his children and his wives on the camels, and drove all his flocks ahead of him, with everything that he had gotten in Mesopotamia.

Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and during his absence Rachel stole the household gods that belonged to her father.

He took his men with him and pursued Jacob for seven days until he caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead.

Jacob had set up his camp on a mountain, and Laban set up his camp with his relatives in the hill country of Gilead.

Laban went and searched Jacob's tent; then he went into Leah's tent, and the tent of the two slave women, but he did not find his gods. Then he went into Rachel's tent.

Rachel said to her father, "Do not be angry with me, sir, but I am not able to stand up in your presence; I am having my monthly period." Laban searched but did not find his household gods.

Then Jacob lost his temper. "What crime have I committed?" he asked angrily. "What law have I broken that gives you the right to hunt me down?

If the God of my fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac, had not been with me, you would have already sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my trouble and the work I have done, and last night he gave his judgment."