Study Desk

"For you had little before I came and it has increased to a multitude, and the LORD has blessed you wherever I turned. But now, when shall I provide for my own household also?"

So he said, "What shall I give you?" And Jacob said, "You shall not give me anything. If you will do this one thing for me, I will again pasture and keep your flock:

"So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come concerning my wages. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, will be considered stolen."

"He said, 'Lift up now your eyes and see that all the male goats which are mating are striped, speckled, and mottled; for I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you.

"Are we not reckoned by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and has also entirely consumed our purchase price.

"Now you have indeed gone away because you longed greatly for your father's house; but why did you steal my gods?"

Then Jacob replied to Laban, "Because I was afraid, for I thought that you would take your daughters from me by force.

"The one with whom you find your gods shall not live; in the presence of our kinsmen point out what is yours among my belongings and take it for yourself." For Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them.

She said to her father, "Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the manner of women is upon me." So he searched but did not find the household idols.

"These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flock, and you changed my wages ten times.

"If the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had not been for me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God has seen my affliction and the toil of my hands, so He rendered judgment last night."

and Mizpah, for he said, "May the LORD watch between you and me when we are absent one from the other.

"This heap is a witness, and the pillar is a witness, that I will not pass by this heap to you for harm, and you will not pass by this heap and this pillar to me, for harm.

for he said, "If Esau comes to the one company and attacks it, then the company which is left will escape."

I am unworthy of all the lovingkindness and of all the faithfulness which You have shown to Your servant; for with my staff only I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two companies.

"Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, that he will come and attack me and the mothers with the children.

"For You said, 'I will surely prosper you and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which is too great to be numbered.'"

So he spent the night there. Then he selected from what he had with him a present for his brother Esau:

and you shall say, 'Behold, your servant Jacob also is behind us.'" For he said, "I will appease him with the present that goes before me. Then afterward I will see his face; perhaps he will accept me."

Then he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."