Study Desk

When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him, and said, "You must come in to me; for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes." So he lay with her that night.

Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, and let me go; for you know very well the service I have given you."

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

He said, "What shall I give you?" Jacob said, "You shall not give me anything; if you will do this for me, I will again feed your flock and keep it:

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

but for the feebler of the flock he did not lay them there; so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.

And he said, ‘Look up and see that all the goats that leap on the flock are striped, speckled, and mottled; for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you.

Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and he has been using up the money given for us.

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

Even though you had to go because you longed greatly for your father's house, why did you steal my gods?"

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

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

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 have changed my wages ten times.

and the pillar Mizpah, for he said, "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 beyond this heap to you, and you will not pass beyond this heap and this pillar to me, for harm.

I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies.

Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children.

So he spent that night there, and from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau,

and you shall say, ‘Moreover your servant Jacob is behind us.'" For he thought, "I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me."

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