I hope this story doesn’t confuse you. I myself got a little confused when I was studying it. I discovered that part of the narrative wasn’t as clear cut as I had thought. I have included three different theories as to what actually happened. The first one is what I thought had happened, revised a little by what I’d learned in the study. The second is one I thought of after studying it and trying to figure it out, but nobody else seemed to have thought of it. It would certainly fit with Laban’s character. The third was one I found after leaving Crosswalk.com and finding a different web site. Either none of the public domain commentaries on Crosswalk were written by people who thought this was what had happened, or they didn’t make it clear. But it made the most sense to me. I apologize, though, that I can’t tell you what the web site was. I saved it in my favorites, but between the time I did that and the time I finished writing I thought I needed to wipe and rebuild my hard drive to get rid of computer viruses that a local computer store’s clinic said that I had. I couldn’t find the site again. I included all three theories because I’m not sure what was happening between Jacob and Laban. My mother used to say about this kind of thing that this is just one of those things we’ll have to ask God when we get to heaven.
When the seven years Jacob was to serve Laban for Rachel were up, just after Joseph was born, Jacob decided he’d had enough of Laban’s schemes. He’d only planned to work for seven years, but Laban had gotten fourteen out of him, and had foisted a wife on him that he didn’t want. In today’s world, Jacob could probably have sued Laban and been free after seven years, and still had two wives. That is, if women could be used as payment in today’s world. Not a good idea, in any era.
If the commentators are right, Jacob was now ninety-one years old. Surely Esau, also ninety-one, would have forgiven him by now. He went to Laban and attempted to quit his job.
But Laban wasn’t about to let Jacob go. Laban was not a righteous man, but he knew enough about God to know that the amazing increases he’d had in his flocks in recent years was directly attributable to God blessing Jacob. But he didn’t know enough about God to know that that didn’t mean that Jacob was a good luck charm, and he wasn’t about to let his good luck charm get away from him. Laban asked Jacob to name his price. What would it cost to get Jacob to stay? What pay would Jacob like?
“Okay,” Jacob replied. “How about I take for my wages any sheep that aren’t pure white, and any spotted goats?”
Laban thought this was a great idea. Most of his sheep were pure white, and most of his goats were solid. Jacob wouldn’t get much. “Agreed.” He said.
Now here is where I got confused. When I re-read this passage of Scripture in preparation for the blog, I noticed something I’d never noticed before. The Bible says that he went through the flocks that very day and removed all qualifying sheep and goats and put them in the hands of his sons. Then it says he put three days journey between himself and Jacob.
I always thought that Jacob did the sheep removal, and that it was Jacob’s sons who got care of his new possessions, and that it was Jacob who put the three days journey between himself and Laban. But it didn’t say that. It says that he removed the sheep, he put them in the care of his sons, and he put three days’ journey between himself and Jacob. Jacob? Jacob wouldn’t be putting three day’s journey between himself and himself. That would be slightly impossible. The pronouns begin with the first action, the removal of the sheep, and end with the three days’ journey.
Now it could have happened the way I always thought. It could have been that Jacob got the sheep out like he said he was going to do and put his kids in charge of them. After all, there were no child labor laws in those days, nor would there have been many animals. 6-year-old Reuben may have been delighted to get to take care of a few sheep, helped out by 5-year-old Simeon and 4-year-old Levi, and maybe even 3-year-old Judah. It may have been a game to them. On the job training would have begun early.
But when I noticed that it said “he put a three-day journey between himself and Jacob (Genesis 30:36 NIV),” I got to re-thinking that theory (helped along by the realization of just how young the children would have been), and came up with another one of my own. I didn’t read this in any of the commentaries, and have never heard anyone else say it, either. That’s what makes me think I must be wrong. However, it makes so much sense to me that I’m going to throw it out there. If it’s wrong, if this can’t be what happened, hopefully somebody will tell me about it. I really am curious as to why nobody else has said this, and I truly won’t mind the criticism.
What if while Jacob built a sheep-fold for the sheep he was supposed to get, Laban went through his flocks and took out all the sheep that Jacob should have gotten and gave them to his sons? And then what if Laban put some distance between himself and Jacob so that when Jacob discovered he’d been hoodwinked, it would be too late to do anything about it? It would be Jacob’s word against Laban’s that there ever were any sheep with markings or spotted goats in the flock at all.
I found another commentary on another site that had a third theory, and I think it may be the best one yet. It said that when Jacob said that he’d take out the sheep that weren’t pure white, and the goats that weren’t solid, he wasn’t meaning he was going to take them for his pay. This commentator pointed out that just before he made this suggestion, he had said to Laban that Laban didn’t have to give him anything. Jacob was merely going to separate them out so that they wouldn’t mix with the other sheep and he was going to get any sheep that would afterward be born of qualifying colors. Laban quickly agreed, but then did the sheep separating himself. He had all the trust in Jacob that a man can muster when he himself cannot be trusted.
Now for a genetics lesson. If white sheep and solid goats are dominant traits, as they obviously are, and there aren’t any other sheep and goats in the mix to mess with the gene pool, you’re going to get white sheep and solid goats. Laban probably figured he was going to get some free labor out of his nephew, which is what he wanted all along.
But Jacob didn’t think so. He didn’t know anything about genes. Neither did some of the commentators I consulted, because I’ve been looking at public domain commentaries, and some of them were written either before the work of Gregor Mendel or before it was all that well known. One of the commentaries was written, according to an editor’s note, a hundred years before genetic theory, and another commentator said that experience spoke louder than science. In other words, he knew about genetics, he just didn’t believe it. Both of these commentators, to my surprise, sincerely believed that what a pregnant female, human or otherwise, spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about would affect what her baby looked like.
Apparently, Jacob thought the same. He cut some branches off a few poplar, almond, and plane trees (whatever plane trees are), cut stripes into them, and when the stronger ewes were in heat and came to drink and to meet some handsome rams at the watering troughs, he put the branches in their water. He also made sure the animals looked in the direction Laban had taken the animals that looked like the ones Jacob was trying to get. I’m not at all sure how far away three days’ journey is, but I’m sure it’s farther than sheep and goats can see. I’m not too sure what good Jacob thought this would do.
Now, anybody who has had the slightest introduction to genetics in their high school science classes, which Jacob hadn’t, knows that this was not going to do Jacob any good. Showing stripes to sheep just aren’t going to get you striped sheep. But I’m sure Jacob was saying to the sheep, “Now have babies that look like this.”
Jacob’s science may have been bad, but he was counting something into the equation that Laban wasn’t. He was counting on the promise of God had made to take care of him.
And lo and behold, Jacob’s plan worked. Suddenly the strongest sheep were giving birth to lambs that just weren’t quite all white. And the strongest goats had dappled kids. The not-so-strong sheep and goats had white and solid babies. The Bible says that the stronger sheep were Jacob’s, and the feebler were Laban’s.
Laban, needless to say, wasn’t liking this too much. Time and time again, he decided that he needed to be more specific in what he was paying Jacob. “You can’t just have any sheep that’s not quite white. How about you take just the striped ones?”
Suddenly all the goats’ kids had stripes on them.
“How about you take the ones with spots?”
Suddenly all the lambs were spotted.
And so it went for six more years. Laban continued to try to get free labor out of Jacob and God continued to give Jacob more and more animals from Laban’s flocks. To say that Laban was not a happy camper would be putting it mildly.
Okay, if anybody out there wants to say that God wasn’t being fair to Laban, you need to remember that God owns the whole world. It’s up to God who gets what. Up until then, God had been blessing Laban through Jacob’s work. The Bible tells us that Laban didn’t have very much before Jacob came, and now he had a lot. Now God was making sure Jacob got what he deserved. Laban certainly wasn’t going to do it.
Next time, we’ll find out what happened when Jacob realized that Laban wasn’t looking at him as his nephew and son-in-law who had done so much for him anymore, but as an enemy who was taking away his stuff.
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