It contains two sections – the first is more competitive child-bearing drama from Jacob’s wives, the second is Jacob tricking Laban to get wealth from him.
First I’ll try to summarize the continued saga of the sister wives and their servants. “When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. Then she said, ‘Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and I too can build a family through her.’ So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife.” (v1,3,4a,9)
The soap opera continues as the two sisters compete to see who can give Jacob the most sons – Leah and Zilpah, or Rachel and Bilhah. These teams are highly competitive and make bargains with each other over who gets Jacob’s attention – I am beginning to feel sorry for Jacob, being pulled in four different directions. This makes me extremely thankful I only have one wife – having four at once is clearly a recipe for trouble, since none of them are seemingly content.
All said and done, Jacob has twelve sons (this is very important later) from four wives: Leah bears 6 (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun), Rachel bears 2 (Joseph and Benjamin), Bilhah bears 2 (Dan and Naphtali) and Zilpah bears 2 (Gad and Asher). [Note: Benjamin is born in ch35] There is also one daughter from Leah mentioned: Dinah (she reappears later in ch34). It’s safe to assume there were other daughters, but they probably weren’t mentioned due to lack of relevance to the history of the Abrahamic line.
The second section of text describes Jacob making a deal with Laban in an attempt to begin building up his own household (rather than just building up Laban’s) – to this point Jacob’s wages have been Leah and Rachel. Jacob bargains with Laban: ” ‘Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages. And my honesty will testify for me in the future, whenever you check on the wages you have paid me. Any goat in my possession that is not speckled or spotted, or any lamb that is not dark-colored, will be considered stolen.’ ” This sounds like a reasonable bargain for Laban – he gets rid of the “blemished” animals, keeping his purebreds, and he still keeps Jacob as a rancher. Not bad.
What Laban doesn’t see coming is just how sly Jacob the deceiver is – Jacob has figured out how to selectively breed the goats and sheep so all the strong animals have spots and the weak ones are uniform in color. “So the weak animals went to Laban and the strong ones to Jacob. In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and female and male servants, and camels and donkeys.” (v42b,43)
I’m not sure what my takeaway from this is, other than to be careful about the lengths to which my competitiveness takes me. I need to watch out that I don’t let my pride drive me to undermine those closest to me, in order for me to “get ahead” or “gain wealth” or “have bragging rights”. I need to humble myself, and allow God to cleanse me of any selfishness and pride that I may have. I don’t want to start a family feud or something as petty as trying to feel good about myself. My identity is found in Christ, not in wealth or achievement, and I need to remember that.
~ Conqueror in Training