Chronological Plan

¹Now when Rachel saw that she had not borne Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister; and she said to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I am going to die.”

²Then Jacob’s anger burned against Rachel, and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?”

³Then she said, “Here is my female slave Bilhah: have relations with her that she may give birth on my knees, so that by her I too may obtain a child.”

⁴So she gave him her slave Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob had relations with her.

⁵Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son.

⁶Then Rachel said, “God has vindicated me, and has indeed heard my voice and has given me a son.” Therefore she named him Dan.

⁷And Rachel’s slave Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son.

⁸So Rachel said, “With mighty wrestling I have wrestled with my sister, and I have indeed prevailed.” And she named him Naphtali.

⁹When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her slave Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife.

¹⁰And Leah’s slave Zilpah bore Jacob a son.

¹¹Then Leah said, “How fortunate!” So she named him Gad.

¹²And Leah’s slave Zilpah bore Jacob a second son.

¹³Then Leah said, “Happy am I! For women will call me happy.” So she named him Asher.

¹⁴Now in the days of wheat harvest Reuben went and found mandrake fruits in the field, and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”

¹⁵But she said to her, “Is it a small matter for you to take my husband? And would you take my son’s mandrakes also?” So Rachel said, “Therefore he may sleep with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.”

¹⁶When Jacob came in from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must have relations with me, for I have indeed hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” So he slept with her that night.

¹⁷God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.

¹⁸Then Leah said, “God has given me my reward, because I gave my slave to my husband.” So she named him Issachar.

¹⁹And Leah conceived again and bore a sixth son to Jacob.

²⁰Then Leah said, “God has endowed me with a good gift; finally my husband will acknowledge me as his wife, because I have borne him six sons.” So she named him Zebulun.

²¹Afterward she gave birth to a daughter, and named her Dinah.

²²Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.

²³So she conceived and gave birth to a son, and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.”

²⁴And she named him Joseph, saying, “May the LORD give me another son.”

²⁵Now it came about, when Rachel had given birth to Joseph, that Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, so that I may go to my own place and to my own country.

²⁶Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, and let me go; for you yourself know my service which I have rendered you.”

²⁷But Laban said to him, “If it pleases you at all, stay with me; I have determined by divination that the LORD has blessed me on your account.”

²⁸He continued, “Name me your wages, and I will give them.”

²⁹But Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you and how your livestock have fared with me.

³⁰For 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?”

³¹So 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:

³²let me pass through your entire flock today, removing from there every speckled or spotted sheep and every black sheep among the lambs, and the spotted or speckled among the goats; and those shall be my wages.

³³So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come concerning my wages. Every one that is not speckled or spotted among the goats, or black among the lambs, if found with me, will be considered stolen.”

³⁴Laban said, “Good, let it be according to your word.”

³⁵So he removed on that day the striped or spotted male goats, and all the speckled or spotted female goats, every one with white on it, and all the black ones among the sheep, and put them in the care of his sons.

³⁶And he put a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob fed the rest of Laban’s flocks.

³⁷Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar, almond, and plane trees, and peeled white stripes in them, exposing the white that was in the rods.

³⁸He set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks in the drinking troughs, that is, in the watering channels where the flocks came to drink; and they mated when they came to drink.

³⁹So the flocks mated by the rods, and the flocks delivered striped, speckled, and spotted offspring.

⁴⁰Then Jacob separated the lambs, and made the flocks face toward the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban; and he put his own herds apart, and did not put them with Laban’s flock.

⁴¹Moreover, whenever the stronger of the flock were mating, Jacob would place the rods in the sight of the flock in the drinking troughs, so that they would mate by the rods;

⁴²but when the flock was sickly, he did not put them in; so the sickly were Laban’s, and the stronger were Jacob’s.

⁴³So the man became exceedingly prosperous, and had large flocks, and female and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

¹Now Jacob heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, “Jacob has taken away all that was our father’s, and from what belonged to our father he has made all this wealth.”

²And Jacob saw the attitude of Laban, and behold, it was not friendly toward him as it had been before.

³Then the LORD said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you.”

⁴So Jacob sent word and called Rachel and Leah to his flock in the field,

⁵and said to them, “I see your father’s attitude, that it is not friendly toward me as it was before, but the God of my father has been with me.

⁶You know that I have served your father with all my strength.

⁷Yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times; however, God did not allow him to do me harm.

⁸If he said this: ‘The speckled shall be your wages,’ then all the flock delivered speckled; and if he said this: ‘The striped shall be your wages,’ then all the flock delivered striped.

⁹So God has taken away your father’s livestock and given them to me.

¹⁰And it came about at the time when the flock was breeding that I raised my eyes and saw in a dream—and behold—the male goats that were mating were striped, speckled, or mottled.

¹¹Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob’; and I said, ‘Here I am.’

¹²He said, ‘Now raise your eyes and see that all the male goats that are mating are striped, speckled, or mottled; for I have seen everything that Laban has been doing to you.

¹³I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a memorial stone, where you made a vow to Me; now arise, leave this land, and return to the land of your birth.’ ”

¹⁴Rachel and Leah said to him, “Do we still have any share or inheritance in our father’s house?

¹⁵Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and has also entirely consumed our purchase price.

¹⁶Surely all the wealth which God has taken away from our father belongs to us and our children; now then, do whatever God has told you.”

¹⁷Then Jacob stood up and put his children and his wives on camels;

¹⁸and he drove away all his livestock and all his property which he had acquired, the livestock he possessed which he had acquired in Paddan-aram, to go to the land of Canaan to his father Isaac.

¹⁹Laban had gone to shear his flock, and Rachel stole the household idols that were her father’s.

²⁰And Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him that he was fleeing.

²¹So he fled with all that he had; and he got up and crossed the Euphrates River, and set out for the hill country of Gilead.

²²When Laban was informed on the third day that Jacob had fled,

²³he took his kinsmen with him and pursued him a distance of seven days’ journey, and he overtook him in the hill country of Gilead.

²⁴However, God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream of the night and said to him, “Be careful that you do not speak to Jacob either good or bad.”

²⁵And Laban caught up with Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the hill country, and Laban with his kinsmen camped in the hill country of Gilead.

²⁶Then Laban said to Jacob, “What have you done by deceiving me and carrying away my daughters like captives of the sword?

²⁷Why did you flee secretly and deceive me, and did not tell me, so that I might have sent you away with joy and with songs, with tambourine and with lyre;

²⁸and did not allow me to kiss my grandchildren and my daughters? Now you have done foolishly.

²⁹It is in my power to do you harm, but the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, ‘Be careful not to speak either good or bad to Jacob.’

³⁰Now you have indeed gone away because you longed greatly for your father’s house; but why did you steal my gods?”

³¹Then Jacob replied to Laban, “Because I was afraid, for I thought that you would take your daughters from me by force.

³²The one with whom you find your gods shall not live; in the presence of our relatives point out what is yours among my belongings and take it for yourself.” Now Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them.

³³So Laban went into Jacob’s tent, and into Leah’s tent, and into the tent of the two slave women, but he did not find them. Then he went out of Leah’s tent and entered Rachel’s tent.

³⁴Now Rachel had taken the household idols and put them in the camel’s saddlebag, and she sat on them. So Laban searched through all the tent, but did not find them.

³⁵And she said to her father, “May my lord not be angry that I cannot stand in your presence, because the way of women is upon me.” So he searched but did not find the household idols.

³⁶Then Jacob became angry and argued with Laban; and Jacob said to Laban, “What is my offense? What is my sin that you have hotly pursued me?

³⁷Though you have searched through all my property, what have you found of all your household property? Set it here in front of my relatives and your relatives, so that they may decide between the two of us.

³⁸For these twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten the rams of your flocks.

³⁹I did not even bring to you that which was torn by wild animals; I took the loss myself. You demanded it of my hand whether stolen by day or stolen by night.

⁴⁰This is how I was: by day the heat consumed me and the frost by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes.

⁴¹For 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.

⁴²If 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 labor of my hands, so He rendered judgment last night.”

⁴³Then Laban replied to Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters, the children are my grandchildren, the flocks are my flocks, and everything that you see is mine. But what can I do this day to these daughters of mine or to their children to whom they have given birth?

⁴⁴So now come, let’s make a covenant, you and I, and it shall be a witness between you and me.”

⁴⁵Then Jacob took a stone and set it up as a memorial stone.

⁴⁶Jacob said to his relatives, “Gather stones.” So they took stones and made a heap, and they ate there by the heap.

⁴⁷Now Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha, but Jacob called it Galeed.

⁴⁸Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me this day.” Therefore it was named Galeed,

⁴⁹and Mizpah, for he said, “May the LORD keep watch between you and me when we are absent one from the other.

⁵⁰If you mistreat my daughters, or if you take wives besides my daughters, although no one is with us, see, God is witness between you and me.”

⁵¹Laban also said to Jacob, “Behold this heap and behold the memorial stone which I have set between you and me.

⁵²This heap is a witness, and the memorial stone 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 memorial stone to me, for harm.

⁵³The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us.” So Jacob swore by the fear of his father Isaac.

⁵⁴Then Jacob offered a sacrifice on the mountain, and called his relatives to the meal; and they ate the meal and spent the night on the mountain.

⁵⁵Then early in the morning Laban got up, and kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. Then Laban departed and returned to his place.