Jacob and his uncle Laban were peas in the same pod. They shared the same thread of using their own considerable wits to work things out to their own benefit. It wasn’t all Jacob’s fault, though, because his mother Rebekah was Laban’s sister, so she too was cut from the same cloth.
And it was Rebekah’s conniving that had put Jacob into Laban’s clutches (Genesis 27:42-45), a situation that Laban was quick to exploit. It was all so easy though, because Jacob was swept up in love with Laban’s lovely daughter Rachel, and so much in love that he offered to work seven years in Laban’s employ to win her.
Come the wedding night seven years later, however, Laban managed to slip his older daughter Leah into Jacob’s bed, claiming it wasn’t their custom “to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one,” Genesis 29:26. But Jacob could have Rachel too, if he did another seven years work for Laban, which Jacob did (30). So that’s now fourteen years of work Laban has squeezed out of Jacob. And it didn’t bother Laban if he messed up his own daughters’ lives to pull it off either.
How do you deal with such a man? Well, by some cunning of his own, Jacob offered to keep looking after Laban’s flocks so long as he could have all the speckled and spotted sheep and goats and the dark coloured lambs for wages (30:31-32). And Laban agreed – but he immediately shot off and gave all the spotted and speckled animals Jacob wanted to his sons to look after instead (35).
It was obvious by now, therefore, there was no way of dealing with this man, not by human means. Laban’s interest was only in himself, and his agile mind would always find a way of benefiting himself – and not a twinge of conscience when cheating and deceiving someone either.
What Laban had not reckoned with, however, was God, and God letting Jacob know in a dream that he’d “seen all that Laban has been doing to you,” Genesis 31:12, the result of which was God telling Laban, also in a dream, that he’d better not “say anything to Jacob, good or bad” (24). And Laban got the point too (29), which becomes a strong hint in the annals of Israel’s history that if there are impossible people like the Labans of life we cannot deal with, God can. He sees and he knows, and his advice is: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you,” Isaiah 41:10. Which God did for Jacob, by showing in Laban that “A leopard’s spots can change”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 