God Blessed Jacob After Laban Changed Wages Ten Times

Laban stood at the pens before dawn and named a new wage. Speckled, he said. Then he watched the ewes drop streaked lambs anyway, as if his mouth had no hold on wool.

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He changed the word. Streaked, he said. The next drop came speckled. He cried out into the yard, "Is there a God or not?" He meant it as a count. Did God do this, or did a nephew with a stick beat him at his own tally.

Jacob already knew the pattern. Laban waited until the sheep conceived, then pointed and said, "This kind shall be yours." Whatever kind he named, that kind was born. The Holy One told the angel to follow Laban's last decision, not the greed in his first sentence. Ten times the wage flipped in Jacob's hearing. Jacob still labored with full strength. Heat sat on his neck. Frost sat in his fingers. He did not sit in the shade waiting for pity.

He Called Them to the Field

The word came while the goats still leaped streaked and spotted. Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred (Genesis 31:3). Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah out to the flock, away from the walls of the house that had sold them.

"I see your father's face," he told them. The face had turned. At the feast Laban still smiled. In the morning he was a man inventing a new way not to pay. He had mocked Jacob and changed the wages ten times.

Rachel and Leah did not plead for their father's honor. "Is there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father's house? Are we not accounted by him strangers? For he has sold us" (Genesis 31:14-15).

They packed the tents. They took the flocks. They took the old grievances because there was no one left in that house to keep them.

The Heart Carried His Feet

Years earlier Jacob had lifted his feet toward the east, and the lifting was not muscle. Good news had gotten into him. A heart that has heard a promise can carry the feet the way food carries a walk. He came to a well in the field with a great stone on its mouth and three flocks lying beside it. Other shepherds waited for a crowd to roll the stone. Jacob rolled it himself and watered the sheep.

Before that well he had slept on a stone. No mattress. No cushion. If he had owned either, he would have put it under his head. He put a rock there instead, and the Lord was standing over him in that place and said, I am the Lord, God of Abraham your father, and God of Isaac. The land upon which you lie, to you I will give it, and to your descendants (Genesis 28:13).

His flesh had yearned in a dry country. Two hundred and forty-eight limbs had thirsted there, on the run from Esau, with one stone for a pillow. Then Isaac's blessing, the blessing of Abraham who had been blessed in all things, sat on him through Laban's pens and Laban's smiles. Laban could rename wool. He could not rename that.

God Spoke Harshly to Laban

Jacob rose, set his sons and his wives on camels, and carried away the cattle. He left in a way that would not light Laban's temper in the yard. On the third day it was told Laban that Jacob had fled. Laban took his brothers and ran after him with the look of a man who still thought the flocks were his to reclaim by speech.

The Holy One appeared before Laban and slit his ear. Laban still arrived talking like a host whose guests had stolen the silver. The chase had already been wounded. Jacob had already heard the return command. The staff that once crossed the Jordan alone now crossed with sons and noise and the smell of goats.

With my staff I passed over this Jordan (Genesis 32:11). He said it later as a count. One stick. Then the man increased exceedingly (Genesis 30:43). He kept naming the staff. The wealth did not get to pretend it had always been there.

God Blessed Him in Person

After the return from Laban's house, the Holy One said the time had come to bless Jacob directly. Isaac's mouth had already spoken. The dream had already stood over him at Bethel. Now appearance and blessing arrived together. God appeared unto Jacob again when he came from Padan-aram and blessed him (Genesis 35:9).

The man who once asked for bread and clothing stood under a sky that named him again. Esau still waited west. A night of wrestling still waited on the road. Sons who would one day sell a brother were already in the tents. The blessing did not wipe those facts away. It put Jacob's name on them from the other side of Padan-aram.

Laban's last word had been a wage meant to leave Jacob unpaid. Heaven's last word did not wait for Laban's apology. Jacob bowed under the blessing. He stood with the staff still in memory. West of him the road still held a brother. The east was finished. Laban's mouth was no longer the clock.