Jacob Sticks Around

When Jacob left the Promised Land, God met him in a dream and gave him some specific promises: first, that the land on which he lay would belong to him. Second, that he would have lots of offspring who would spread out over the whole earth. Third, that in him and his offspring all the families of the earth would be blessed. Fourth, that God would be with him and keep him wherever he went until he brought him back to the land (Genesis 28:13-15).

It's interesting to note how Jacob interpreted that fourth promise about God being with him and keeping him. He said, "If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God" (Gen 28:20-21). Obviously, if God is going to be with Jacob and keep him and bring him home in safety, he's going to need to eat and be provided for along the way.

So there's four promises we're looking to be fulfilled. And last week we heard in a bunch of messy detail how that second promise was fulfilled. Jacob found his wife, and not just a wife, but two wives, and had many children with them and not just with them but with them and their servants. It was a total mess, but through that total mess, eleven sons and one daughter have been born to him.

So God's promises are being kept. But we're still wondering about the rest. What about returning to the land? What about blessing others? What about God being with and keeping and providing for Him?

Today's passage answers those questions for us in some very surprising ways. And it begins with Jacob wanting to see that first promise be fulfilled.

1. Bargaining

a. Jacob's Request (vv. 25-26)

Listen to Jacob's request in verse 25: “As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, ‘Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you’” (Genesis 30:25–26).

We should note, which we might have missed in all of the stuff going on last week, that Joseph was Rachel's first son. The wife he loved most, the woman he chose first—Joseph was the first son that she bore.

And its as soon as Joseph is born that Jacob wants to return to his land like God promised he would. Maybe he was afraid Laban wouldn't let her go if she hadn't had a child—as if that meant she wasn't fully Jacob's wife yet. Or maybe Joseph's birth just lines up with the end of the 7-year period.

Whatever the reason, it's not until this point that he's confident to leave Laban. And yet this request is so interesting. Jacob could just announce that he's leaving. This is his family, these are his wives, and these are his children, but evidently there's a power struggle going on here with Laban—a power struggle we'll see come to the surface next week. Laban seems to acts like these things still belong to him. Maybe even that Jacob belongs to him.

At this point, Jacob probably suspects this. At best, he's just being polite by asking for permission to do what he has every right to do: take his family and go back to the land where he came from.

b. Laban's Counter (27-28) (vv. 27-28)

Laban, however, makes a counter. “But Laban said to him, ‘If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. Name your wages, and I will give it’” (Genesis 30:27–28).

Laban has been blessed through Jacob, and he knows it. There's that third promise. In Jacob, Laban has been blessed. Laban, the first of many peoples to be blessed through Jacob and his offspring.

It's interesting how Laban says he learned this through divination. The word here for "divination" is slightly in question and could potentially just be translated, "I have become rich." There's a text note in the ESV showing that as a possible translation.

But there's a reason that many English translations put this as "I have learned through divination," because that is the most basic and natural way of translating this word. It seems like Laban used some kind of magic or fortune-telling and discovered that Jacob was the secret to his being blessed in those years.

Just a reminder here that the Bible tells us to stay away from witchcraft and sorcery not because it's not real and not effective but because it's wrong. There are all kinds of dark spirits in the world who are all too happy to tell you what they know, if that means they have a greater ability to manipulate and control you as a result.

And just like the demons who knew exactly who Jesus was, Laban appears to find out from whatever dark powers he's in touch with that he is being blessed because of Jacob.

So, Laban doesn't exactly finish what he's saying here, but the sense is that he wants Jacob to stick around because he wants to keep on getting blessed.

c. Jacob's Reminder (vv. 29-30)

And Jacob doesn't so much make a request of Laban right away as much as just affirm what he's just said. “Jacob said to him, ‘You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned.’” (Genesis 30:29–30).

In other words, "Yeah, you're right, Laban: you were poor when I showed up and now you're doing really well, and God is blessing you through me." Jacob has officially entered deal-making territory. He's bargaining with Laban. And to increase his changes of having his offer accepted, he's making sure Laban knows what Jacob brings to the table and how valuable he is. Laban doesn't want Jacob to walk away from this deal.

And Jacob finishes this reminder with a question, at the end of verse 30: "But now when shall I provide for my own household also?” You've been doing great through me, but what about my own household?

Men have a responsibility to provide for their households. This is one of the places we see that responsibility described in Scripture and we should commend Jacob for this. He is right to not just keep working for Laban for free. He has a family to care for.

d. Laban's Question (v. 31a)

So Laban asks, verse 31, "What shall I give you?”* Laban declines to make an offer. He wants Jacob to name his price.

e. Jacob's Request (vv. 31b-33)

And Jacob's request is surprising. Verse 31: "Jacob said, ‘You shall not give me anything." Well, that's not exactly true, as we'll see in a moment. But Jacob is in bargaining mode here and he wants to emphasize that he's not asking for much. What does he want?

Verse 32: "If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it: let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen’” (Genesis 30:30–33).

Most sheep in these flocks would have been white. Speckled and spotted sheep are rare. So are black sheep, which is why we have that phrase. With goats, it was similar: most would have been a solid colour.

So Jacob isn't asking for nothing, but he's asking for next to nothing. Just the rare sheep, the imperfect ones.

To put this on context, we have record from the ancient world that a shepherd might have been paid 20% of the flock as his wages. So if 100 lambs were born, he got to keep 20 of them as his payment. Genetically, the striped or spotted or black sheep and goats would be less, maybe even significantly less, than this standard 20% payment. So Jacob is basically saying, "Pay me less than you'd pay any other shepherd. Let me work for peanuts."

And he pledges on his honesty that he won't keep any solid or white coloured animal as his.

Now, we know that Jacob has a plan here. Once again, he's up to tricks involving goats. Instead of stealing a blessing from his father, he's going to try and get something from his uncle.

f. Laban's Agreement (v. 34)

But Laban doesn't know this. And Laban probably should say, "Jacob, that's nothing. Let me give you more than that." But we see Laban's heart here in the way he so quickly agrees to this scheme. Verse 34: "Good! Let it be as you have said!" Greedy Laban is all too happy to rip off his nephew and give him way less than he deserves.

He doesn't know that this plan will end up working against him. Like so many greedy people in history, he plunges into what seems like a good deal without much regard for who he's dealing with.

g. Laban's Dirty Dealing (v. 35-36)

But he doesn't stop there. In verse 35, he goes through the flock before Jacob gets a chance and removes all of the speckled or spotted animals that should have gone to Jacob, gives them to his sons, and sends them three days away, so that there's no chance they'll interbreed with his main flock.

This is dirty. He's breaking his bargain, he's stealing what he's pledged to Jacob, and he's trying to remove any possibility of Jacob earning an income in the future.

It looks like Jacob has once again been cheated by Laban the way he's cheated others. It looks like, once again, the heel-grabber has met his match.

2. Breeding (vv. 36-43)

But it's actually the other away around. It's Laban who has met his match in Jacob, who has a plan for the breeding of these animals. And we read about that in verses 37-40:

“Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted" (Genesis 30:37–39).

Jacob has this plan to make Laban's flocks produce striped, speckled and spotted offspring. It involves making sticks that had white stripes in them, and putting them where the flocks would see them as they mated. Jacob holds to an idea that was apparently common in the ancient world, that what an animal is looking at or surrounded by when it reproduces will affect the offspring it bears.

He thinks that if a sheep is looking at a striped stick while it's breeding, it will bear a striped or spotted or speckled lamb. And this is his plan to outwit Laban and grow his own flocks.

It's not like they were ignorant of general patterns of breeding. They knew that speckled or spotted sheep tended to produce speckled or spotted lambs, which is probably why Laban moved all of the speckled ones three days away—to prevent cross-breeding. Jacob also knows that strong sheep tend to produce strong lambs, whereas weak sheep tend to produce weak lambs, which is why he only puts out the sticks when the strong ones were breeding, like we see in verse 41.

But on top of this basic knowledge of how genetics work, Jacob holds to this idea that he can influence the sheep and the goats to bear more speckled offspring by putting these striped sticks near them while they breed.

a. What's going on here?

And this is the point at which we all say "wut?" Like, this is seriously in the Bible? Jacob really believed this? And it worked?

If you struggle with that, you're not the only one. Lots of people have struggled with this and have tried to explain this passage in multiple ways to get around this. Some have suggested that these sticks in the water had some kind of medical properties, or served as an aphrodisiac to encourage breeding. Others have suggested complicated genetic situations in which the sticks are just a ruse and Jacob is doing some really smart selective breeding. Still others think the sticks are a distraction to keep Laban's strong ones from having offspring while Jacob breeds his spotted ones in a way not addressed by the text.

If you sound confused, so was I. And honestly, it's almost funny the way people get themselves all tied into knots trying to dodge what the text is pretty clearly saying.

Jacob here is practicing a form of what's called sympathetic magic. It's not formal magic, like where someone uses written incantations. It's sympathetic magic—the belief that using natural objects that look like a certain outcome, you can influence people or events or animals to turn out the way you want them to.

It's very similar to Reuban's mandrakes earlier in the chapter. Because the mandrake's roots apparently looked like a woman's figure, the people associated them with fertility.

This kind of idea is closely associated with certain kinds of folklorish beliefs that still persist in the world, even our part of the world, up until today. Think of athletes who carry a good luck charm they think will help them win a game, or apartment buildings that don't have a 13th floor because people are afraid of that number. Think about phrases like "beginner's luck" or "bad things comes in threes."

Or think about more overt forms of this, like witching sticks. There are people still convinced that they can walk around with a hazel branch to find water under the ground, even though multiple double-blind studies have repeatedly proven that hazel witching is not accurate at all.

Jacob lived at a time when these kinds of beliefs would have been even more prevalent and even more accepted. They lived long before the scientific revolution. He had no idea about recessive genes and dominant genes and how it was scientifically possible for two solid-coloured sheep to bring forth a spotted lamb if they each had certain genes present.

To him, this probably seemed common-sense, and he probably thought he was being really clever. And it worked.

b. What's Really Going on here?

Now let's ask an even more important question—what's really going on here? I really struggled with this passage for a time because it seems like the Bible itself is endorsing Jacob's actions. It seems like the author of this particular passage, which was either written or compiled and edited by Moses and probably others—whoever it was, it sounds like they are saying that Jacob's use of the striped sticks is the reason why the flocks bore striped offspring.

And if that were true, that would be an error in the text of the Bible. That would be a case of Scripture directly advancing a view that is factually incorrect. And this really troubled me for a time.

But there's three elements we need to notice before we jump to that conclusion.

1) First, if we pay close attention to the language, we can see that this passage does not actually say that what Jacob did with the sticks was the reason or the cause his flocks bore spotted and speckled offspring. It simply says that he put the sticks in the troughs, and they bore speckled and spotted offspring. And the real cause is not explained to us until next week.

Unfortunately, this is one of the cases where the translation of small Hebrew words trips us up. In the ESV translation, verse 39 says, “the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted” (Genesis 30:39).

But here's the thing: that word "so" is not there as a separate word in the original Hebrew language of this passage. All that's there is the Hebrew conjunction which just has the basic meaning of "and then this happened."

This is why several other translations, like the NIV, KJV, and the NASB, more accurately translate this word as "and." The flocks bred in from of the sticks and the flocks brought forth speckled offspring.

The same thing happens in verse 42. "So the feebler would be Laban's and the stronger Jacob's." That should probably just say "and."

You might wonder whether this small word makes any difference, but the difference is huge. It's the difference between saying, "John put on his lucky basketball shorts, and so his team won the game that night," or saying, "John put on his lucky basketball shorts, and his team won the game that night." In the first case, you're agreeing with John that his lucky shorts helped him win the game. In the second case, you're just telling things the way that they happened.

And the actual Hebrew text is doing the second. It's just telling us what happened and not necessarily giving us a reason why things happened that way.

2) Secondly, once again looking at the Hebrew language, this passage is pointing out the ironic and poetic way that Jacob's personality once again showed itself and got back at Laban for his treachery.

For starters here, it's helpful to know that the name "Laban" means "white" in Hebrew. So when Laban takes "every one that had white on it" out of the flock in verse 35, Hebrew readers would recognize that as a pun on Laban's name. And when Jacob makes sticks with "white streaks" on the sticks, the idea, as one writer suggested, is that Jacob is "beating Laban at his own game" (Sarna). Just like he used "red red stuff" to get the birthright from his brother whose name meant Red, so he's using white striped sticks to get a blessing from his uncle whose name meant white.

There's more irony here. Rachel's name means "ewe lamb." Laban didn't want to give Jacob any of his ewe-lambs—either his daughter or his actual lambs. But Jacob ended up getting them both. And just like Laban tricked Jacob by giving him his weak-eyed daughter, Jacob makes sure that Laban only gets the weak sheep.

What we see here is that, by stepping back for a minute from the question of how these sticks worked, we see a very poetic and rich description of two tricksters at each other and retributive justice being served on Laban by Jacob who out-smarts him at every point.

3) Thirdly, and most importantly, when we turn to the next chapter, we find out some really important information that brings this all into focus. Look over at 31:6-9, when Jacob says this to his wives:

“You know that I have served your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me. If he said, ‘The spotted shall be your wages,’ then all the flock bore spotted; and if he said, ‘The striped shall be your wages,’ then all the flock bore striped. Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me” (Genesis 31:6–9).

At the beginning, Jacob may have thought the flocks were producing spotted sheep and goats because of his little magic trick. But in time, he came to see that it had nothing to do with him at all. It was all God. Jacob gives God all the credit, not his magic stick trick.

Now there's more to say about chapter 31, and I'm looking forward to next week when we'll actually have a guest speaker. Dr. Victor Kuligin, who is doing some guest teaching at the Bible college and is going to be teaching in our Sunday school and preaching chapter 31 for us. So I don't want to say a whole lot more—other than to point out that, in the end, both the author of Genesis and Jacob himself recognize that the sticks had nothing to do with his becoming rich.

Jacob grew huge flocks of strong striped and spotted and speckled sheep and goats, while Laban had mediocre flocks of weak, solid-coloured animals, because the sovereign God was causing things to turn out that way.

Verse 43: “Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys” (Genesis 30:43).

And there's our fourth promise. God promised to be with Jacob and bless him. Jacob requested that God give him food and bread. Well, look at what happened. Jacob, who went into exile with nothing in his hand, has become very rich. Does this language used here in verse 43 sound familiar at all? It's the same kind of language used of Abraham and Isaac. And now Jacob, experiencing God's blessing, has become very, very wealthy.

3. Basic Truth

And this promise has been fulfilled in much the same way as the other promises. It's been fulfilled through the mess of human sin. God gave Jacob his twelve children through the chaos of two sisters and their concubines. God gives Jacob his huge flocks and riches even as Jacob practices primitive sympathetic magic. It's a theme we've seen again and again throughout Genesis and which we will continue to see: God keeping His covenant promises not just in spite of His people's foolishness and sin, but through their foolishness and sin.

And yet, in the end, its not their foolishness and sin that produced the results, but God's faithfulness to them.

And this really challenges and disrupts several human assumptions that we often have. A big one is the age-old assumption that correlation implies causation.

Let me explain that a little bit. "Correlation implies causation" is the idea that if two events go together, the first event must have caused the second event.

It's where lots of superstitions come from. Somebody once killed a spider, and it rained the next day, and so they came up with the superstition that killing spiders makes it rain. If these two events go together, one must have caused the other.

It's an age-old belief that we still can't shake in our modern age. We see it show up in the realm of health. Walking through a cancer journey with my mother and then years of my own health struggles as an adult, I've been blown away at how people have promoted practices with zero scientific evidence behind it, saying, "This worked for me, therefore everybody else should try it."

Listen: if you took a product and experienced a result, that doesn't mean that th product produced the result. Maybe you got better after taking those pills because you were going to get better anyways. Or maybe it's because of something else you were doing that you weren't aware of. Or maybe it worked for you, with your particular body chemistry, but it won't have the same effect on anybody else. It takes careful scientific studies, often with a large population samples, to determine whether a product can consistently influence an outcome.

And this kind of gullibility gets particularly dangerous when we drag God into it. Christians so often make this mistake. We do something, experience a good outcome, and then assume that this means God is blessing that thing that we did.

Think about how many books line the shelves of Christian bookstores, or how many videos are uploaded to Christian youtube channels, saying the same thing: "I did this thing, it worked, so God must be in it, so you should do this too"? How many Christians have marched through life confident that they are correct and that God is with them because they've had some good outcomes? And they very confidently pass on their experiences to others: "Pray this prayer! Attend this conference! Adopt this practice or belief! Send money to this speaker! Look at what it's done for me!"

And so often what they are promoting is not found in Scripture at all, or, worse, Scripture directly contradicts it. And honestly, this has caused me to ask a lot of questions throughout the years. Why does God seem to bless and take care of Christians who often believe and practice things that are totally unbiblical and frankly foolish?

The answer, I believe, is found in our passage today. God keeps His promises, not because of the things we do, but often in spite of the things we do.

It's like those videos you see of dads catching their babies right before they roll off the couch, or snatching their toddlers right before they plummet off of the monkey bars. The lesson in those videos isn't that toddlers should be careless on the monkey bars because look at how great it worked out for them. The lesson is that those dads in the video were good dads. Those kids were often being careless and foolish but the dads kept them safe anyways because that's what good dads do.

Just like God with Jacob. It's not the case that Jacob's striped sticks caused God's blessing. It's more that Jacob's striped sticks couldn't prevent God's blessing. God had made promises, and He was going to keep them, no matter how foolish Jacob was in the process.

Maybe there's some things in your life you've done, or haven't done, and it's worked out well for you. That does not mean that God endorses what you've done or haven't done. All it might mean is that God is merciful and kind to you.

Maybe you don't believe all of this superstitious nonsense—all you've done is keep your head down and work hard for what you have. But even then, you can't take any credit. Who kept your heart beating every day you were out there working hard? Who held creation together moment-by-moment so that you could do that work and experience those results?

See, none of us have any reason to boast. Like Jacob, we need to realize that in the end, nothing we've done gets the credit for anything good that we've received. Every good thing we've ever experienced, including every beat of our hearts and lungful of air, has been a pure gift from our father.

As Paul said to the Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

This same truth is an encouragement to us when things don't seem to be going well. Just like our success is not a sign that God is endorsing everything we're doing, so our hardship is not a sure sign that God is displeased with us. Scripture tells us that God has all kinds of loving reasons for bringing hardship into our lives, including the promise that He disciplines those He loves (Heb 12:3-11).

Here's one way that we could sum up this big idea: our circumstances are not a reliable guide to figuring out what God thinks about us and what we've been doing. God's word is the only reliable guide. It's the sharp sword that discerns the thoughts and intentions of our hearts (Heb 4:12). And it's the bright light that tells us about the cross.

If you really want to know what God thinks about you, look to the cross. In the ugliness and the brutality of Jesus being nailed up to suffocate and die, we see both how deeply God hates our sins, how and how deeply He loves us in taking that punishment on to Himself in the person of His son.

So don't be so sure that your good life means you've done things right, or your hard life means you've done things wrong. But look to the cross and be sure that though you are a great sinner, Jesus is an even greater saviour and He will keep the promises He's made to us.

Like the promises to forgive us when we confess our sins, to work all things for our good, to discipline those He loves, to make us like Christ, to be with us until the end of the age, and to come again for us like He promised.