It is significant that Jacob, who was really following God at this point, used none of those worldly techniques. He operated by different set of rules. The first principle is a strange one for a person who prospered as Jacob did, but it is important to see and understand it. Jacob was not trying to become wealthy and rightly understood that this is the initial key to all prosperity. The point is easy to see from verses 25-26.
It is obvious from the story that Jacob was not coveting wealth, and at the end of the his fourteen years of service, he is as poor as he was at the beginning, and in that poverty stricken state he is willing to end his service. Now during those years of service there would have been other opportunities for him to improve his finances and situation.
An unscrupulous man would have taken advantage of any and all opportunities to cheat Laban, as Laban was doing to him. Now considering how Jacob was deceived and how he had been used, even an average man would have at least toyed with the idea of laying up something for himself, but Jacob did not do that.
Faithful to his trust, not as an eye servant, but as one fearing God, he conscientiously devotes himself to Laban’s work. He does not promote himself; he is not a social climber, he does not use any schemes of self-aggrandizement. He does not even complain about his own poor financial state, in which his father-in-law was growing wealthy by Jacob’s hard work, he is so ungenerously keeping him in a virtual state of slavery, or at least indentured servanthood.
With patient endurance he continues to fulfill his agreement, when at last he proposes to leave his greedy kinsmen, it is without one word of complaint or rebuke about the past. He does not demand any more than his wives and children, for whom he alone, has faithfully served during these fourteen long years.
Now remember that makom—place, in the Old Testament—always refers to a place with some godly connection.
Jacob saw in his mind's eye that going back to his own place was special to him and was a closer connection God, at least in the sense of where he desired to be the most. When use figuratively, makom—place—is referring to a condition of the mind or body and that is where Jacob’s heart was still yearning for after all these years.
Immediately after Jacob’s request to be allowed to leave with his wives and children, he tells Laban, “You know how much work I have done for you.” Laban hated to admit this but he did not deny it. In fact he acknowledged that his own prosperity had increased noticeably since Jacob came to live with him and was due to Jacob.
