Genesis 31:40 - Forerunner Commentary

Genesis 31:40

38 These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the rams of your flock.

39 ^aThat which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it. ^bYou required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night.

40 There I was! In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes.

41 Thus I have been in your house twenty years; I ^aserved you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and ^byou have changed my wages ten times.

42 ^aUnless the God of my father, the God of Abraham and ^bthe Fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. ^cGod has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands, and ^drebuked you last night.”

Laban’s Covenant with Jacob

43 And Laban answered and said to Jacob, “These daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children, and this flock is my flock; all that you see is mine. But what can I do this day to these my daughters or to their children whom they have borne?

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Genesis 31:36-42

Later when Jacob had fled with his household and Laban had pursued him angrily, there was a confrontation in which Jacob apparently spoke his mind for the first time in two decades. It is the most we are told that Jacob ever spoke on any one occasion. It had been bottled up in him for twenty years.

Laban was stunned by this speech, but he reacted with mere bluster. He said that the daughters, children, and flock were all his. What an obvious lie, but it is significant that he did not dispute Jacob’s claims to be self-sacrificing, upright, and industrious.

Now there is a third principle that contributed to Jacob’s prosperity. In Jacob’s impassioned speech before Laban in Genesis 31, Jacob trusted God for his prosperity and this of course is the most important of the principals and points.

Excerpted from Created to Do God's Will and Work by Martin G. Collins

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The Israel of God

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