Originally published on the Doxa blog.
Jacob asked to go home the year Joseph was born, and for six more years he stayed in Haran, peeling the bark off almond branches beside a watering trough.
Send me on my way
Jacob wanted to leave because his fourteen years of work for Rachel and Leah were done, and God had promised at Bethel to bring him home. Right after Rachel gave birth to Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, "Send me on my way so I can return to my homeland" (Genesis 30:25).
At Bethel God had told him, "I will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you" (Genesis 28:15). Jacob had carried that sentence through fourteen years of another man's sheep.
The LORD has blessed me
Laban meant that he had read omens to find out why his flocks kept growing, and the omens told him the LORD was blessing him because of Jacob. "If I have found favor in your eyes, please stay. I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you" (Genesis 30:27).
Laban knew the LORD's name and could count the LORD's blessing in his own sheepfolds. He went to omens to explain it, and he went no further. He wanted to keep the shepherd who made him rich.
So Jacob stayed and asked for every speckled or spotted goat and every dark-colored lamb as his wages (Genesis 30:32). That same day Laban took every animal of those colors away to his sons (Genesis 30:35).
Peeled branches at the troughs
Jacob put peeled branches in the troughs because he believed that what the animals saw while they mated would mark their young. He took fresh branches of poplar, almond and plane trees, "and peeled the bark, exposing the white inner wood of the branches" (Genesis 30:37), and set them where the strong animals came to drink. The flocks bore streaked and speckled young, and "Jacob became exceedingly prosperous" (Genesis 30:43).
Years later Jacob told Rachel and Leah where the flocks had come from: "Thus God has taken away your father's livestock and given them to me" (Genesis 31:9). In a dream the angel of God had shown him the speckled males and said, "for I have seen all that Laban has done to you" (Genesis 31:12). Jacob had trusted his branches, and God had been watching every one of Laban's tricks the whole time.
Blessed because of you
Laban's growing flocks were a small piece of God's promise to bless the nations through Abraham's family, and God kept that promise in full in Jesus. God told Abram, "all the families of the earth will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12:3). A man who read omens grew rich because Abraham's grandson kept his sheep.
Paul wrote that Christ "redeemed us in order that the blessing promised to Abraham would come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:14). Laban got sheep from that blessing. In Jesus, God gives us Himself.
Hold it until He says go
Jacob asked to leave when Joseph was born, and God's word to go came six years later: "Go back to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you" (Genesis 31:3). In the dream He said, "I am the God of Bethel" (Genesis 31:13). He named the place and the pillar, and the command to go home was the Bethel promise coming due.
We are the people who remember what God has said. Write down the promise He has given you, with the date, in the Doxa app, and read it back through the waiting years. When He speaks again you will know Him, the God of Bethel, who keeps every word He has spoken.
What has God promised you that you are still holding while you wait for Him to say go?
Keep exploring. If this raised a question, or brought back something God has said to you, take it further. Ask Doxa. It answers from Scripture, real stories, and your own journey, free in your browser. No signup to start.
Download Doxa, the app for recording, weighing and remembering prophetic encouragement.
Also please feel free to read the Doxa Deeper Dive below where we delve into the original language and historical context.
The Doxa Deeper Dive
Laban's Omens Were Spelled Like the Serpent (Genesis 30:25–43)
Originally published on the Doxa blog.
Laban's word for divination is spelled with the same three Hebrew letters as the serpent in Eden, and the almond wood Jacob peeled carried the old name of Bethel.
Omens spelled like the serpent
Laban's word for learning by divination is nachash (H5172), to read omens, and a Hebrew listener heard in it the noun nachash (H5175), the serpent. The verb means looking for signs in the world to find out what the gods intend. The noun is the snake of Genesis 3, the first voice in Scripture to question what God had said. An English reader sees "divination" in Genesis 30:27 and "serpent" in Genesis 3 and never hears that they sound alike.
The law later forbade it: "You must not practice divination or sorcery" (Leviticus 19:26). Divination there is the same verb, so an Israelite heard Laban reach for a practice God had forbidden His people, named with the serpent's letters.
Heard on the plains of Moab
Israel first heard Laban's omens as a people Moses had commanded to have nothing to do with omens and to listen to the prophet God would raise up. Moses forbade anyone who "interprets omens" (Deuteronomy 18:10), using the same verb again. Then he said, "Though these nations, which you will dispossess, listen to conjurers and diviners, the LORD your God has not permitted you to do so" (Deuteronomy 18:14), and, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. You must listen to him" (Deuteronomy 18:15).
That same generation had seen a diviner on the hills of Moab. Balak hired Balaam to curse Israel, and Balaam ended up saying, "For there is no spell against Jacob and no divination against Israel" (Numbers 23:23). Spell there is nachash. Then, "when Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel, he did not seek omens as on previous occasions" (Numbers 24:1). Two diviners, Laban in Haran and Balaam in Moab, read the LORD's blessing on Jacob and his children. Israel heard both stories as the people meant to hear the LORD's mind from the LORD Himself.
Peter stood in Jerusalem and named Jesus as that prophet: "You must listen to Him in everything He tells you" (Acts 3:22).
White wood and the man named White
Genesis 30 calls the branches white because the Hebrew for white, laban (H3836), is also the name of the man Jacob was dealing with, Laban (H3837), so a Hebrew listener heard Laban beaten by his own name. The first tree Jacob cut was libneh (H3839), poplar, a tree named for its pale bark, and he stripped it with patsal (H6478), to peel, into stripes of that white.
Laban had once sent Leah into Jacob's tent in the dark, and Jacob woke to ask, "Why have you deceived me?" (Genesis 29:25). Now the speckled (H5348) young went to Jacob in front of branches showing the colour of Laban's name. Jacob put the outcome down to God: "God has not allowed him to harm me" (Genesis 31:7).
A shepherd's wages in Haran
Shepherds in Jacob's world were often paid with a share of the young born in the flock they kept, and the law limited what they owed for lost animals. Hammurabi's laws in Babylon made a shepherd pay for losses through his own neglect and released him from losses to a lion or a plague. Jacob carried more than the law asked of him: "I did not bring you anything torn by wild beasts; I bore the loss myself. And you demanded payment from me for what was stolen by day or night" (Genesis 31:39).
Most sheep in that region were white and most goats were dark, so speckled goats and dark lambs were a small share of any flock, and Laban said "Agreed" at once (Genesis 30:34). Jacob had asked for the wage an owner would value least. When God explained in a dream how that small wage had grown, He named Himself by the place the almond wood was named for.
Almond wood from Luz
The Hebrew for almond is luz (H3869), and Luz (H3870) was the old name of Bethel, where God first spoke to Jacob. After the ladder and the promise, Jacob "called that place Bethel, though previously the city had been named Luz" (Genesis 28:19). Years later he peeled branches that carried the name of the place where God had promised to bring him home.
In the dream God reminded Jacob of that place by what Jacob had done there, "where you anointed the pillar and made a solemn vow to Me" (Genesis 31:13). The God who had spoken at Luz gave Jacob those flocks. Jacob used a breeder's trick, and God, who had seen all that Laban had done, turned it into the wages He meant Jacob to carry home.
The God who tells His people
Jacob staked his case on his honesty as a future witness: "So my honesty will testify for me when you come to check on my wages in the future" (Genesis 30:33). Honesty there is tsedaqah (H6666), righteousness, the word Genesis 15:6 uses for what God credited to Abram: "Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). Jacob claimed righteousness by his own honesty, and Abram received it by believing what God had said.
Laban had to read omens to learn what the LORD was doing. Jacob heard it from God in a dream, with his own name spoken first. Israel was forbidden the omens and promised a prophet to listen to, and the writer of Hebrews wrote, "But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son" (Hebrews 1:2). We know Him by listening to Him. When He speaks to you through Scripture or an encouragement, keep it the way Jacob kept Bethel for twenty years: put it in the Doxa app with the day it came, and come back to it while you wait. The God who sees all that is done to His people still speaks to them by name.
Keep exploring. If this raised a question, or brought back something God has said to you, take it further. Ask Doxa. It answers from Scripture, real stories, and your own journey, free in your browser. No signup to start.
Questions and comments are welcome below.
Download Doxa, the app for recording, weighing and remembering prophetic encouragement.