The Devotional Journey: Bible Reading 22

Jacob’s dealings with Laban

Read Genesis 31:1–55.

Yahweh was protecting and blessing Jacob and he grew in wealth. This didn’t go unnoticed among Laban’s sons who began to be concerned that Jacob would soon overrun the family. Knowing this, Yahweh instructed Jacob to return to the land that He had given to Abraham’s family.

Jacob wasn’t sure if his wives would leave with him so he had to tell them how Yahweh had been blessing him and how God had reminded him of the vow he made at Bethel years ago, to honour Yahweh and return to his father’s land (Genesis 28:20–22). His wives readily agreed to leave with him.

Afraid of what Laban might do if he asked for permission to leave, Jacob took all the people, animals and goods that belonged to him and quietly ran away from Laban.

When Laban found out, he immediately started chasing after Jacob. It took him seven days of travel to catch up with Jacob and his family.

As He had promised, Yahweh protected Jacob by appearing to Laban in a dream and warned him to leave Jacob alone! So when Laban finally caught up with Jacob, he pretended to be hurt that Jacob had ran away. Laban pretended that he would have thrown a farewell party for Jacob had he known his son-in-law wanted to leave.

Laban also told Jacob that he had the power to harm him. But Laban said that Yahweh had warned him not to and so he refrained himself. But Laban demanded to know why Jacob had taken his household idols.

The household idols appeared to be very important to Laban, even more important than losing his daughters or livestock. Perhaps he thought that the idols protected him and had brought him wealth. With the idols gone, he was possibly afraid that he had now lost his protection.

The Bible doesn’t tell us why Rachel stole her father’s household idols. Was she punishing him? Or did she think that the idols were helpful? Stealing the idols seemed to indicate that just being in Laban’s idol-worshipping home had impacted or influenced Rachel negatively.

But Jacob didn’t know that Rachel had stolen her father’s household gods and so he allowed Laban to search through his whole camp to look for them. Laban failed to find them and Jacob took the opportunity to scold his father-in-law, reminding him of how he had mistreated Jacob for 20 years.

Without the household idols, Laban was afraid that in the future, Jacob might decide to attack him. After all, Laban was guilty of all the accusations that Jacob had laid on him. He had not been nice to Jacob at all!

And so, to protect himself Laban asked to make a contract with Jacob. The contract was mainly to say that both men would agreed not cross over to each other’s land. It was like a border treaty.

As a sign of the treaty and the border, the men built a pillar with stones to mark the location that separated each other’s territories. And then ironically, Laban called on Yahweh, Jacob’s God, to watch between them. Even though Laban was an idol worshipper, he didn’t call on his own “gods”.

We see in Laban a confused man, one who was willing to acknowledge Yahweh as God but at the same time worship handmade, manmade idols. In Laban, we learn a sobering lesson. We need to watch ourselves to make sure that we know and understand Yahweh properly through diligent study of the Bible. A right understanding of God would prevent us from also worshipping other “gods”. If we don’t study God’s Word, we might end up like Laban, where our own thinking becomes our final authority, and that would lead us to making wrong decisions and trusting in the “wrong gods”.

This was one reason why Yahweh had Jacob separate from Laban. God didn’t want Jacob’s family to have more pagan influence especially since He was going to work with Jacob’s family to build the nation of Israel.

Sometimes, people have the idea that Yahweh will only work with those who already know Him or worship Him. But here, we see that God intervened in the situation to talk to Laban, who was an idol worshipper. Whether a person believes in Him or not, God is able to work things out so that His plans will be fulfilled.

If we are having problems with people who don’t believe in Yahweh, we can still pray to ask God to intervene and help us. Yahweh really is the God of all people and the whole universe, regardless of whether people acknowledge Him or not.