COME AS A CHILD LESSON 82 HOW GOD BLESSES JACOB AND PREPARES HIM TO MOVE ON

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

As we noted before, Jacob was growing restless.  He was tired of working for Laban.  He had labored long and hard and he was tired of making Laban a profit.  He wanted to go back to his original home and begin to raise his family there in the land of the birthright.

This thought took flight with him and moved him into action one day when he received a vision from God.  It was during the time when the flocks conceived and Jacob lifted up his eyes and saw in his dream that all the rams that leaped upon the flocks were streaked, speckled, and gray-spotted.  After this he saw The Angel of God who called out his name.  When Jacob answered “Here I Am,” the angel said “Lift your eyes now and see all the rams which leap on the flocks are streaked, speckled, and gray-spotted, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you.  I AM the God of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar and where you made a vow to Me.  Now, arise, get out of this land, and return to the land of your family.”

Anytime anyone hears The Angel of The LORD call out their name and answers "Here I am" you can expect their life is about to change!  It is a repeated pattern throughout the scriptures.  Indeed, Jacob's life was about to take another turn.

This vision and this word from The Angel of The Lord sealed the thoughts in Jacob’s mind.  He knew he needed to prepare to leave.

So, he said to Laban, “Send me on my way so I can go back to my own homeland.  Give me my wives and children, for whom I have served you, and I will be on my way.  You know how much work I’ve done for you.”

Laban did not want to see Jacob go.  Jacob had made him rich!  Laban had made a great living from doing nothing while Jacob had tended to his business for no wages, except a few wives and some maid servants who had many children.  They had eaten well, but Jacob wasn’t exactly getting wealthy working for Laban.

Laban wasn’t going to let Jacob go that easy!  He told 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.  Name your wages and I will pay them.  
                                                   ”Well….that was a sudden change of heart!  Laban was offering wages for good labor!  Why had he not done this before?  

Jacob must have found his offer disgusting at this point.  Also, Jacob must have been appalled to know that Laban had learned something about him from divination.  Even if it was true, and the LORD was blessing Laban because of Jacob; divination was forbidden by God. 

So, Jacob said to Laban, “You know how I have worked for you and how your livestock has fared under my care.  The little you had before I came has increased greatly, and the LORD has blessed you where ever I have been.  But now, when may I do something for my own household?”

Laban would not be put off that easy.  “What can I give you?” he replied.

Like any business man who gets called and caught for being greedy to his best employee, Laban told Jacob just to name his price.  It seemed that Jacob had proven to be irreplaceable to Laban.  He was finally willing to pay him what he was worth in order keep him, only because it was forced upon him by Jacob’s desire to leave. 

However, by now Jacob detested Laban so much that he did not want to have anything that was tied to Laban.  Rest assured any time God gives you a vision of His will for your life, someone like Laban will come along and offer you the things you had wanted all along and try to bribe you into not doing what God has instructed. 

Jacob did not want Laban to GIVE him anything.  He probably figured anything that Laban offered as a gift had to have strings attached……Jacob had certainly learned that this applied to arrangements concerning marriage to his daughter!  Besides, Jacob had seen God’s will in the vision and he was probably pondering why God had specifically told him about the the rams which leap on the flocks that are streaked, speckled, and gray-spotted. He had probably concluded by now that God was telling him these would be the flocks that would multiply and reproduce well.  Jacob knew it was time for him to listen to God and show his faith.

 “Don’t GIVE me anything,” Jacob replied.   “But if you will do this one thing for me, I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them; let me go through all of your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat.  They will be my wages.  And my honesty will testify for me in the future, whenever you check on the wages you have paid me.  Any goat in my possession that is not speckled or spotted, or any lamb that is not dark colored, will be considered stolen.”

Now Jacob didn’t mean the original speckled and spotted sheep would be his.  He meant that he would separate the white ones out from the colored ones, and all the original animals would belong to Laban.  Jacob would tend to the white ones.  Whatever livestock was born to these that were speckled, spotted or stripped would belong to Jacob.  The white ones and the original spotted, speckled and stripped ones would still belong to Laban and would eventually go back to him. 

Whatever could have possessed Jacob to make such a deal as this?  

He had to believe in the vision from heaven and the word from The Angel Of The LORD!  

Some might tend to think it possible that he was as fed up with Laban as he had been with Esau, and maybe he was trying to trick him.   Could Jacob be up to his old trickery again?  Could he out-smart that trickster Laban this time?  That doesn’t seem to be the case!
 

It seems that after 14 years of serving under this Laban who was constantly outwitting him, Jacob had learned that God was prospering him no matter what his circumstances were.  Jacob had changed and matured to the point that he now relied on his righteous conduct to secure blessings from God.  He was simply acting on his directions from God in the vision.  This was a major turn for Jacob!  He had quit being a manipulator and he had begun to seek the will of God in all that he did!

The trickster Jacob had TURNED into a righteous man.  Not only that, he had become a righteous man who had FAITH that God would provide.  He not only THOUGHT it, but he LIVED it out.  This isn’t to say that Jacob had developed a perfect character yet, but it is to say that he was well on his way, and God was showing him and teaching him new things every day. 

Jacob had been listening and learning!  One new thing that Jacob had learned in all his years of handling livestock was the practice of animal husbandry.  He had not wasted his time.  He had been studious. 

Maybe Laban was not as observant as he thought he was.  He knew he was being blessed because of Jacob, but he had not caught on to the fact that Jacob had been prosperous because of The One True God of Heaven and Earth.  Laban had obtained his facts somewhere else.  They were true facts, but they came from the wrong sources for all the wrong reasons.  Laban was a victim of twisted truths.   Jacob’s truth was pure and it came directly from God.  Laban went blindly on down the path of destruction thinking he was so very smart in his own ways.    

“Agreed!” yelled Laban as fast as he could.  Silently he must have been thinking to himself that this was too good to be true!  How could he possibly lose? 

That very day the flocks were divided.  Jacob took out the unspotted, unspeckled and unstriped animals of Laban and tended to them.  The others (the spotted and speckled ones) were taken three days away and were tended by Laban’s sons.  Only those new born spotted and stripped that came from the flock of the white ones would become Jacob’s property and wages.  The flock Jacob tended would be examined later and then divided out again.  Jacob would receive all the spotted, striped and colored animals from HIS herds, and Laban would keep all the rest, including all the original white animals.   But how were those pure white flocks of Jacob’s going to produce spotted and speckled flocks so that his earnings would be increased?  Both of these men had bred flocks long enough to know that you usually could not create colored sheep from white ones.  How were the sheep left with Jacob going to produce the right colored offspring? 

Laban was probably thinking, easy money! This would be a “shoe in” win for him!  He would get even more use out of that not-so-smart son-in-law.  Life was good!  Laban just LOVED getting “something for nothing!”

Jacob, however, had been breeding sheep, goats and cattle for a long time now.  He knew a lot about animals and even more important, he knew about the background of these particular herds.  Not to mention the fact that and he knew a LOT about Laban. 

Simply by long continued observation of his flocks Jacob had picked up on a technique we now call Mendalian genetics.  In other words; Jacob knew that even though a species of animal may have certain ‘dominant’ traits (such as white coloring) a certain proportion of the solid-colored animals would be homozygous (with the same abnormative color genes) and, if mated with other homozygous animals would bear only solid-color offspring.  The heterozygous animals, which did contain, in some proportion, the genes for off-colored progeny, would be the ones which would have to supply his own future progeny.  

Jacob had a history of breeding these animals.  He knew which were which.  These that were heterozygous would be the ones to supply his own future flocks; so by selective breeding he could eventually develop a flock of predominantly spotted and speckled animals. Normally, this would be a slow, time consuming process. 

Okay, so Jacob had learned a lot more than Laban about animal DNA, which is VERY amazing, but why did he use the next methods he used?  The scriptures tell us that Jacob took branches from the poplar, almond and plane (chestnut) trees, peeled their bark in places (which would have given them a mixed-colored look of part bark and stripes of white) and placed them in the water troughs when the animals came to drink. 

Some people have the theory that Jacob thought by peeling the bark in a certain way the animals would see stripped wood as they mated and the visual image of “mixed colors” would send a message to their brains and they would (for some reason)  because of this produce speckled and spotted and stripped offspring. 

It is very unlikely that an external image, like many suspected as the cause, could be transmitted through the eyes to the brain and therefore in some way serve as a signal to the DNA structure to specify certain characteristics (such as color) to be triggered in an empryo. 

Still, it IS true that certain chemicals can and do have a significant prenatal influence if they can reach the embryo  prior to conception in the DNA in the germ cells.  Therefore, it IS possible that certain chemicals in the wood of these named trees – peeled rods of which were actually in the water where the flocks came to drink – were capable somehow of affecting the animals.  This is a possible yet doubtful theory.

It is more likely and highly possible that this “treated” water may have served as an aphrodisiac to promote fertility among the animals.  One of these same chemical substances HAS been used for such a purpose in both ancient and modern times.  Jacob seemed to know this. 

Did the fact that Jacob performed this act mean he doubted the vision of God.? Not at all!  It only meant that he was working side-by-side WITH God to perform the instructions he had been shown.  He needed to build up his herds and get his family away from Laban.

Another thing that Jacob did was to divide the stronger animals from the weaker animals.  He only used the peeled sticks when the stronger animals came to drink, thus; encouraging them to mate, and not encouraging the weaker animals to mate, hence stronger, healthier animals were being born to his flocks. 

Some theologians have seen this picture of Jacob breeding his herd as a symbolism of how God lets The Holy Spirit work in The Kingdom of God.  Jacob took stripped rods to entice the strong animals to breed.  Just seeing that word "stripe" brings to mind the lashes applied in the beating of Jesus Christ as he was about to be crucified for our sins.  The fact that the stripes were white symbolized the purity and innocence of Christ.   The scripture does say "by His stripes we are healed."   Because He was willing to suffer in our place, we now have life!   The rod bearing the white stripes is symbolic of Jesus in his suffering.  

One has to look upon this picture of what happened at the cross of Calvary in order to believe in God, and in order for God's Holy Spirit to lead them into repentance.  What does belief and repentance bring about?  One becomes "born again."  

That was exactly what Jacob was trying to achieve with his flocks - a new birthing method.  He was changing the herd from Laban's leadership to Jacob's leadership.  All of the new birth would belong to Jacob.  Some theologians have picked up on this picture as symbolic of how God gave men the right to choose The Kingdom of God through being "born again" or Satan and hell.  The more you look into this, the more the symbolism comes into play, but back to the real facts of the original story:

All of Jacobs knowledge, whether he understood the science of it or not; helped to produce the animals he desired.  The strange factor that played into it and the part that Jacob did not expect and could not control  was the exceedingly large number of animals born with color.  The amount of animals that were produced with specks or spots was very unusual, even with all the knowledge and techniques that Jacob had used.  He NEVER expected to get this LARGE a number of colored animals!

Usually, the numbers would be much smaller and take much longer to increase.  Jacob probably thought the most he could hope for were a few good animals that he could breed again and slowly grow the herds.  It seemed that God was adding His blessings to the knowledge that He had led Jacob to obtain.  Where Jacob’s efforts left off, God supplied the rest.

This is a little different than what most people seem to come up with about this passage; most just assume that EVERYTHING was of God and NOTHING was of Jacob.  That is basically and indirectly true; in that God gave Jacob the knowledge that he had.  I would also like to point out that Jacob had been listening and learning from God from the moment he arrived in the land, and his ways and his heart had changed enough to be doing his part and acting in faith to provide for his family.  He wasn’t just sitting back and expecting God to constantly produce for him like a genie in a bottle, but he was giving of himself too and trusting God to take over when and where MORE was needed.  God expects all of us to do our part.

From this combined teamwork of God first and Jacob following, the percentage of streaked and spotted animals was way out of proportion, even for someone who understood animal husbandry and who followed the laws of science to the letter.  There was still a huge miracle in Jacobs favor, and God is the ONLY reasonable explanation.

This act of listening and learning from God and developing the skills of a good shepherd made Jacob prosperous and very wealthy.  His success was abundant and his family was blessed from the outcome of the development of his herds.  

Laban was amazed and quite displeased with the results, but what could he say?

God had blessed Jacob tremendously and it was time for Jacob to move on!