Genesis 28

Genesis 28:10-31

XXVII JACOB’S AND LIFE IN HARAN Genesis 28:10-31:55 Now we come to an important event in Jacob’ s life, his leaving home to be absent many years, and his conversion. How different his leaving from old Eliezer’s! Eliezer went openly, with a large train and many handsome presents. Jacob had to slip off, without money, an exile and afoot. From this time on the man’s individuality will come out. This chapter gives an account of his conversion, the great event of his life, Genesis 28:10-18.

That dream was God’ s method of communicating with this lonely man. The ladder in that dream, according to John’s Gospel, represents Jesus Christ, the connecting stairway between earth and heaven, upon which angels descend to earth and ascend to heaven. In that dream Jacob saw a grand sight for any man. Earth and heaven had been separated by sin with earth’s inhabitants under a curse. By grace that chasm was spanned by the coming of the Redeemer. Upon that stairway angels come to earth and carry back their reports.

Jesus said (John 1), “Hereafter you shall see the angels of heaven ascending and descending upon the Son of man,” showing that he fulfilled the type of Jacob’s ladder. Dr. Richard Fuller has a marvelous sermon on Jacob’s ladder. He was the great orator of the Southern Baptist pulpit, tall, finely formed, handsome, his voice as a silver bell, and as sweet in its melody as the whisper of an Aeolian harp. It is said that no man could interest a crowd following Dr. Fuller in a speech.

He is the only man, other than Dr. J. L. Burrows who has preached the Convention Sermon more than once in the Southern Baptist Convention. People were carried away by the man and his personality. He was one of the few rich men who are called a man of great intellectuality.

Read his sermon on Jacob’s ladder, and also the one on “The Cross of Christ.”

Jacob awakened from his sleep and said, “Surely Jehovah is in this place,” and he called the name of that place Bethel. “And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah shall be my God, then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” There is the evidence of his conversion, his keen sense of divine presence and realization of the import of divine communication, his recognition, as if for the first time in his hitherto unworthy life, of his relations to God and the fixed purpose that came into his heart from that time on to serve God, and to honor God with the firstfruits. Here we come to the second mention of tithing before the giving of the law on Sinai. We have seen before that Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek. This man is changed from this time on. He does not lose his shrewd business sense, but he is godly and prayerful and believes that wherever he goes God is with him. That is the secret of a religious life.

The conviction that there is a direct connection between earth and heaven, and that every angel in heaven, to the extent of his power, is pledged to the companionship and protection of every child of God, and that Jesus Christ is the connecting link between earth and heaven, and that through sickness and health, good and evil report, God will be with his people, is a sure basis of a good life. That consciousness brings out the purpose, “I will serve and honour God with everything that I have.” I remember, while sitting in the back end of a wagon, I read this passage to my wife.

The circumstances were these: At the close of the War Between the States, though crippled with wounds, and bankrupt, I voluntarily assumed an antebellum debt of $4,000, not legally my own, and had finally paid all by selling everything I bad but wife and baby, and was moving to a church on the promise of $500 a year. I said, “Now, wife, here is a time to settle our financial relation to God. We haven’t got a thing, and we are sure to fail if he is not honored by us, and if he is honored we will succeed. Let us enter into a covenant right here that whatever happens we will give God one-tenth of every cent that we ever make.” We did from that time on. I have long since passed that limit. For many years I have been giving one-fifth, and some years two-fifths.

So here was the event that changed this man’s life. What matters it that he was banished from home and alone, without friends and without money?

If God’ was his portion he was rich no matter how poor. If God was with him he had company, no matter how lonely. If God was for him, who could be against him?

The rest of this chapter we devote to Jacob’s life in Haran (Genesis 29-31:55), a period of twenty years. He enters tliat country afoot, with nothing but the clothes he had on and the staff in his hand. He comes out an exceedingly rich man, very much married, with twelve children. Another son was born later. The lesson commences with telling how he arrived at Haran and stopped at the well, perhaps the same at which old Eliezer stopped when he went after a bride for Isaac. Here he meets Rachel, the one woman throughout his life he was to love.

She was a little girl about ten or twelve years old, or she would not have bad charge of the flock by herself. But in Oriental countries a girl of twelve is equal in maturity to a girl of seventeen here. It was a case of love at first sight. He never loved another woman while he lived. After they were made known to each other (v. II), “And Jacob kissed Rachel and lifted up his voice and wept.” My first question is, Why did he weep after kissing that girl?

I leave that for you to find out. When Brother Truett and his wife were here, looking toward each other just about like Jacob and Rachel, and we were passing over this, I gave that same question. Some of the class answered, “He wept because he had not commenced that work sooner.” And one ill-natured young preacher said, “He wept because Rachel had been eating onions.” But Brother Truett’s wife gave the true answer. See who of you will give it.

The next remark is on the Genesis 29:14 : “And Laban, the father of Rachel, said unto him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him a month of days,” i.e. he stayed as a guest for a full month. A guest must not stay too long. So naturally Laban raised the question of something to do, and said to Jacob, “Because thou art my brother,” which means kinsman, “shouldst thou, therefore, serve me for nothing? Tell me what shall be thy wages.” Laban proposes a business transaction. Look at it.

Jacob says, referring to the two girls – Leah, the elder, was not beautiful and her eyes were weak, but Rachael was beautiful of form and countenance – “I will serve thee seven years for thy younger daughter. It was the custom for the bridegroom to give presents, and in the Orient today a man in a measure purchases his wife.

But Jacob had nothing to give, but he was to serve seven years without other wages. Young men of the present day think if they serve for a girl thirty days that it is a great tax on them, and they begin to think how much they have paid for ice cream, streetcar fare, buggy rides, theater tickets, etc., and begin to bring matters to a focus. They have not the love that Jacob had. And his proposition was accepted. Next, Genesis 29:20, “And Jacob served for Rachel seven years, and they were in his eyes but a few days for the love he had for her.” There is a remarkable proof of the genuineness of his love. This is one of the most illustrious cases of deep, personal, lifelong attachment that we have any historical account of, and has become proverbial: “Serve seven years for Rachel.” At the end of the seven years he claimed the fulfillment of the contract.

Now this young man who had practiced the deception upon his old, blind father, has a deception practiced upon him. Laban is very tricky and unscrupulous.

All that crowd up there are shrewd traders and sharp bargainers. Whoever deals with them has to keep both eyes open, and not sleep in the day, and not sleep very sound at any time in the night. They are that way till this day. The manner of consummating the marriage, the betrothal of which had lasted seven years, is very simple: In a formal way the father veils the girl and at night turns her over to the bridegroom. That ends the ceremony. I have seen a letter today from a judge who occupies his seat for the first time, and he says one of the first acts of his administration was to marry a couple and he tells of the ceremony, too simple to repeat, but it does not make much difference about the form, the fact that the transfer has been made and accepted establishes the validity.

Here comes a general question, What ill-natured English poet, in order to illustrate what he calls the disillusions that follow marriage said, “With Rachel we lie down at night; in the morning, behold it is Leah”? I don’t agree with him at all. There have been thousands and thousands of marriages where there was not only no disillusion after the marriage was consummated, but an ever-deepening, lifelong attachment. I expect if some woman had written a couplet she would have put it: “With George Washington we lie down at night, and in the morning, lo I it is Benedict Arnold.” It sounds smart, but you ought not to have any respect for any man who reflects upon the sanctity of the marriage relation. I knew a couple who married early, the man about twenty-three, and the girl about eighteen. After twenty-five years had passed the man said, “I have not been anywhere in the world that she has not been with me.

Even when I go hunting, fishing, traveling, she is with me. And there has never been an hour since I married her that I had not rather be with her than with anybody else in the world.” And the woman said the same thing. I think that kind of testimony is much better than the English poet’s testimony.

Jacob was very indignant at the cheat perpetrated upon him. He did not love Leah, and he did not want her at all. The explanation that Laban made is so thin that it won’t hold water. It is not true that in the East you cannot marry the younger until the older is disposed of. Laban then said, “As soon as the week of wedding festivities is over, I will let you have Rachel, provided you will serve seven more years. You can take her at the end of the week, but you take her on a credit until you have served the seven years.” Jacob made that trade. Fourteen years of hard work! I want you to think of that whenever you think of the bad things Jacob did; think also of the good points in the man.

Now we come to the evils of polygamy forced upon Jacob. He never wanted but one woman, but this trickery of his uncle gave him two, and the jealousy of these two wives fastened upon him two more; so that there were two wives and two concubines. For quite a while the strife between the two wives goes on. What kind of a home do you suppose that was? Among the Mormons they do sometimes give a separate house to each wife, but others put a dozen in the same house. Jealousy is certain to develop and cause conflict among the children. A struggle between these two wives is manifested in the names given to the children. Leah, in these seven years, bore Jacob seven children, six sons and one daughter.

Rachel bore one son, Joseph, and afterward another. The two maidservants bore two each. That makes twelve sons. I will call the names out in the order in which they were born. Reuben, Leah’s firstborn, means “See, a son.” It expresses her pride, that Jacob’s firstborn was a son, and not a daughter. Simeon, her second, means “a hearing”: that she asked God, as the love of her husband had not come when Reuben was born as she supposed, to send her another child, but Jacob still did not love her.

Levi, her third, means “a Joiner”; “Now I will be joined to my husband.” But he did not join them. Judah, her fourth, means “praise”; “Praise Jehovah for the blessing that has come upon me, now that I have borne four sons to my husband.” When Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, bore a son, Rachel named him Dan, meaning “a judge”; “God has judged my side of the case.” When Naphtali, the second son, was born to her handmaid, Rachel names him “wrestling.” She had wrestled in prayer to God for still additional hold on the husband.

Then Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid, bore a son and he is named Gad. The literal Hebrew means “good fortune,” but when we come to interpret it in chapter 49, it means “7 troop,” i.e., four sons have already been born on the Leah side and here is another. That means there is going to be a troop of them. Her next son is named Asher, which means “happy” – happy in getting the advantage of Rachel. Then Leah herself bears another son, Issachar, which means “reward.” Her next son, Zebulun, means “dwelling.” “I have borne six sons to my husband. Surely he will dwell with me.” When her daughter was born she named her Dinah, which means “vindication”: “God is vindicating my side of the marriage relation.” At that time Rachel bore her first child and she named him Joseph, “May he add, as I now have a start.” Later on, Rachel’s last son is born, and dying she names him Benoni, “the child of my anguish.” But the husband steps in and for the first time gets to name one of the children.

He names him Benjamin, “the child of my right hand.” These are the twelve names bestowed on the sons. When we come to the dying blessing that Jacob pronounces in chapter 49 upon all of the children, we will see some additions to the names and the characteristics there brought out.

These titles come from what the mothers thought of the twelve children at the time they were born, but the names from chapter 49 come from the developments of character in the boys themselves. In Deuteronomy 33, where Moses pronounces the blessing on the twelve tribes, calling them by their names, he leaves out one of the twelve altogether, and brings in new titles not based upon what was in the mother’s mind, nor upon the characteristics of the twelve sons, but upon the characteristics of the tribes descended from the sons. In Revelation 12, we will come upon another list of them, where the reference is not at all to the reasons heretofore expressed in their names but to the later tribal characteristics. As we pass along I, will ask you to compare these four lists of the children of Jacob. You know we have four lists of the twelve apostles, and sometimes different names for the same person. Yet more particularly will I call your attention to the birthright man.

Reuben, the firstborn, is entitled to the right of primogeniture. You will find out later how he loses it, and how the several elements of the right of primogeniture are distributed among three other sons of Jacob.

At the end of the fourteen years Jacob claimed the fulfillment of his contract. Up to this time he had not made anything, except the wife that he wanted. He has a large family, no money or property, but rich in this family. A young man of the present time, encumbered with twelve children in fourteen years of married life, would think himself pretty much hampered, particularly if he had no bank account, cotton field, or big salary. Now the question comes up about a new contract. God had marvelously blessed Laban on account of Jacob.

Jacob had attended to his business so well, being competent from habits of earlier life to which I called your attention in a previous chapter, that Laban did not want to lose Jacob. Jacob makes another proposition: “You shall not pay me any salary, but I propose that we leave it for divine providence to designate how much I ought to get.

Most of the sheep are white, brown, or black, an unmixed colour. I propose that my part shall be the speckled, striped or ringstreaked.” Laban looked over his flocks and found only a little sprinkle in all the multitudes not having a solid color. So he accepted the proposition. He was a very shrewd old man. Before the contract goes into effect he moves every one that is already ring-streaked, striped, or speckled, three days’ journey from Jacob, and puts them in the hands of his sons and says to Jacob, “We will start even.” Jacob said nothing, but God was with him, and we have here presented in the history how Jacob got rich, and the expedients that he resorted to in order that the flocks might bear striped, speckled, and ring-streaked. And we learn how God intervened that Jacob, who had been working fourteen years and had been cheated, might have compensation.

Through Jacob’s expedient, and particularly through divine providence, Jacob’s flocks increased. Old Laban looked on and it puzzled him.

Laban’s children looked on and it puzzled them. The pure white and solid colors began to get fewer and fewer. Jacob’s flock began to multiply beyond all human calculation. What follows? Laban’s sons begin to talk about it: “This stranger has come up here. He did not have a thing when he came to our house. He is managing this business and getting all of our father’s property. After a while there won’t be anything to divide between us.” Laban heard the boys talking and he agreed with them.

When he would pass Jacob he would look at him sideways and would not speak to him. Jacob saw a storm was brewing. God came to him in a vision and said, “Return to thy native land. It is time to go, twenty years have passed.” Jacob did not know how his wives would stand on the matter. So he sent for them to come out to the field. He would not talk to them about it at the house. He stated the case fairly: how badly he had been treated, and wanted to know if the wives would stand by him and would go with him. They told him they would, and he might have known it.

A man need never be afraid, if he is a good husband, of her not standing by him. Everybody else in the world may go back on him, but a good wife will be true. Laban was away on a three days’ journey, so they decided to strike out without letting him know. And to add to it, Rachel went into Laban’s house and stole his teraphim, little images of idolatry and divination. Just as Demetrius, the silversmith at Ephesus, made little models of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, so they could tie them around their necks or put them in their pockets and carry them around with them. Wherever they felt like worshiping, they could bow down before this little trinket, or as they now tie crosses around their necks, or when they get up they bow down before that cross or little image of the virgin Mary.

Now, the question comes up, Why did Rachel steal the teraphim? That is what I want you to answer.

I have my own opinion, but I don’t want to force it on you now. One may answer that she was herself at heart an idolater, at least in part. Now, you may adopt that, if you want to, for your answer. It is not mine. They started at a good time. Laban was gone to that other flock, and they knew he would not be back for three days and that they would have three days the start. So they crossed the Euphrates and set out with many servants, cattle, sheep, goats, and quite a sprinkling of children and only four wives. It was a pretty big caravan.

I don’t know just which way Jacob went. He may have gone down to Damascus, and from Damascus to Gilead.

Three days passed before Laban heard of it. He cornea home after shearing his sheep and wanted to find his little gods, but he could not find them. Then he went out to look for his interests in that other herd, and lo, Jacob was gone. So he rallied a party, a flying column, without women or children, flocks, or other hindrances, on swift dromedaries, or horses – suppose dromedaries – and at the end of seven days he caught them near the mountains of Gilead. But the night before he caught up with them old Laban had an experience that he had never had before in his life. In that night Almighty God in a vision comes to him and says, “Laban, don’t you speak either good or evil to Jacob.

Keep your hands of.” Unquestionably that is the only thing that prevented the killing of Jacob and taking the wives and children and that property – God’s divine intervention. It sobered Laban very much.

They had a meeting, and it was one of the most touching incidents in human history. Why some novelist has not brought it out I don’t know. Old Laban said, “You have stolen my goods, my cattle, my teraphim.” Jacob knew nothing about these little gods and denied it, and said he had carried off only what was his own. Now comes Jacob’s speech which I would like for you to be able to memorize. “And Jacob answered and said to Laban, What is my trespass? what is my sin, that thou hast hotly pursued after me? Whereas thou hast felt about all my stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? set it here before my brethren and thy brethren, that they may judge betwixt us two. These twenty years have I been with thee; thy ewes and thy she-goats have not cast their young, and the rams of thy flocks have I not eaten.

That which was torn of the beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day or by night. Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep fled from mine eyes.

These twenty years have I been in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy flock; and thou hast changed my wages ten times. Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now hadst thou sent me away empty. God hath seen mine affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked thee yesternight.” Old Laban could not say a word to that. The promise that God had made to Jacob that he would be with him had been literally fulfilled. Laban then proposes that a covenant be made between them. They erected and consecrated a pillar, that Laban’s crowd should never pass that pillar toward the Holy Land to do evil to Jacob, and Jacob’s crowd could never pass that pillar going to Laban’s country to do evil to him.

Now open wide your eyes and ears: “And Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha; but Jacob called it Galeed.” The first is Aramaic, and the second word is Hebrew, and they mean exactly the same thing. Dr. Joseph Parker of England has preached a great sermon on the text entitled “Logomachy,” i.e., strife about words. “And Laban said, This heap is witness between me and thee this day,” and he called it Mizpah. Here I am going to tell you a fragment of a very touching story. In the first year of the war, just before a young man had started to the army, he paid very pointed attention to a lady, and they became engaged. During the war, the man, in passing the time in absence and with new faces, changed his feelings.

His first letters were very loving and glowing. Then they began to lose the glow and diminish in length, and at last he quit writing. One evening just before a terrible battle in which many were killed, I was standing by the side of this man when one of the men who had been on a furlough brought a letter and handed it to him. He looked at the letter and said, “Pshaw! that is from that bothersome woman.” He opened it and there wasn’t a thing in it except a piece of colored paper, and on it was written in capital letters: “Mizpah, THE LORD BETWEEN ME AND THEE.”

He turned white as he looked at it. This woman knew the Bible story and knew that, where a covenant had been made in the name of God and God’s name brought in, whoever violated that covenant not only wronged a human being but was guilty of sin toward God. His hand shook as he looked at it. He told me about it, and I said, “If you are a man, you go right to your tent and send her a humble, penitent letter.” He said, “I won’t do it.” And I said, “Then watch out. That woman has quit appealing to you. She has appealed to God.

Mizpah, the Lord witness between me and thee.” He says, “I reckon I can take care of myself.” The next day we went into battle. He was shot through the heart and fell on me. That saved my life. When the battle was over I went back and found him thoroughly dead, and in going through his pockets to send home to his family, I found that piece of paper and through the center of the word “Mizpah” the Yankee bullet had gone right into his heart.

My reason for calling your attention to this is that he is a profane person who is irreverent toward God in anything. He is profane in the East who breaks an oath, and it is counted an everlasting degradation. Whenever you agree to anything in the name of God, you bring God in as a witness. Then you do what is said in another Old Testament book, “When I swear to my hurt, I will keep my word.” Stick to your word. Notice when Jacob meets Laban it is diamond cut diamond, but when Jacob meets Esau, it is rapier meeting hammer.

1. What was the great event of Jacob’s life?

2. State the time, place, and circumstances of his conversion.

3. What New Testament passage explains Jacob’s ladder and who preached a great sermon on it?

4. What melting hymn was suggested by this incident?

5. What name did Jacob give to the place of his conversion, and why?

6. What vow did he make?

7. What was the evidence of his conversion?

8. What is the secret of a successful, religious life?

9. What do we find here which was mentioned in the Bible only once before this, and what is the author’s belief respecting that teaching?

10. How long was Jacob in Haran?

11. Contrast his condition when he went in with his condition when he came out.

12. Describe the meeting of Jacob and Rachel.

13. Why did Jacob weep after he kissed Rachel?

14, How did Jacob get Rachel and what evidence that he loved her?

15. What proverb based on this incident?

16. How was the law of lex talionis exemplified in Jacob’s case?

17. What do you think of the English poet’s testimony referred to?

18. Was Laban’s explanation to Jacob plausible and what good points of Jacob here comes out?

19. State some of the evils of polygamy.

20. Who were Jacob’s children by Leah? Rachel? Bilhah? Zilpah?

21. What the meaning of their names?

22. From what were these names derived?

23. What four lists of these names do we have in the Bible?

24. What was Jacob’s condition, at the end of fourteen years?

25. What business contract did he now make with Laban and what do you think of the way he executed his part?

26. How did Jacob get away from Laban and why did Rachel steal Laban’s teraphim?

27. How did Jacob get the start of Laban and where did Laban over-take him?

28. What kept Laban from killing Jacob?

29. What charge did Laban bring against Jacob?

30. What was Jacob’s reply?

31. Cite the passage that shows the hardness of Jacob’s life in Haran.

32. How was it finally settled?

33. What is the meaning of Mizpah and what illustration of this is given by the author?