Verse 31, he said, "...what shall I give
thee?"
And Jacob said, "...thou shalt not give me
anything.
If thou wilt do this thing for me,
I will again feed and keep thy flock.
I'll pass through all thy flock to-day,
removing from fence all the speckled and spotted
cattle, all the brown cattle among the sheep,
and the spotted and speckled among the goats,
and of such shall be my hire."
In other words, the pure breed will be
labans, but that which is just a half
-breed are not breeds at all, that are
not blue-ribbon cattle.
I'll take those if you'll give them to
me, and that's all that you'll need to
do.
These are the off-breeds.
They were not purebred by any means.
And he said, "...you let me have these,
that'll be my wages."
Now, that sounds like a pretty good proposition.
Verse 33 now, and let me read, "...so
shall my righteousness answer for me in time
to come, when it shall come from my
hire before thy face, every one that's not
speckled and spotted among the goats and brown
among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen
with me."
And Laban said, "...behold, I would it might
be according to thy word."
And he removed that day the heat goats
that were ring-streaked and spotted, and all
the goats that were speckled and spotted, and
every one that had some white in it,
and all the brown among the sheep, and
gave them into the hand of his sons.
In other words, they would not be able
to breed with the others.
Jacob would take that which is the off
-breed, and only the full-breed would bear,
and that would belong to Uncle Laban, but
the others would be his.
He's making here a very interesting deal, and
the way that it worked out is quite
interesting.
And I want to read this because this
has been criticized.
Verse 36, "...he set three days' journey betwixt
himself and Jacob, and Jacob fed the rest
of Laban's flocks, and Jacob took in rods
of green poplar, and of the hazel and
chestnut tree, and peeled white strakes in them,
and made the white appear which was in
the rods.
And he set the rods which he had
piled before the flocks in the gutters and
the watering troughs, when the flocks came to
drink, that they should conceive when they came
to drink."
Well, there have been several explanations of this.
There are those that say this is nothing
in the world but just pure superstition, and
others say it's just old wives' tales, and
this is certainly something that ought not to
be in the Bible record.
I think probably it should be in the
record.
In fact, it's my judgment it should be
in the record.
It's very important that it be in the
Word of God.
And the fact of the matter is this
is not superstition.
There are several explanations.
Now, I'm of the opinion that there are
those that today have been able to ascertain
that this does have an effect upon those
that are bringing into the world animals, and
certainly what a woman sees in time of
pregnancy and her experience during that time has
a tremendous effect upon the child.
And today the psychiatrist and psychologist makes a
great deal of it.
Well, it affects the animal world also.
Now, I do not intend to go into
that particular phase of it, but there are
things that frankly I can't explain, and I
don't know that anybody that can explain them.
If they can, they ought to explain them
to me because I'm in the dark.
I remember in our community where I lived
as a boy in southern Oklahoma, there was
one of these men that would take a
fork and stick and tell you where there
was water.
And everybody in our neighborhood, when they wanted
to drill a well, they called for him.
He came along with a fork and stick,
and the interesting thing is that every time
they called him in and he picked out
a spot, they drilled for water where he
said and they got water.
Now, I don't know whether they would have
got water if they hadn't called him in.
I don't know.
All I know is that there was a
very strange procedure.
It sounds superstitious to me, but it seemed
to work.
I know in many cases it does not
work.
But I found out that there are a
lot of scientific cures today that they give
and they don't work.
And there are a lot of scientific explanations
that don't work.
So that just goes to say it doesn't
work, and in some cases it does work,
and that doesn't prove anything.
All I'm trying to say is don't rule
this out as being superstitious.
Now, if you want to know the thing
that I actually think, both Laban and Jacob
believe this is what caused them to be
ring-straight.
And that's the thing that's important for this
story.
Maybe you are smart enough not to believe
it, but these two boys believed it.
And what you must remember, all those cattle
were together and some cattle would produce ring
-straight and speckle and some of the offspring
would be white.
Now, if there's speckle, some speckle and some
not, even that one that's not may bring
into the world one that is not.
I know that it may use a very
homely illustration.
I remember we had a cat one time
when I was a boy and that cat
was the prettiest, whitest cat that I've ever
seen.
Now, she had a bunch of kittens and
there were a lot of them just speckled,
you know, just like the cattle, and several
were perfectly white.
And lo and behold, in that litter, there
was one that was as black as ink.
Now, you tell me how he got in
there when his mama was a white cat,
just a snow-white cat, and here she
has a black kitten and yet other speckled
and others white.
Well, I know she must have met a
black cat somewhere, but I do know this.
Why did one be perfectly white and one
black?
Well, that's what's happening with these cattle.
I don't understand all that myself and I
don't propose to try to explain it.
All I say is this is the record
that is here these men believed it and
Jacob is using trickery again regardless of whether
there's value in it or not.
He's using trickery.
Now, he's been quite a trickster, you can
see, but he's met an uncle that's a
better trickster than he is and he's trying
now to make a comeback.
Well, may I say to you, poor Jacob,
because he came there with just a walking
stick and when he leaves, he leaves with
quite a few possessions.
Now, God is calling him to leave and
before we leave the chapter, I think probably
I ought to call attention to this.
It may be mechanical about these boys, but
here you have the mention of the 11
sons and that's important because these 11 sons
are the sons that are going to constitute
the 12 tribes of Israel.