Comeuppance

In this section of Scripture, Jacob has left Beersheba and his family so that he would not be killed by his brother. He arrives in Paddan-Aram where his uncle lives, and for the next two decades, he stays there and works for his uncle.

Upon arrival, Jacob is enamored with Rachel, Laban’s daughter. He promises to work for Laban seven years to marry her but is deceived by Laban into marrying his older daughter Leah, whom Jacob “hated” (29:31). He then agrees to work another seven years to get the hand of Rachel, whom he loved.

In Laban, Jacob meets a deceiver of equal stature and the means of God’s discipline. Like an angle grinder on a rough piece of metal, two decades of familial friction serve to smooth the rough edges of Jacob’s character, and the reader can reflect that presumably Jacob is not the only person to have needed a Laban in his life. It was through Laban that Jacob drank deeply of his own duplicity.

There are several parallels between this deception and Jacob’s deception of Issac which make it clear that Jacob is getting just what he deserves. As any parent knows, a father’s children are not too far out of reach for a father’s discipline. However, the Bible makes clear that God, not Laban, had the last word. The deceiver Jacob was deceived, and the despised Leah was exalted to become the mother of, among others, the priestly and kingly tribes of Levi and Judah.