It's odd that Jacob gets pegged with the labels, deceiver, cheat, and liar, when it is Laban who perfectly pictures that character. Jacob's character does not change throughout the story of his life. He's a man of faith at the beginning when he sees the invisible and decides he'll buy it from the one who doesn't care about it anyway, Esau, to the time he tells Joseph to swear that he'll take Jacob's body out of Egypt and bury it where God promised to take Jacob's descendants, Canaan.
But Jacob knows the value of things. He knew the value of the birthright and that his brother undervalued it. He also knew the value of a wife. After he had worked for Laban, Laban asked what his wages would be. Jacob said he would work 7 years for Rachel. This is an incredible statement. He understood the value of a wife. How many of us husbands can say we would do that for our wives, if we had to do it over again? This could not have been lust, for lust cannot wait. Jacob valued Rachel very highly. And he was generous toward Laban, who would get rid of a costly daughter and only have to pay Jacob with . . . well, his daughter. Jacob is not a schemer seeking to get what he could while the going was good. It was Laban who was the schemer, who would even cheat Jacob seven years later by giving him Leah and then requiring him to commit to another seven years for Rachel.
Shockingly, I have even heard preachers and bible teachers criticize Jacob for this, as if he told Laban what had happened back in Canaan with Esau, and Laban figured he could take advantage of the situation. Thus, it was Jacob's fault, in part, that Laban decided to cheat Jacob. This is perverse, speculative, and another slander of the man who was upfront with Laban, generous, and unable to see that his uncle was a manipulating cheat. If anything, Jacob is somewhat naive, not a schemer.
Jacob worked for Laban for fourteen years, yet was paid barely enough to survive, even though he was married to two of Laban’s daughters. Talk about a deceptive unsavory character! That was Laban. If anyone was a schemer, it was Laban. Often Laban is discussed as if Jacob were reaping what he had sowed. Laban was out to scam Jacob out of everything. At the end of fourteen years, Jacob negotiated what he thought was a generous deal for Laban. Laban got to keep the best of the flock. Apparently, at that time, the speckled and spotted were considered less valuable than the pure colored flocks of goats and sheep. So Jacob was generous enough to work out a deal with Laban that he receive the lesser valued animals. Laban agreed, then behind Jacob’s back, had his sons take all the speckled and spotted animals and hide them far from where Jacob kept Laban’s flocks. Genetically, Laban made it practically impossible for Jacob to make a living of any substance. He would have been happy to let Jacob have nothing, even though he knew his own wealth had been enhanced and blessed simply because Jacob was living with and working for him. This Laban admitted to Jacob in Gen. 30:27. Talk about perverse, that was Laban.
But Jacob saw with the eyes of faith, and placing poplar branches in front of the watering troughs, envisioned the flocks as speckled and spotted. What was amazing was not that some pure-colored animals gave birth to spotted animals, but that God ensured that so many spotted and speckled animals were born. Only God could have miraculously changed the population of animals to favor Jacob, and he clearly did so to pay Jacob back for the manner in which Laban had cheated him. Jacob himself explains the injustice of his situation when Laban comes after him to do who knows what because God had blessed Jacob.
These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the rams of your flock. That which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was! In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes. Thus I have been in your house twenty years; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked you last night.
Gen. 31:38-42. Jacob had lived by faith. He refused to cheat Laban, even after he knew Laban had cheated him. He relied upon the God of His fathers. So, again Jacob is the man of faith, willing to suffer rather than steal or respond in revenge. In addition to Rebecca and Joseph, Laban is the third person spoken to by God in Jacob's story, and it is not a pleasant message but a rebuke and warning. See Gen. 31:24, 29.
Jacob’s name means to “grasp the heel,” which has been interpreted as schemer and manipulator. But that is not what Jacob was. Jacob grasped the heel in the same sense that Peter did. What did Peter do when he met Jesus and realized who He was? He fell down on his face and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” He was at the place, on the ground, where he could only grasp Jesus’ heel. Where can you grasp Christ when He’s on the cross, only His heel. Where was the prostitute when she honored Christ, at His feet. Therefore, that is where we should be – at His feet, fit only to grasp His feet, His heel, and hold on, believing that His righteousness can be ours and that is our only hope.
Jacob is most like the Disciple, Peter, whose name was changed from Simon. When was Jacob’s name changed? When he would not let go of the man with whom Jacob wrestled all night. The bible does not tell us what part of the man Jacob held. It could only have been the heel, right, because the man was trying to leave? How can you grab a strong person who is leaving but by the heel? Yet, that event, when Jacob most fit his name as a grasper of the heel, the man changes his name to Prince, which is what Israel means. Therefore, Jacob’s name was not based on manipulation and deceit but on not letting go of the God who took hold of Him when Jacob was in the womb and would not let go of his twin brother’s heel. Jacob wanted the most valuable thing, the Lord Himself, and he would not let go. He was a persevering saint, and God honored him with an even better name, as he lived up to his original name.
How else is he like Peter? Peter wanted the best. He left the fishing nets, perhaps a fairly prosperous business, to follow Jesus Christ, the person and thing most valuable. Peter expected something from it: “Lord, we have left all to follow you. What will there be for us?” Jesus did not rebuke him. Far from it, He told Him there would be great riches for him and the other disciples – houses, family, persecution, and eternal life. Jesus loved that Peter would leave all to seek after what was most valuable, even though Peter did not fully understand all that he was seeking. Jacob also left all. Why? Because he was being persecuted for seeking the eternal, the invisible. Jacob left home with no money, no property, just what he could carry. He had nowhere to lay his head, just a rock for a pillow under the stars. Had Jesus come to Jacob and told him to follow Him, Jacob would have left all just like Peter. Why? Because Jacob knew what was most valuable, unlike Esau who sold what was most valuable for what was temporarily satisfying.
What can we learn? Single men, if you would not be willing to work for seven years to earn the right to marry the woman you think should be your wife, I wonder if you value her enough. You husbands, do you know how much your wife has sacrificed to be your wife? (Dear, forgive me for not seeing and not honoring your sacrifice in choosing to be my wife, for thinking you had gotten quite a catch. It is I who got the catch and have not respected that enough.) Employees, business men, when you see you're being cheated, how do you respond? Is it with faith in God? When you see people getting ahead through unscrupulous methods, are you tempted to do the same? Or do you believe God can bless your work and even make things right for you when you are unjustly treated? Thus, Jacob was the most Christ-like of the three patriarchs. He suffered unjustly, though innocent, and he did not seek revenge against his persecutors but instead entrusted himself to the God "who judges justly." I Pet. 2:23. He left all at the instruction of his father and to seek righteousness - to marry within the covenant. And he believed in the miraculous power of God to protect him from utter destitution and dependence upon man, when he believed God would bless him with speckled goats and sheep, even when it was impossible for such to be produced in the numbers necessary to pay Jacob the wages he was owed.
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