Genesis 30:27-43 ▼

27 And Laban says to him, “Now if I have found grace in your eyes—I have observed diligently that YHWH blesses me for your sake.”

28 He also says, “Define your hire to me, and I give.”

29 And he says to him, “You have known that which I have served you [in], and that which your substance was with me;

30 for [it is] little which you have had at my appearance, and it breaks forth into a multitude, and YHWH blesses you at my coming; and now, when do I make, I also, for my own house?”

31 And he says, “What do I give to you?” And Jacob says, “You do not give me anything; if you do this thing for me, I turn back; I have delight; I watch your flock;

32 I pass through all your flock today to turn aside every speckled and spotted sheep from there, and every brown sheep among the lambs, and speckled and spotted among the goats—and it has been my hire;

33 and my righteousness has answered for me in the day to come, when it comes in for my hire before your face—everyone which is not speckled and spotted among [my] goats, and brown among [my] lambs—it is stolen with me.”

34 And Laban says, “Behold, O that it were according to your word”;

35 and he turns aside during that day the striped and the spotted male goats, and all the speckled and the spotted female goats, everyone that [has] white in it, and every brown one among the lambs, and he gives into the hand of his sons,

36 and sets a journey of three days between himself and Jacob; and Jacob is feeding the rest of the flock of Laban.

37 And Jacob takes to himself a rod of fresh poplar and almond and plane-tree, and peels in them white peelings, making bare the white that [is] on the rods,

38 and sets up the rods which he has peeled in the gutters in the watering troughs (where the flock comes to drink), in front of the flock, that they may conceive in their coming to drink;

39 and the flocks conceive at the rods, and the flock bears striped, speckled, and spotted ones.

40 And Jacob has parted the lambs, and he puts the face of the flock toward the striped, also all the brown in the flock of Laban, and he sets his own droves by themselves, and has not set them near Laban’s flock.

41 And it has come to pass, whenever the strong ones of the flock conceive, that Jacob sets the rods before the eyes of the flock in the gutters, to cause them to conceive by the rods,

42 and when the flock is feeble, he does not set [them]; and the feeble ones have been Laban’s, and the strong ones Jacob’s.

43 And the man increases very exceedingly, and has many flocks, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and donkeys.