When Jacob strikes his bargain with God after seeing the ladder of angels (Genesis 28:16-17), we feel that he believes he’s gotten the better end of the deal. According to Jacob’s vow, God has to deliver both protection and prosperity in order to “earn” Jacob’s allegiance.
What Jacob doesn’t realize is that he’s just signed up for God’s mentoring program.
The very day Jacob enters his mother’s family territory, he meets his first cousin and the love of his life – Rachel – at the well where she waters her father Laban’s flock. Laban happily takes in his penniless nephew and eventually agrees to let him earn the bride price of his daughter Rachel’s hand in marriage with seven years of labor (Genesis 29:15-20).
At the end of that term, however, Laban places his older daughter Leah behind the wedding veil. When Jacob complains about the switch, Laban makes no excuses. Instead, he argues that Jacob can’t possibly expect a father to marry off a younger daughter before the older. After a honeymoon week with Leah, Jacob can also marry Rachel but will have to complete another seven-year stint of work (Genesis 29:21-27).
Thus, the deceiver of his brother Esau learns what it feels like to be deceived.
Perhaps it was a sense of the justice of payback that kept Jacob sojourning as an underling in Laban’s house for some twenty years. He takes in stride the blessings of ten sons and a daughter (from three different women), but, while his father-in-law’s flocks flourish, Jacob never gains any security about what goods belong to him. Laban persists in trying to trick him out of his rightful wages (Genesis 30:25-31:2).
Only after God opens the womb of his beloved Rachel, is Jacob able to hear the voice of the Lord urging him to leave Laban and return home (Genesis 31:3).
God mentors us with doggedness, but also with nuance. Much of the time, the Lord allows the unwelcome but predictable consequences of our selfish actions to teach us the errors of our ways. But sometimes it is the undeserved blessing that catches us off guard and turns us back to the Source of all that is good.
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