Genèse 31

¹Jacob heard what Laban’s sons were saying: “Jacob has taken everything that belonged to our father. All his riches come from our father’s property.” ²Jacob also saw from Laban’s face that he no longer felt as he once had toward him. ³The LORD said to Jacob, “Return to your fathers’ land and to your own people. I will be with you.” ⁴Jacob therefore called Rachel and Leah out to the pasture where he had his flock. ⁵He told them, “I can tell from your father’s face that he is not the same toward me as he was. But the God of my father has stood by me. ⁶You yourselves know that I have given your father my full strength in his service. ⁷Even so, your father has tricked me and altered my wages time after time. But God would not let him do me any harm. ⁸Whenever he said, ‘The speckled ones will be your pay,’ the whole flock had speckled young. And whenever he said, ‘The striped ones will be your pay,’ the whole flock bore striped young. ⁹So it is God who has taken your father’s livestock away from him and given them to me. ¹⁰At the season when the flocks were mating, I lifted my eyes and saw in a dream that the male goats mounting the females were striped, speckled and mottled. ¹¹And the angel of God called to me in the dream, ‘Jacob!’ ‘Yes, I am here,’ I answered. ¹²He said, ‘Raise your eyes and look: every male goat mounting the flock is striped, speckled or mottled, for I have taken note of everything Laban is doing to you. ¹³I am the God of Bethel, where you poured oil on a pillar and made a vow to me. Now get up, leave this land, and go back to the land of your birth.’”^{a 14}Rachel and Leah replied, “Is there anything left for us to inherit from our father’s house? ¹⁵He treats us as outsiders. He sold us, and then he swallowed up the whole price paid for us. ¹⁶Whatever riches God has taken from our father are ours and our children’s by right. Now then, do everything God has said to you.” ¹⁷Jacob set out at once, putting his children and wives on camels, ¹⁸and he drove off all his herds and all the goods he had gained in Paddan-aram, the livestock that he had acquired there, to go to his father Isaac in the land of Canaan. ¹⁹Laban was away shearing his sheep, and Rachel took the household gods that belonged to her father. ²⁰And Jacob outwitted Laban the Aramean by not letting him know that he meant to run away. ²¹He fled with all that was his. Setting out, he crossed the Euphrates and turned toward the hill country of Gilead. ²²Three days later Laban learned that Jacob had run away. ²³Laban took his relatives with him and went after Jacob, and after seven days’ travel he caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead. ²⁴But in a dream by night God came to Laban the Aramean and warned him, “Watch yourself: do not say a word to Jacob, good or bad.” ²⁵Laban caught up with Jacob, who had pitched his tent in the hills, and Laban and his relatives camped in the hill country of Gilead too. ²⁶“What is this you have done?” Laban said to Jacob. “You have tricked me and driven my daughters off like prisoners taken at sword point. ²⁷Why did you slip away in secret and fool me, without a word to me? I would have given you a send-off with celebrating and singing, with drums and harps. ²⁸You gave me no chance to kiss my grandchildren and daughters farewell. That was a foolish thing to do. ²⁹It is within my power to do you all harm, but last night the God of your father spoke to me: ‘Watch yourself: do not say a word to Jacob, good or bad.’ ³⁰Now I understand you went away because you were homesick for your father’s house. But why did you steal my gods?” ³¹Jacob replied, “I was afraid. I told myself you would snatch your daughters away from me. ³²As for your gods, whoever has them will be put to death. With our relatives as witnesses, search for anything of yours that I have, and take it.” Jacob had no idea that Rachel had stolen them. ³³Laban searched Jacob’s tent, Leah’s tent and the tent of the two slave women, and found nothing. Coming out of Leah’s tent, he went on into Rachel’s. ³⁴Rachel, though, had taken the household gods, tucked them into her camel saddle and sat down on top of them. Laban felt through the whole tent without finding them. ³⁵She said to her father, “Please, my lord, do not be offended that I do not rise before you; it is my time of the month.” He went on searching, but the household gods were not to be found. ³⁶Jacob became angry and argued with Laban. “What wrong have I done?” he said to him. “What is my offense, that you came after me in such hot pursuit? ³⁷You have gone through every one of my things. Have you found a single thing from your house? Lay it out here before your kinsmen and mine, and they can settle the matter between us. ³⁸For twenty years I was with you. Not one of your ewes or she-goats miscarried, and I never ate a ram of your flock. ³⁹When a wild animal killed one, I did not bring it to you to show it was not my fault; I made up the loss myself. You made me pay for anything stolen, by day or by night. ⁴⁰That is how it was: by day the heat wore me down, by night the cold, and I could not sleep. ⁴¹That was my life for twenty years in your house: fourteen years of work for your two daughters and six for your flocks, while you changed my wages again and again. ⁴²Had the God of my father, the God of Abraham, the One whom Isaac fears, not stood by me, you would have sent me off with empty hands by now. But God saw how I suffered and how hard I toiled, and last night he gave his verdict.” ⁴³Laban answered, “These daughters are mine, these children are mine, these flocks are mine; everything in front of you belongs to me. Yet what can I do today for my own daughters, or for the children they have had? ⁴⁴So come, you and I will make a covenant, and it will stand as a witness between the two of us.” ⁴⁵Jacob then took a stone and stood it upright as a pillar. ⁴⁶He told his kinsmen to gather stones, and they brought stones and made a heap, and there beside the heap they shared a meal. ⁴⁷Laban named it Jegar-sahadutha, and Jacob named it Galeed. ⁴⁸“This heap stands as a witness between you and me today,” Laban said. So it was named Galeed, ⁴⁹and also Mizpah, for he said, “Let the LORD be on watch between us when we are out of sight of each other. ⁵⁰Should you ever mistreat my daughters or marry other women besides them, though no one else is with us, see, God is witness between you and me.” ⁵¹Then Laban said to Jacob, “Look at this heap, and look at the pillar I have raised between us. ⁵²The heap and the pillar both bear witness: I will not cross over past this heap to attack you, and you will not cross past this heap and this pillar to attack me. ⁵³Let the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us.” So Jacob swore by the One his father Isaac feared.^{b 54}Then Jacob offered a sacrifice there on the mountain and invited his relatives to share the meal. They ate together and spent the night on the mountain.