Genesis 31:7 Yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times; however, God did not allow him to hurt me. Genesis 31:9 Thus God has taken away your father’s livestock and given them to me. Genesis 30:38,39 And he set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks in the gutters…so the flocks mated by the rods, and the flocks brought forth striped, speckled and spotted.
Gen 31: 2 And Jacob saw the attitude of Laban and behold, it was not friendly toward him as before.
Laban, Jacobs father in law, was dishonest and tried to gain by his relationship with Jacob. As his boss, Laban constantly changed business agreements in his favor.
Jacob’s pay was the speckled sheep. Normally this would be about one percent of the sheep born. However, God caused the majority of the newborns to be of this type. Suddenly, Jacob is getting a large percentage of the flock. This was God’s design.
However, behind the scenes Jacob thought it was his doing. He thought putting specked sticks in front of the sheep would cause them to have speckled offspring. There is no evidence that this works. However, it was Jacob’s intent to manipulate the circumstances in his favor. I believe this caused the bad blood. People can sense when we’re being dishonest. Jacob’s actions were partially responsible for the sour business relationship and the angry family relationship.
Do we act in an underhanded fashion in business or friendships? This is learned early on. When siblings split the candy bar in half, do we take the bigger half?
God promises to look out for us. Jesus talked about purposely not taking the seat of honor, but to choose the lesser one. What often happens is we’ll get bumped up. However, when we overreach, we’re often put in our place (humiliation). Our self promotion breads distrust.
God will care for us. It’s ok to want to do well, but not at the risk of overly promoting.
Lord, help us to trust you with our lives. Thank You that you want better things for us. Things that we haven’t imagined.