TOPIC: The Diligent Hands

READ: Genesis 30:22-43 (NKJV)

22. Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.
23. And she conceived and bore a son, and said, “God has taken away my reproach.”
24. So she called his name Joseph, and said, “The LORD shall add to me another son.”
25. And it came to pass, when Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own place and to my country.
26. “Give [me] my wives and my children for whom I have served you, and let me go; for you know my service which I have done for you.”
27. And Laban said to him, “Please [stay,] if I have found favor in your eyes, [for] I have learned by experience that the LORD has blessed me for your sake.”
28. Then he said, “Name me your wages, and I will give [it.”]
29. So [Jacob] said to him, “You know how I have served you and how your livestock has been with me.
30. “For what you had before I [came was] little, and it has increased to a great amount; the LORD has blessed you since my coming. And now, when shall I also provide for my own house?”
31. So he said, “What shall I give you?” And Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep your flocks:
32. “Let me pass through all your flock today, removing from there all the speckled and spotted sheep, and all the brown ones among the lambs, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and [these] shall be my wages.
33. “So my righteousness will answer for me in time to come, when the subject of my wages comes before you: every one that [is] not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the lambs, will be considered stolen, if [it is] with me.”
34. And Laban said, “Oh, that it were according to your word!”
35. So he removed that day the male goats that were speckled and spotted, all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had [some] white in it, and all the brown ones among the lambs, and gave [them] into the hand of his sons.
36. Then he put three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob fed the rest of Laban’s flocks.
37. Now Jacob took for himself rods of green poplar and of the almond and chestnut trees, peeled white strips in them, and exposed the white which [was] in the rods.
38. And the rods which he had peeled, he set before the flocks in the gutters, in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink, so that they should conceive when they came to drink.
39. So the flocks conceived before the rods, and the flocks brought forth streaked, speckled, and spotted.
40. Then Jacob separated the lambs, and made the flocks face toward the streaked and all the brown in the flock of Laban; but he put his own flocks by themselves and did not put them with Laban’s flock.
41. And it came to pass, whenever the stronger livestock conceived, that Jacob placed the rods before the eyes of the livestock in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.
42. But when the flocks were feeble, he did not put [them] in; so the feebler were Laban’s and the stronger Jacob’s.
43. Thus the man became exceedingly prosperous, and had large flocks, female and male servants, and camels and donkeys.