Jacob continues on his journey into the east until he reaches the equivalent of a service station: a well! “Well, well, what have we here,” he thinks, because there are some other men gathering around the well already and they have their flocks of sheep with them. Turns out that when all the different flocks are together then the stone cover is rolled off the well and they draw up water and give the sheep a drink. The only reason the stone is there is to stop all the water from drying out in the heat of the sun.
“Where are you from?” Jacob asks.
“Haran,” they reply. “Ah” Jacob thinks, “that’s where I’m going” so he goes ahead and asks “Do you know of a guy called Laban? He’s the grandson of Nahor.
“We know him,” they say.
“Is he well?” Jacob asks, for Laban is his uncle, even if he has never seen him before.
“He sure is,” they say, “And look, here comes his daughter now – Rachel.” But Jacob only glances in the direction to see yet MORE sheep coming. There are already quite a lot there so he says “Look, guys, why do you water all these sheep now? The sun is high and it is extremely hot. Don’t gather all the flocks together, give your sheep some water then go back to the fields where they can graze and sleep in the afternoon sun.”
But the men say, “We can’t. We need everyone to roll the stone cover off the well so everyone needs to be here before we water the sheep because one person can’t do it on their own.”
Then there was probably that big awkward silence… lol well Jacob looks around at the sheep that Laban’s daughter Rachel was bringing to the well (she was a shepherdess) but this time he actually spots Rachel. So he goes over and waters her sheep for her (after they’ve got the cover of) and then he behaves a little stupidly (or we would think so anyway). He kisses Rachel (presumably NOT on the lips… but as a greeting) and he starts to cry. And as he cries he says that he is a relative of her father. Rachel runs to her father and tells him. As soon as Laban hears he hurries out and runs to meet Jacob.
Then Laban hugged him and kissed him (again, presumably NOT on the lips) and he takes him into his house and says “You’re like a son to me.”
That was the beginning of a good relationship. Jacob stays with Laban and works for him. After a month Laban comes and says “you’re a relative but I should pay you if you work for me. So what do you want me to pay you?”
It should be noted at this point that Laban has TWO daughters. The older one is called Leah, and Rachel is the younger one. Leah has “weak” eyes, but Rachel is stunningly beautiful.
Jacob is in love with Rachel and so he says, “I will work for you for seven years IF you give me your daughter Rachel to be my wife.”
And Laban says “Well, why not? Better that she’s married to you than any other man! Stay here and work for me and I will let you marry Rachel.” So a couple of days passed… well it seemed like a couple of days for Jacob, because he was in love with Rachel, but it was actually SEVEN YEARS!! Then Jacob goes to Laban and says: I have worked seven years for you, now you must give me Rachel to be my wife. I want to sleep with her.”
Laban agrees and puts on a massive feast and celebration. Now it was custom that the wife would wear a viel through the feast and also until the morning. So no one noticed that Laban had actually put LEAH into the bride’s dress instead of Rachel. As a gift Laban gives a slave girl called Zilpah to be a maidservant for his daughter. So Jacob goes off and sleeps with her. But in the morning he wakes up and its time to take the veil off… then he finds out that actually he’s just slept with Rachel’s older sister! Oh dear. He’s not happy.
“You’ve tricked me! What have I done that you decide to do this to me?” Jacob demands the next morning. And Laban says smoothly, “I’m sorry Jacob, but its custom here that the older sister MUST be married before the younger sister is. Have the week’s holiday that you have to have with Leah, but at the end of the week you can be married to Rachel, but you will have to then stay here for another seven years and work for me again.”
Jacob loves Rachel so he does this. Laban gives a servant called Bilhah to be Rachel’s maidservant. So Jacob eventually gets to lie with Rachel, but he loves Rachel more than Leah. And then he starts working for another seven years. He must have been furious that he’d been tricked, but he must have loved Rachel more because he works a total of FOURTEEN YEARS trying to get her!
But God sees everything and he saw that Leah was not loved by Jacob so he made it that Leah COULD have babies but that RACHEL couldn’t. :O So Leah gives birth to a son, who was Jacob’s firstborn, and she calls him Reuben and she thinks “Surely Jacob will love me more now!” Then she gives birth to a second son and calls him Simeon and she thinks “At least God sees that I am unloved because he has given me TWO sons!” Then she gives Jacob a THIRD son and she thinks “Surely now after THREE sons, Jacob will love me.” And she calls the third son Levi. Then she gives birth to a fourth son and she thinks, “I don’t think anything could ever make Jacob ove me more, so I will just praise God.” At that time she stops having children.
Rachel sees that her sister is having loads of boys and becomes really jealous. So she says to Jacob: “Give me kids!! If you don’t I will die!” Obviously Jacob has no power to just say “have kids” and make her have kids so he gets angry that she’s expecting something from him that he can’t give and replies “Am I god? Only god can keep you from having kids or allow you to have them!”
So Rachel says, “Right here is the maidservant my father gave me. Have sex with her and her child can be counted as mine!”
So her maidservant, Bilhah, sleeps with Jacob and becomes pregnant. And Rachel says “God has heard me ask for kids. I am proven godly.” And she calls the kid Dan. Then Bilhah has a second child and Rachel says “Ha! Stuff that in your face Leah! I have won this fight, my sister!” And she calls him Naphtali.
This doesn’t go down too well with Leah, especially as she can’t seem to have anymore kids at the moment. So Leah takes HER maidservant and says to Jacob: “Bed, now!” Leah’s maidservant, Zilpah, bears a son and Leah says, “I have got lucky!” and she names him Gad. Then Zilpah gives birth to a second son and Leah says “Ha ha! I am insanely happy! All the women from all around will call me happy :D” She calls this little boy Asher.
In the Autumn Reuben, the eldest son of Jacob and Leah, went out into the fields and found some mandrakes (which were supposed to make women more fertile) and brings them back to his mum, Leah. Rachel hears about this and, knowing that she needs everything she can to make herself more fertile so as to have a child, goes to Leah and says, “Please give me the mandrakes I know you have. Even just some of them will be good enough.” But Leah says, “You stole my husband from me! Will you take my mandrakes too?”
Now remember that that statement is quite funny because really it was Leah that had stolen Rachel’s husband because Jacob had always wanted Rachel and not Leah. But Rachel ignores this and she says… “very well, I will let you sleep with him tonight if you give me some of the mandrakes.” Leah agrees with this and hands over the mandrakes. Then she waits for Jacob to return home from work. When he gets in she says “Tonight you are sleeping with me. I have hired you with the mandrakes that Reuben picked.” So he slept with her… and she got pregnant because God cared for her and blessed her with a fifth son (the more sons you gave birth to the better women you were as the sons were the most important in those days).
Leah says at the birth of her FIFTH son: “this must be a reward from God because I gave Jacob my maidservant to sleep with.” And she calls the baby boy Issachar. And again Leah gets pregnant and she has a SIXTH son! And she says “This is such an amazing gift God has given me, for surely Jacob must treat me with honour because I have given him SIX sons!” And she calls the baby Zebulun. Some time later she has a daughter and names her Dinah.
But God remembers (which means care for/looked after) Rachel and he finally opens her womb. She becomes pregnant and FINALLY has a son. She says “God has taken away the disgrace of having no children.” And she calls the baby JOSEPH. At the same time she asks, “God please will you give me another son!”
After Rachel gives birth to Joseph, Jacob goes to Laban and says, “Allow me to go back to my homeland where my father is. Allow me to take my wives and my kids. I have served you so that I may look after them. Now let me go. You know I’ve done loads of work for you! You have no reason to keep me.”
But Laban says “If you have ever loved me and cared for me then please stay. God has told me that he has only blessed ME because of YOU. I tell you what: you name what you want me to pay you and I’ll pay you to stay and work for me!”
So Jacob says to himself “time to get even, you tricked me into all this trouble with my wives.” So he says out loud to Laban, “I have worked hard for you, you know this. The flocks have grown massive because I cared for them. God has blessed whichever land I am in. Now I want to do something for my own family and not for your family.”
So Laban says, “What shall I give you that shall help you do this?” And Jacob says, “Give me nothing, BUT if you do ONE thing for me I shall continue to work for you and look after your flocks. Go through your flocks and take all the spotted, speckled, dark, streaked or marked goats. Take them out. They shall be my wages. And then if you ever find that I have an unmarked goat in my flock then you shall know that I have cheated you.”
Sounds good to Laban and he agrees. Then he goes through and takes all the marked goats out of his flocks and makes his sons look after them then he moves three days away from Jacob. Uh oh. How is Jacob supposed to get more wages if there are no marked goats in HIS flock… that’s not how mating works. Sneaky trick of Laban… but Jacob gets him back. He takes some branches of a tree and strips some of the bark off so that it is stripy. Then, when the goats come to drink and mate he puts those branches in the watering bowls. Then (it must be a miracle0 whenever they mated in front of those branches the offspring they gave were marked, even though the parents WEREN’T marked. :O :O wow. Then Jacob gets clever. He only puts the branches in front of the goats when the strong and healthy ones are mating. When the weak and rubbish ones are mating he doesn’t put the branches up and the offspring are not marked. So in the end Jacob ends up with loads of strong, beautiful goats and Laban ends up with a load of thin, rubbishy ones. By doing this Jacob grew to be extremely rich and had large flocks and lots of servants and camels and donkeys. He’d made it big time! :D
Matthew 11:16-30
“The people of this generation are like children who say to others in public places: ‘We played you dancing music and you didn’t dance; but then we sang you a funeral song and you did not mourn.’ And it’s a bit like that because John the Baptist came and he did not eat of drink, but he fasted. And you said ‘he has a demon in him.’ Then I come and I eat and I drink and you call me, ‘glutton,’ and ‘drunkard’ ‘a friend of tax collectors and sinners’. But true wisdom is shown by how you act not who you hang around with.”
Then Jesus began to say why the towns were rubbish and he cursed them (funny how the towns he curses are no longer around.) He said “Curse you Korazin! Curse you Bethsaida! If the miracles that you have seen had been down in Tyre and Sidon (some amazingly rich and wealthy towns of the non-jews) then they would have repented long ago and be mourning and saying sorry now. It will be better for those sinners on the day of judgement than for you towns! And curse you Caprnaum! Will you go to heaven? Nope. You’re going to hell! If the miracles that have taken place in you had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah (two towns from Genesis that were completely evil and were completely destroyed) then they would have been standing to this day and they wouldn’t have been destroyed. It will be better for the people of Sodom on the day of judgement.”
But after this Jesus said “Dad in heaven, I praise you! I praise you because you have hidden these amazing truths from those who are wise and clever and you’ve shown great secrets to those who are young. Because that is what you wanted to do. My dad has given me everything. No one knows me except for God and no one knows God except me and those whom I tell.”
And he went on, “Anyone who is tired of this world, who are carrying heavy burdens of guilt and sin and pain. I will give you rest! I am gentle and I am humble and your soul will find true rest in me. My rules are not heavy and burdensome like the yokes/rules of the other teachers. My yoke/rules are easy and the burden is light (cos they’re summed up by love god and love each other AND you’re gonna get a helper!)
Psalm 9:7-12
God rules as a king forever.
He has made himself a king so that he can judge
He will be the perfect judge for the world
He will govern everyone with justice
God is a refuge to the oppressed
He is like a castle in times of trouble
Those who know you God trust you
You have NEVER forsaken ANYONE who has looked for you, Gof
So sing praises to God who sits on his throne in heaven!
Shout out to everyone what he has done!
God remembers/cares for people
He does NOT ignore the cries of the people in pain.
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