The speckled and the spotted
25 When Rachel had borne Joseph, 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 with which I have served you.” 27 Laban said to him, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, stay here, for I have divined that Yahweh has blessed me for your sake.” 28 He said, “Appoint me your wages, and I will give it.” 29 Jacob said to him, “You know how I have served you, and how your livestock have fared with me. 30 For it was little which you had before I came, and it has increased to a multitude. Yahweh has blessed you wherever I turned. Now when will I provide for my own house also?” 31 Laban said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this thing for me, I will again feed your flock and keep it. 32 I will pass through all your flock today, removing from there every speckled and spotted one, and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats. This will be my hire. 33 So my righteousness will answer for me hereafter, when you come concerning my hire that is before you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and black among the sheep, that might be with me, will be considered stolen.” 34 Laban said, “Behold, let it be according to your word.” 35 That day, he removed the male goats that were streaked and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white in it, and all the black ones among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons. 36 He set three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob fed the rest of Laban’s flocks. 37 Jacob took to himself rods of fresh poplar, almond, and plane tree, peeled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. 38 He set the rods which he had peeled opposite the flocks in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink. They conceived when they came to drink. 39 The flocks conceived before the rods, and the flocks produced streaked, speckled, and spotted. 40 Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the streaked and all the black in Laban’s flock. He put his own droves apart, and didn’t put them into Laban’s flock. 41 Whenever the stronger of the flock conceived, Jacob laid the rods in front of the eyes of the flock in the watering troughs, that they might conceive among the rods; 42 but when the flock were feeble, he didn’t put them in. So the feebler were Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s. 43 The man increased exceedingly, and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.
Two men try to outmaneuver each other over livestock for six years, and the increase turns out to have been arranged by neither.
With Joseph born, Jacob asks to go home, and Laban's reply is the most honest thing he says: I have divined that Yahweh has blessed me for your sake. He does not want a nephew; he wants the blessing that follows him, and he says so in the vocabulary of a man who consults omens.
Jacob's own accounting is equally frank. It was little which you had before I came, and it has increased to a multitude. Yahweh has blessed you wherever I turned. Now when will I provide for my own house also? Twenty years of labor and he owns nothing.
The wage he proposes sounds absurdly modest. He will take the speckled, spotted and black animals — the off-colored minority in flocks that ran predominantly white sheep and dark goats — and everything ordinary stays Laban's. He even builds in an audit: any normal-colored animal found with him counts as stolen.
Laban agrees instantly, which tells the reader it is a bad deal, and then improves it for himself before the day is out. He removes every marked animal already in the flock, hands them to his sons, and puts three days' journey between them and Jacob. The breeding stock Jacob's wage depends on has been stripped out and moved beyond reach.
What Jacob does about it is the part everyone remembers and nobody can quite explain. He peels white streaks in rods of poplar, almond and plane, sets them in the watering troughs where the flocks come to drink and conceive, and the animals produce streaked, speckled and spotted young. He also does something less picturesque and more effective — he separates the flocks so the strong breed for him and the weak for Laban.
Whether the rods worked as folk breeding lore held is not a question this chapter answers, and it is answered flatly in the next one. Telling his wives what happened, Jacob reports a dream in which God showed him the flocks and said I have seen all that Laban does to you, and he states the outcome without any mention of sticks: God has taken away your father's livestock, and given them to me Genesis 31:9 Genesis 31:12.
So the increase is credited by Jacob himself to God, and the rods are left as what a clever man was doing while God did something else. Genesis reports the technique and then, a page later, reports the cause, and the two are not the same.
That is the shape of Jacob's whole life. He schemed for the birthright and it had been assigned before his birth. He schemed for the blessing and his father gave it to him properly a chapter later. He schemes now with peeled sticks and is told in a dream that God had already moved the flocks. He never stops contriving, and he is never once the reason things go his way.
The man increased exceedingly. After twenty years of unpaid labor he has flocks, servants, camels and donkeys — and a father-in-law who has changed his wages ten times and is about to notice.
settled What this mark means