Some scholars see Jacob at this point as a kind of trickster or cheater. However, I don’t see it that way. For all intents and purposes, Laban is the cheater in this part of the scriptures. He knew that through Jacob, he was blessed by the Lord. Yet, he swindled Jacob out of those blessings by taking everything for himself. When things didn’t go as well for him later, as he had come to expect from Jacob’s labor, he changed Jacob’s wages 10 times (Genesis 31:7), but Jacob took it without complaint and depended upon the Lord to continue to bless him, despite Laban’s efforts to keep Jacob poor and dependent upon him for the sake of the blessings, which Laban received from the Lord for the first fourteen years Jacob spent with him. Even those years were twice what Jacob agreed to do, but Laban found a way to add seven more years of blessing for himself, and keep Jacob in poverty.
This kind of prosperity for the wealthy hasn’t changed to this day. The wealthy often seek to keep their laborers dependent upon the wealthy. This is done by paying their employees less than they deserve. If laborers are kept in want, it is theorized the wealth of the wealthy would grow. Some corporations literally kept other corporate interests out of local areas by controlling local politics. This was done, simply because the local industries didn’t want to have to compete for their laborers by offering them more income for a day’s work. Bottom line economics has been in force throughout human history. No, it is not Jacob who’s the trickster, that title belongs to Laban alone in this part of scripture.
According to the text before us, Jacob took rods of poplar, hazel and chestnut trees. He carved them to suit his purpose and put them before the flocks, while they came to drink at the water troughs, and while they conceived. Afterward the females brought forth the rarer colored animals that Jacob wanted (Genesis 30:37-39)! How did this occur? If one tried to do this today, it wouldn’t work like it did for Jacob. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, how one would successfully and scientifically breed animals today. So, what’s behind all this?
What we read in the text at this point is only half the story. The complete story comes in the next chapter. There we are told that Jacob was instructed in a dream in which the Lord appeared to him (Genesis 31:9-12). It was the Lord, who told Jacob that Laban’s cattle would bear the rarer colors in the births of their young. How Jacob interpreted this dream was to prepare the rods as an expression of faith and an indication of which animals, he wished to birth the rarer colors, for those animals would be his. So, there was no hocus pocus involved, no trickery, and the rods aren’t passed off as science. What occurred was according to the grace of God in order to fulfill the promises he made to Jacob in Bethel.
Jacob separated his lambs and flocks from Laban’s, and he used the rods in the form of prayers (Genesis 30:40). Jacob wanted only the stronger animals (verse-41). Therefore, he used the rods only when the stronger animals among Laban’s herds were conceiving. Thus, the weaker animals went to Laban (verse-42), while the stronger went to Jacob, but the Lord caused it to happen (Genesis 30:43); cp. 1Corinthians 3:6).
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