Genesis 30

God Remembered Rachel

Rachel and Leah, with their maids, compete in giving Jacob sons; Leah buys a night with mandrakes, and in the end God remembers Rachel and gives her Joseph. Jacob, who wants to go home, bargains with Laban for the speckled and spotted animals of the flock and grows rich.

Genesis chaptersChapter 30 of 50

Jacob’s last years in Haran. The births fall within the fourteen years he served for Leah and Rachel, and the wage bargain opens the last six of his twenty years there (Gen. 31:41). The text gives no year. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

Jacob came to Haran with the Lord’s promise from Beth-el: “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest” (Gen. 28:15).

Jacob came to Haran with the Lord’s promise from Beth-el: “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest” (Gen. 28:15). There he served Laban seven years for Rachel, was given Leah instead (Gen. 29:23–25), and served seven more for Rachel; he “loved also Rachel more than Leah” (Gen. 29:30). Chapter 29 ends with four sons born to Leah (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah) while Rachel was barren (Gen. 29:31–35). Genesis 30 takes up from there.

It is the birth chapter of Israel. Seven more sons and a daughter are born, through four mothers, so that by its end eleven of the twelve sons are born; Benjamin comes later, as Rachel dies (Gen. 35:16–18). Genesis counts the sons of the maids Zilpah and Bilhah among the sons of Jacob (Gen. 46:18; Gen. 46:25), and long afterward the people of Bethlehem would bless a bride to be “like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel” (Ruth 4:11). The second half of the chapter turns from births to wages: Jacob asks to go home and ends by making a new contract with Laban, and by its close he is rich.

The chapter has five parts: Rachel and Bilhah (verses 1–8), Leah and Zilpah (9–13), the mandrakes and the last births (14–24), Jacob’s request to leave and the wage agreement (25–36), and the peeled rods (37–43). The plural marriages in these chapters are treated once, at Gen. 16:3, and Jacob’s marriages to the maids at Gen. 29:28; the next chapter has Jacob’s departure (Gen. 31).

The thread through the chapter

Genesis 30 is a chapter of bargains, and the narrator keeps writing God into each one.

Genesis 30 is a chapter of bargains, and the narrator keeps writing God into each one. Rachel demands children of Jacob, and he asks whether he is “in God’s stead” (verse 2). The sisters trade maids, and Leah hires Jacob for a night with her son’s mandrakes (verses 14–16). The names they give the sons are the language of the contest: vindication, wrestling, fortune, happiness, hire, dowry. But in the narrator’s own voice the births have another cause: “God hearkened unto Leah” (verse 17); “God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb” (verse 22).

The second half repeats the pattern with men. Laban and Jacob dicker over wages, in the same Hebrew word, “hire,” that Leah used of her son (verses 18, 28, 32). Jacob lays peeled rods before the mating flocks. But Laban himself says, “the LORD hath blessed me for thy sake” (verse 27), and Jacob will say later that “God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me” (Gen. 31:9). The human devices are all there: the maids, the mandrakes, the rods. The chapter’s claim is that none of them is what gives the increase.

Joseph’s name is where the halves meet. Rachel names him for what God did (“taken away my reproach”) and for what she asks of the LORD (“add to me another son”). The tribes that Genesis will call Israel are being born in a household of rivalry, and the text says it is God who remembers.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–8

Rachel, Bilhah, and the first two sons

In plain words

When Rachel saw that she was giving Jacob no children, she became jealous of her sister. “Give me children,” she said to Jacob, “or I will die.” Jacob was angry with her. “Am I God?” he said. “He is the one who has kept you from having children.” Then she said, “Here is my servant Bilhah. Sleep with her, and she will bear a child on my knees, so that through her I too can build a family.” She gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob slept with her. Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Rachel said, “God has judged in my favor. He has heard my voice and given me a son.” So she named him Dan. Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Rachel said, “I have wrestled mightily with my sister, and I have won.” So she named him Naphtali.

1 And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.

Context #

What Rachel was asking for

Rachel’s cry says more than envy, though the text names envy first. The Hebrew says she “was envious” of her sister (qana, “be envious of”), and what she asks is, literally, “Give…

Rachel’s cry says more than envy, though the text names envy first. The Hebrew says she “was envious” of her sister (qana, “be envious of”), and what she asks is, literally, “Give me sons, and if not, I will die” (havah-li banim ve’im ayin metah anokhi). She is asking for what her world counted as a woman’s worth: barrenness was the lack of “the cultural and visual evidence that gave women value in her society,” and Rachel, the wife Jacob loved, had none.

A Latter-day Saint reading adds the covenant. For the matriarchs a son “was the assurance of the continuation of God’s covenant with Abraham,” so Rachel’s plea was “more than an instinctive maternal yearning. It was a profound longing to fulfill her God-given responsibility to continue the Abrahamic covenant through future generations.” The verse does not say this; it is how the cry reads in a family where “all but one of the matriarchs faced trial and refinement through a period of barrenness.” On that reading the sisters’ rivalry is more than “petty jealousy”: it is a struggle over “a mother’s responsibility to ensure a secure future both for her children and for herself.”

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425.

2 And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?

Language #

Am I in the place of God?

Jacob’s answer is a question with only one answer. The Hebrew is “In the place of God am I?”

Jacob’s answer is a question with only one answer. The Hebrew is “In the place of God am I?” (hatachat Elohim anokhi), and the rest of the verse names who does hold that place: the one “who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb.” Rachel’s demand is made to Jacob, not to God. A Latter-day Saint reading takes Jacob’s reply as showing “his realization of the same truth”: that, as God had done for Leah, He alone could “lead Rachel to where only he could help her.”

The same question comes back at the end of Genesis, word for word apart from the form of “I.” When his brothers fear that Joseph will take revenge now that their father is dead, Rachel’s son says, “Fear not: for am I in the place of God?” (Gen. 50:19). He goes on, “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Gen. 50:20). In both places a man declines a place that belongs to God: giving children in one, repaying wrong in the other.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

3 And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.

Language #

Born on Rachel’s knees

Rachel’s plan is legal as well as practical: Bilhah’s child would count as hers.

Rachel’s plan is legal as well as practical: Bilhah’s child would count as hers. “Upon my knees” means that she will receive the child as her own. The phrase “retains the trace of a primitive ceremony of legitimatization and adoption,” and the same words are used when Joseph’s great-grandchildren “were brought up upon Joseph’s knees” (Gen. 50:23). The household law fits: the maids belonged to Rachel and Leah, not to Jacob, so “when the handmaids had children, the children were viewed legally as the children of Rachel and Leah.”

The KJV’s “have children by her” is, in Hebrew, “be built up from her” (ve’ibbaneh mimmennah). The lexicon glosses the verb for a childless wife with a concubine: “I shall be built up, i.e. become the mother of a family, from or through her.” Sarai used it of Hagar in Gen. 16:2, and it is the verb behind the blessing on Ruth, that she be “like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel” (Ruth 4:11).

Sources: Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Genesis 24–36: The Covenant Line Continues with Isaac and Jacob, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003). Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

4 And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her.

5 And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son.

6 And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan.

7 And Bilhah Rachel’s maid conceived again, and bare Jacob a second son.

8 And Rachel said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed: and she called his name Naphtali.

Language #

Wrestlings of God

Rachel’s name for Naphtali rests on a phrase whose meaning is uncertain.

Rachel’s name for Naphtali rests on a phrase whose meaning is uncertain. The KJV’s “great wrestlings” translates naftulei Elohim, “wrestlings of God,” and the sentence runs, “wrestlings of God I have wrestled with my sister, and indeed I have prevailed.” “Of God” may be an intensifier, as in “a mighty prince” (Gen. 23:6): mighty wrestlings. Or it may mean “strugglings in prayer for God’s blessing” of children. “The original meaning has probably been lost.” The Septuagint takes another way: “God has helped me, and I contended with my sister and prevailed.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.

Verses 9–13

Leah, Zilpah, and two more sons

In plain words

When Leah saw that she had stopped bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Zilpah bore Jacob a son. Leah said, “What good fortune!” and named him Gad. Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. Leah said, “How happy I am! The women will call me blessed.” So she named him Asher.

9 When Leah saw that she had left bearing, she took Zilpah her maid, and gave her Jacob to wife.

10 And Zilpah Leah’s maid bare Jacob a son.

11 And Leah said, A troop cometh: and she called his name Gad.

Language #

Gad: fortune, not a troop

The KJV’s “A troop cometh” follows a reading that the Hebrew text itself flags.

The KJV’s “A troop cometh” follows a reading that the Hebrew text itself flags. As written, the consonants (the ketiv, “written”) are bgd, “with fortune.” The Masoretic tradition, the traditional Hebrew text that the KJV translates, gives a different reading (the qere, “read”): ba gad, “fortune has come.” The KJV took that second reading and translated it word for word, taking gad as “troop.” The Septuagint reads the written text: “It is happily” (Greek en tychē, “with fortune”). The lexicon takes gad here as “fortune, good fortune.”

So Leah’s cry is closer to “How fortunate!” The lexicon also lists Gad as the name of a god of fortune, “named often in Phoenician & Aramaic inscriptions,” and finds it in the passage where the KJV has “prepare a table for that troop” (Isa. 65:11). That is background only, and Genesis does not say that Leah meant the god.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. “Masoretic text”, Bible Dictionary. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

12 And Zilpah Leah’s maid bare Jacob a second son.

13 And Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed: and she called his name Asher.

Verses 14–24

The mandrakes, and Joseph

In plain words

In the days of the wheat harvest Reuben went out and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” But Leah said, “Is it not enough that you have taken my husband? Now you want my son’s mandrakes too?” “Then he may sleep with you tonight,” Rachel said, “in return for your son’s mandrakes.” When Jacob came in from the field that evening, Leah went out to meet him. “You must come in to me,” she said, “for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” And he slept with her that night. God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. “God has given me my reward,” said Leah, “because I gave my servant to my husband.” She named him Issachar. Leah conceived again and bore a sixth son. “God has given me a good dowry,” she said. “Now my husband will honor me, because I have borne him six sons.” She named him Zebulun. Afterward she bore a daughter and named her Dinah.

Then God remembered Rachel. He listened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” She named him Joseph, saying, “May the LORD add another son to me.”

14 And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son’s mandrakes.

Context #

Mandrakes, and who opened the womb

The mandrakes were a fertility charm, and the story is careful to give them no credit.

The mandrakes were a fertility charm, and the story is careful to give them no credit. The Hebrew dudaim may share a root with the Hebrew for “love” (the etymology is uncertain), and the Bible Dictionary glosses the name “love fruit”: “The fruit had a pleasant taste and odor and was supposed to ensure conception.” Elsewhere the Bible names mandrakes only in the Song of Solomon, where “the mandrakes give a smell” (Song 7:13). Egyptian art helps explain the reputation. The plant was common in that art, and in one scene “a king is holding a mandrake in one hand while pouring water into the cupped hand of the queen, in a scene clearly meant to imply life and fertility.” The root, too, “has long been thought to resemble a human baby.”

What the narrative does with them is the point. Rachel trades a night with Jacob for the mandrakes, and it is Leah who conceives: three more children are born to Leah before Rachel bears Joseph. When Rachel does conceive, “the text specifically states that God, not the mandrakes, opened Rachel’s womb.” And of Leah’s fifth son it says plainly, “God hearkened unto Leah” (verse 17), not that the plant worked.

Sources: “Mandrake”, Bible Dictionary. Scripture Central, “Why Does Rachel Want Leah’s Mandrakes?”, KnoWhy #840, Feb. 24, 2026. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Genesis 24–33, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

15 And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son’s mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son’s mandrakes.

16 And Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me; for surely I have hired thee with my son’s mandrakes. And he lay with her that night.

17 And God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived, and bare Jacob the fifth son.

18 And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to my husband: and she called his name Issachar.

Language #

Hire, the chapter’s word for wages

Issachar’s name is built on the Hebrew word for wages, sakar, and the chapter keeps using it.

Issachar’s name is built on the Hebrew word for wages, sakar, and the chapter keeps using it. Leah tells Jacob, “I have hired thee with my son’s mandrakes” (Gen. 30:16; literally “hiring, I have hired you,” sakor sekhartikha), and two verses later she calls her son her “hire” (sekhari), “because I have given my maiden to my husband.” In Leah’s mouth the reward is for giving Zilpah to Jacob. But the narrator has already said where the child came from: “God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived” (verse 17), and Leah herself says, “God hath given me my hire.”

The same noun turns up when the men bargain. Laban says, “Appoint me thy wages” (verse 28), and Jacob answers with “my hire” (verses 32 and 33). The lexicon lists them all as one word. So the chapter’s two bargains, the sisters’ over a night and the men’s over a flock, are carried in one vocabulary, and in each someone names God as the giver.

19 And Leah conceived again, and bare Jacob the sixth son.

20 And Leah said, God hath endued me with a good dowry; now will my husband dwell with me, because I have born him six sons: and she called his name Zebulun.

Language #

Zebulun and the dowry

Leah’s word for what God gave her at her sixth son’s birth is a dowry.

Leah’s word for what God gave her at her sixth son’s birth is a dowry. The Hebrew verb zabad means “bestow upon, endow with,” and the noun zebed in this verse is, in the lexicon’s word, “dowry.” The lexicon sees this clause as “apparently in explanation of name Zebulun” and notes “another explanation” in the next: the KJV’s “dwell with me” renders yizbeleni, from zabal, which it takes as “probably exalt, honour”: “my husband will honour me.”

A dowry “was compensation for a daughter’s separation from the family property and was a critical part of establishing a new household,” including her security “should she become widowed or divorced.” Leah and Rachel had not received theirs. When Jacob later calls his wives to the field, both say of Laban, “he hath sold us, and hath quite devoured also our money” (Gen. 31:15); the sense is that Laban “failed to give them their dowries or bride wealth earned from the fourteen years Jacob worked for them.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

21 And afterwards she bare a daughter, and called her name Dinah.

22 And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.

Language #

God remembered Rachel

The sentence in verse 22 has three verbs, and each is God’s: He remembered, He hearkened, and He opened.

The sentence in verse 22 has three verbs, and each is God’s: He remembered, He hearkened, and He opened. When God is the one remembering, the lexicon says, the Hebrew verb (zakar) means to remember persons “with kindness, granting requests, protecting, delivering,” so that remembering is already acting, and it puts Rachel beside Noah in the ark (Gen. 8:1), Abraham as Lot is brought out of the overthrow (Gen. 19:29), and Hannah (1 Sam. 1:19). “Hearkened” is vayishma, “and He listened.” And “opened her womb” is the phrase used of her sister before any of the sons were born: “he opened her womb” (Gen. 29:31). The sisters compete, but both are given children in the same words.

23 And she conceived, and bare a son; and said, God hath taken away my reproach:

24 And she called his name Joseph; and said, The LORD shall add to me another son.

Language #

Joseph: taken away, and add

Rachel names Joseph twice over, and between the two explanations her speech moves from “God” to “the LORD.”

Rachel names Joseph twice over, and between the two explanations her speech moves from “God” to “the LORD.” In verse 23 she says, “God hath taken away my reproach,” using asaf, “take away,” the verb the lexicon lists for removing reproach (Isa. 4:1). In verse 24 the name itself is yosef, from a different verb, yasaf, “add”: “The LORD shall add to me another son” (literally, “May YHWH add to me another son”). In each of Rachel’s sayings about the births so far (verses 6, 8, 23) she says Elohim, “God.” Here, for the first time, she says the name YHWH, Jehovah (the KJV’s “the LORD”), which Leah had used at the births of three of her first four sons (Gen. 29:32–35) but not since.

One commentary explains the change simply: Rachel first looks back at the earthly means she had tried in vain and credits God; then, her envy gone, she looks forward in faith to the God who, as she had heard from Jacob, “had given Jacob such great promises,” and prays for another son. Another scholarly view assigns the two explanations of the name to two different sources. The Bible Dictionary allows that Moses “used several documentary sources from which he compiled the book of Genesis,” but the text does not say which, if either, accounts for the double name.

The second prayer was answered at a price. “Fear not; thou shalt have this son also,” the midwife tells Rachel in hard labor, and as she dies she names the child Ben-oni, but Jacob calls him Benjamin (Gen. 35:16–18).

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. “Pentateuch”, Bible Dictionary. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Verses 25–36

Jacob asks to go, and the wage bargain

In plain words

After Rachel bore Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, so that I can go to my own place and my own country. Give me my wives and children, for whom I have served you, and let me go; you know the service I have given you.” Laban said, “If I have found favor with you, please stay. I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you. Name your wages, and I will pay them.” Jacob said, “You know how I have served you and how your livestock have fared with me. You had little before I came, and it has grown into a multitude, and the LORD has blessed you since I came. But when may I provide for my own household?” “What shall I give you?” Laban asked. “You need give me nothing,” said Jacob. “If you will do this one thing for me, I will go on tending your flock. Let me go through your whole flock today and take out every speckled or spotted animal, every dark lamb, and every spotted or speckled goat; those will be my wages. My honesty will testify for me in time to come, when you come to look at my wages: any goat that is not speckled or spotted, and any lamb that is not dark, will count as stolen if it is with me.” “Agreed,” said Laban. “Let it be as you say.”

That same day Laban removed the male goats that were striped or spotted, all the female goats that were speckled or spotted, every one with any white on it, and every dark lamb, and put them in the care of his sons. Then he put three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, while Jacob tended the rest of Laban’s flocks.

25 And it came to pass, when Rachel had born Joseph, that Jacob said unto Laban, Send me away, that I may go unto mine own place, and to my country.

Context #

Why Jacob asks to leave now

Jacob’s request comes when the fourteen years he agreed to serve for his wives are complete, but his departure is still six years off.

Jacob’s request comes when the fourteen years he agreed to serve for his wives are complete, but his departure is still six years off. On one reckoning, “Joseph was born at the end of the 14 years of service that had been agreed upon,” and Jacob later counts it exactly: “I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle” (Gen. 31:41). The wage bargain that follows is those six. Jacob does not leave until the LORD tells him to: “Return unto the land of thy fathers” (Gen. 31:3). That instruction took twenty years to come, “a duration of time none could have foreseen,” and it came only after Laban had changed Jacob’s wages ten times.

The arithmetic raises a question: how can eleven sons be born in seven years? One commentary’s answer is that the narrator groups the births by mother, not by date: “the intention to arrange them according to the mothers prevails over the chronological order.” So Leah’s first four sons could have come in her first four years, Rachel could have given Bilhah to Jacob in the meantime, and the rest overlapped, so that “Jacob may easily have had eleven sons within seven years of his marriage.” That is a reconstruction; the text fixes only the end points.

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425. Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84.

26 Give me my wives and my children, for whom I have served thee, and let me go: for thou knowest my service which I have done thee.

27 And Laban said unto him, I pray thee, if I have found favour in thine eyes, tarry: for I have learned by experience that the LORD hath blessed me for thy sake.

Language #

Laban divined that the LORD had blessed him

Where the KJV says Laban “learned by experience,” the Hebrew says he has “divined” (nichashti).

Where the KJV says Laban “learned by experience,” the Hebrew says he has “divined” (nichashti). The verb belongs to omen-reading. The lexicon gives it two senses: “practise divination,” as when Joseph’s steward says of the silver cup, “whereby indeed he divineth” (Gen. 44:5), and, for this verse, “observe the signs or omens.” The Septuagint has Laban say, “I would augur well, for the Lord has blessed me at thy coming in.” Genesis does not say how Laban learned it; it says only what he concluded.

What he concludes is the point: “the LORD hath blessed me for thy sake.” Laban says the divine name YHWH and credits the blessing to Jacob’s presence. The Hebrew for “for thy sake,” biglal, is used again when “the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake” (Gen. 39:5): a generation later, the same words are said of Rachel’s son in Egypt.

28 And he said, Appoint me thy wages, and I will give it.

29 And he said unto him, Thou knowest how I have served thee, and how thy cattle was with me.

30 For it was little which thou hadst before I came, and it is now increased unto a multitude; and the LORD hath blessed thee since my coming: and now when shall I provide for mine own house also?

31 And he said, What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shalt not give me any thing: if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock:

32 I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such shall be my hire.

Language #

The wages: the exceptions in the flock

Jacob asks for the animals least likely to be born, the odd-colored ones.

Jacob asks for the animals least likely to be born, the odd-colored ones. In that region “the sheep in Syria are nearly always white, and the goats black,” so Jacob’s wage is “the sheep that were not white and the goats that were not black,” while “Laban’s flocks would be, according to this arrangement, the great mass of the animals.” Hebrew has four words for the marks: naqod, “speckled”; talu’, “spotted” or “patched”; chum, “dark brown or black” (used only of sheep); and ‘aqod, “striped, streaked,” which is the KJV’s “ringstraked” (verse 35).

Verse 33 adds a test: “So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come.” Tsedaqah here is “righteousness, as ethically right,” which one commentary glosses as “my uprightness, honesty, and straightness of dealing.” Any solid-colored goat, or sheep that was not dark, found with Jacob will “be counted stolen” (ganuv), so Jacob sets a standard by which he can be convicted of theft. Some have read Jacob’s dealings with Laban as trickery, but, in one Latter-day Saint reading, “there are just too many other ways to interpret those passages to categorically label Jacob in this manner,” and God’s part can be seen as “upholding a righteous sufferer” rather than “sustaining a trickster.”

Sources: Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84.

33 So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen with me.

34 And Laban said, Behold, I would it might be according to thy word.

35 And he removed that day the he goats that were ringstraked and spotted, and all the she goats that were speckled and spotted, and every one that had some white in it, and all the brown among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons.

Context #

Laban acts first

Jacob offered to separate the marked animals himself, and Laban did it first.

Jacob offered to separate the marked animals himself, and Laban did it first. In verse 32 Jacob proposes to “remove” (haser) the speckled and spotted animals from the flock; in verse 35 the same verb returns with Laban as its subject: “he removed that day” every striped, spotted, or speckled goat and every dark sheep, “gave them into the hand of his sons,” and then “set three days’ journey betwixt himself and Jacob” (verse 36). The result, as one commentary spells it out: “Jacob will begin the new term of service with nothing in his favour. All the sheep that he will tend will be white, and all the goats black.” The distance was “to prevent the least possibility of confusion or of intermingling.”

Jacob will later tell Rachel and Leah that “your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me” (Gen. 31:7).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

36 And he set three days’ journey betwixt himself and Jacob: and Jacob fed the rest of Laban’s flocks.

Verses 37–43

The peeled rods, and Jacob’s increase

In plain words

Jacob took fresh branches of poplar, almond, and plane trees and peeled white stripes in them, so that the white wood showed. He set the peeled branches in the watering troughs, in front of the flocks where they came to drink, and the flocks mated when they came to drink. They mated in front of the branches and bore young that were striped, speckled, and spotted. Jacob separated the lambs and made the flock face the striped and dark animals in Laban’s flock; he kept his own animals apart and did not put them with Laban’s. Whenever the stronger animals were mating, Jacob laid the branches before their eyes in the troughs, so that they would mate among the branches; but when the animals were weak he did not put them there. So the weak animals went to Laban and the strong to Jacob. The man grew exceedingly rich, with large flocks, female and male servants, camels, and donkeys.

37 And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.

Context #

The peeled rods and who gave the increase

Genesis tells what Jacob did with the rods and what the flocks bore (verse 39); whether the one caused the other, the narrator does not say here.

Genesis tells what Jacob did with the rods and what the flocks bore (verse 39); whether the one caused the other, the narrator does not say here. Jacob peels white stripes in fresh rods and sets them in the watering troughs where the flocks mate. Behind the practice was a belief of the time: “There was a superstition that what an animal looked at while it mated would affect the appearance of its offspring.” “The effectiveness of this technique is never questioned in the account, but later Jacob gives all the credit for the miracle to the Lord.”

Jacob’s own later account says what happened. He tells Rachel and Leah that Laban changed his wages ten times, and each time the flock bore what the new terms required: “If he said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages; then all the cattle bare speckled: and if he said thus, The ringstraked shall be thy hire; then bare all the cattle ringstraked” (Gen. 31:8). Jacob does not mention the rods. He says, “Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me” (Gen. 31:9), and that an angel of God showed him in a dream the rams already “ringstraked, speckled, and grisled: for I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee” (Gen. 31:12). The rods are what Jacob did; the increase, in his telling, is what God did.

The trees are not the ones the KJV names. Its “hazel” and “chesnut” are, in the lexicon, the almond tree (luz) and the plane tree (armon, “as stripped of bark”), beside the poplar (livneh).

Sources: Genesis 24–33, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

38 And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.

39 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

40 And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban’s cattle.

41 And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.

42 But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s.

43 And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses.

Related Scriptures #

Increased: a verb from Beth-el

The chapter’s last sentence uses a verb from Jacob’s dream at Beth-el.

The chapter’s last sentence uses a verb from Jacob’s dream at Beth-el. The Hebrew paratz means “break through,” and then “break over [limits], increase.” Jacob uses it to Laban of Laban’s own flocks, “it is now increased unto a multitude” (verse 30; literally “it burst forth into a multitude”), and the narrator uses it of Jacob: “the man increased exceedingly” (vayifrots ha’ish me’od me’od, “burst forth greatly, greatly”). At Beth-el the LORD had said, “thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south” (Gen. 28:14), which is the same verb, ufaratzta. The lexicon lists Genesis 30:30, 30:43, and 28:14 together under one sense.

The promise that came with it was, “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest” (Gen. 28:15), and Jacob tells his wives, “the God of my father hath been with me” (Gen. 31:5). One Latter-day Saint reading of the hard years in Haran is that God is keeping that promise through them: “Perhaps God is tenderly promising Jacob to help bring him the promises of the covenant now that things have become difficult.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Seeing Christ in Genesis 30

Rachel’s last words in the chapter name the LORD, Jehovah, “the premortal Jesus Christ”: “The LORD shall add to me another son” (verse 24). It is His name that Laban credits for the blessing on his flocks, and that Jacob confirms (verses 27 and 30). The chapter itself says what gives the increase: God remembering, hearkening, and opening the womb (verses 17 and 22), not the mandrakes; and, in Jacob’s later telling, God and not the rods (Gen. 31:9).

Two of the sons of this family lead toward Christ in different ways. Leah’s Judah (Gen. 29:35) is the ancestor, “through her son Judah,” of “the kings of Israel and Judah from David until Jesus Christ.” Rachel’s Joseph, whose birth closes the first half of this chapter, received the birthright (1 Chr. 5:2), and his life is read as a type of Christ’s: “the life and mission of Joseph typifies the life and mission of Jesus.” Sold by his brothers, he “would become their deliverer,” and he says himself, “God did send me before you to preserve life” (Gen. 45:5).

Worth exploring next

Leah’s first four sons. Gen. 29:31–35: the LORD “opened her womb,” and Leah names Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.
The end of Rachel’s prayer. Gen. 35:16–20: Benjamin’s birth and Rachel’s death.
The same years, told by Jacob. Gen. 31:1–16: Jacob and his wives look back on Laban’s dealings and on what God did.
Rachel and Leah. The Religious Studies Center chapter “The Matriarchs” (in From Creation to Sinai) follows the two sisters down to the blessing on Ruth (Ruth 4:11).

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.
Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.
“Mandrake”, Bible Dictionary.
“Jehovah”, Bible Dictionary.
“Pentateuch”, Bible Dictionary.
“Masoretic text”, Bible Dictionary.
Genesis 24–33, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
Genesis 24–36: The Covenant Line Continues with Isaac and Jacob, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).
Genesis 37–50: Joseph: The Power of Preparation, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).
Scripture Central, “Why Does Rachel Want Leah’s Mandrakes?”, KnoWhy #840, Feb. 24, 2026.
Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425.
Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.
Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.

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