Genesis 30

¹ Rachel, seeing that she herself gave Jacob no children, became jealous of her sister. And she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I shall die!’

² This made Jacob angry with Rachel, and he retorted, ‘Am I in God’s place? It is he who has refused you motherhood.’

³ So she said, ‘Here is my slave-girl, Bilhah. Sleep with her so that she may give birth on my knees; through her, then, I too shall have children!’

⁴ So she gave him her slave-girl Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her,

⁵ and Bilhah conceived and gave birth to a son by Jacob.

⁶ Then Rachel said, ‘God has done me justice; yes, he has heard my prayer and given me a son’. Accordingly she named him Dan.

⁷ Again Rachel’s slave-girl Bilhah conceived and gave birth to a second son by Jacob.

⁸ Then Rachel said, ‘I have fought God’s fight with my sister, and I have won’; so she named him Naphtali.

⁹ Now Leah, seeing that she had no more children, took her slave-girl Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife.

¹⁰ So Leah’s slave-girl Zilpah gave birth to a son by Jacob.

¹¹ Then Leah exclaimed, ‘What good fortune!’ So she named him Gad.

¹² Leah’s slave-girl Zilpah gave birth to a second son by Jacob.

¹³ Then Leah said, ‘What happiness! Women will call me happy!’ So she named him Asher.

¹⁴ Going out when they were harvesting the corn, Reuben found some mandrakes[*a] and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, ‘Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes’.

¹⁵ But Leah replied, ‘Is it not enough to have taken my husband that you should want to take my son’s mandrakes too?’ So Rachel said, ‘Very well, he shall sleep with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes’.

¹⁶ When Jacob came back from the fields that night, Leah went out to meet him, saying, ‘You must come to me, for I have hired you at the price of my son’s mandrakes’. So he slept with her that night.

¹⁷ God heard Leah, and she conceived and gave birth to a fifth son by Jacob.

¹⁸ Then Leah said, ‘God has paid me my wages for giving my slave-girl to my husband’. So she named him Issachar.

¹⁹ Again Leah conceived and gave birth to a sixth son by Jacob,

²⁰ saying, ‘God has given me a fine gift; now my husband will honour me, for I have borne six children to him’. So she named him Zebulun.

²¹ Later she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah.

²² Then God remembered Rachel; he heard her and opened her womb.

²³ She conceived and gave birth to a son, saying, ‘God has taken away my shame’.

²⁴ So she named him Joseph, saying, ‘May Yahweh give me another son!’

²⁵ When Rachel had given birth to Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, ‘Release me, and then I can go home to my own country.

²⁶ Give me my wives for whom I have worked for you, and my children, so that I can go. You know very well the work I have done for you.’

²⁷ Laban said to him, ‘If I have won your friendship… I learned from the omens that Yahweh had blessed me on your account.

²⁸ So name your wages,’ he added ‘and I will pay you.’

²⁹ He answered him, ‘You know very well how hard I have worked for you, and how your stock has fared in my charge.

³⁰ The little you had before I came has increased enormously, and Yahweh has blessed you wherever I have been. But when am I to provide for my own House?’

³¹ Laban said, ‘How much am I to pay you?’ And Jacob replied, ‘You will not have to pay me anything: if you do for me as I propose, I will be your shepherd once more and look after your flock.

³² ‘Today I will go through all your flock. Take out of it every black animal among the sheep, and every speckled or spotted one among the goats. Such shall be my wages,

³³ and my honesty will answer for me later: when you come to check my wages, every goat I have that is not speckled or spotted, and every sheep that is not black shall rank as stolen property in my possession.’

³⁴ Laban replied, ‘Good! Let it be as you say.’

³⁵ That same day he took out the striped and speckled he-goats and all the spotted and speckled she-goats, every one that had white on it, and all the black sheep. He handed them over to his sons,

³⁶ and put three days’ journey between himself and Jacob. Jacob took care of the rest of Laban’s flock.

³⁷ Jacob gathered branches in sap, from poplar, almond and plane trees, and peeled them in white strips, laying bare the white on the branches.

³⁸ He put the branches he had peeled in front of the animals, in the troughs in the channels where the animals came to drink; and the animals mated when they came to drink.

³⁹ They mated therefore in front of the branches and so produced striped, spotted and speckled young.

⁴⁰ As for the sheep, Jacob put them apart, and he turned the animals towards whatever was striped or black in Laban’s flock. Thus he built up droves of his own which he did not put with Laban’s flock.

⁴¹ Moreover, whenever the sturdy animals mated, Jacob put the branches where the animals could see them, in the troughs, so that they would mate in front of the branches.

⁴² But when the animals were feeble, he did not put them there; thus Laban got the feeble, and Jacob the sturdy,

⁴³ and he grew extremely rich, and became the owner of large flocks, with men and women slaves, camels and donkeys.