Jacob and the speckled sheep

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My son doesn’t believe the story (in Gen 28?) about how Jacob increased his flock by having sheep look at a spotted post so that they would become speckled/spotted. (I may have the details wrong, but I don’t have a Bible here). He says it was Jacob’s way of deceiving Laban somehow, so what Jacob actually did was steal the sheep.

My son has been going through a crisis of faith (for the past 5 years or so), so simply saying “God did it” won’t satisfy him.

How can I answer him?
 
Genesis 30.

How does he not believe? Is it that he doesn’t believe that God did that, or he doesn’t believe that Jacob tried to influence the color of the sheep with visual markings?

From the NAB commentary:
Jacob’s stratagem was based on the widespread notion among simple people that visual stimuli can have prenatal effects on the offspring of breeding animals. Thus, the rods on which Jacob had whittled stripes or bands or chevron marks were thought to cause the female goats that looked at them to bear kids with lighter-colored marks on their dark hair, while the gray ewes were thought to bear lambs with dark marks on them simply by visual cross-breeding with the dark goats.

I would view this as a way of using allegory to tell a historical truth. In my personal reading of it, the overall meaning of the story is how to keep the flock entrusted to Jacob separate, much as God sought to keep the nation if Israel separate.
 
A careful reading of the story reveals that it was Laban who initially tried to cheat Jacob in this matter (Laban on several occasions shows he was just as much a trickster as Jacob). Jacob’s counter tactic is in fact an ingenious way to keep from being cheated himself.
 
Interesting responses, everyone. Thanks.

Obviously it worked, because Jacob left with a large flock. Now, with the understanding that God can do anything, why were the rods necessary? It makes it look like it was a result of the effect of the rods, not of God.
 
I think that it may well be that Jacob believed that if he followed this practice, that it would be blessed by God, Who would accept his faith & would cause the sheep to be born as Jacob wished.
In a sense, we can see this as a simple man’s kind of a prayer (accompanied by some folk beliefs common to his days).
 
  1. Obviously the rods didn’t work.
  2. Laban and Jacob both thought they had the power to control what happened, through magic, idol worship, and other methods, and that they could both run all kinds of fights and deception games without any consequences. Wrong on all counts.
  3. Meanwhile, really it was God who had the power, and was playing with them to make things come out right in the end (ie, with lots of sheep for Jacob to bring home in exchange for all his hard work) – and to teach them both to quit playing all these playbaby games.
  4. Unfortunately, Leah and Rachel didn’t learn to quit following their dad’s and husband’s examples, and their deceptions and conflicts would continue into their kids’ lives and the future of Israel. This goes to show that even if God takes a direct hand in events, people still can and will exercise their own Godgiven free will.
  5. God being God, it’s very easy for Him either to do genetic engineering, or to make sure through hundreds of years that certain sheep with certain recessive genes mate with certain other sheep, exactly as required for this outcome. (And of course, whatever they were doing with rods and sheep-choosing, probably Jacob wasn’t above sneaking X-colored sheep into the Y-colored herd at mating time. I mean, this is Jacob we’re talking about. Sneaky Jacob.)
  6. The specific mechanism doesn’t really matter, though; what matters is how God made it work on Jacob and Laban, and on the history of His people. And of course, how God made a boring family drama into a story worth telling and retelling.
 
Larry1700 said:
Interesting responses, everyone. Thanks.

Obviously it worked, because Jacob left with a large flock. Now, with the understanding that God can do anything, why were the rods necessary? It makes it look like it was a result of the effect of the rods, not of God.
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Jacob might be practicing a local superstitious belief. No scientific evidence was ever claimed today that those animals got their blotched coats from the striped rods. Those things might as well be a sort of “lucky rods” of Jacob.

Jacob said:
5 He said to them, "I see that your father’s feelings toward me have changed. But the God of my father has been with me. 6 You know that I’ve worked for your father with all of my strength.
7 "But your father has cheated me. He has changed my pay ten times. In spite of everything that’s happened, God hasn’t let him harm me. 8 **Sometimes Laban would say, ‘The speckled ones will be your pay.’ Then all the flocks had little ones with speckles. At other times he would say, ‘The striped ones will be your pay.’ Then all the flocks had little ones with stripes. **
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9 So God has taken away your father’s livestock and given it to me. Genesis 31:5-9

His prosperity was a result of God’s blessings not of breeding techniques or superstitious lucky charms.
 
Mintaka said:
  1. Obviously the rods didn’t work.
  2. Laban and Jacob both thought they had the power to control what happened, through magic, idol worship, and other methods, and that they could both run all kinds of fights and deception games without any consequences. Wrong on all counts.
  3. Meanwhile, really it was God who had the power, and was playing with them to make things come out right in the end (ie, with lots of sheep for Jacob to bring home in exchange for all his hard work) – and to teach them both to quit playing all these playbaby games.
  4. Unfortunately, Leah and Rachel didn’t learn to quit following their dad’s and husband’s examples, and their deceptions and conflicts would continue into their kids’ lives and the future of Israel. This goes to show that even if God takes a direct hand in events, people still can and will exercise their own Godgiven free will.
  5. God being God, it’s very easy for Him either to do genetic engineering, or to make sure through hundreds of years that certain sheep with certain recessive genes mate with certain other sheep, exactly as required for this outcome. (And of course, whatever they were doing with rods and sheep-choosing, probably Jacob wasn’t above sneaking X-colored sheep into the Y-colored herd at mating time. I mean, this is Jacob we’re talking about. Sneaky Jacob.)
  6. The specific mechanism doesn’t really matter, though; what matters is how God made it work on Jacob and Laban, and on the history of His people. And of course, how God made a boring family drama into a story worth telling and retelling.
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I guess my feeling is that, from a modern way of thinking, Jacob could have just prayed–and left the rods out of it. However, a sacramental is a material thing being used for a holy purpose (my wording isn’t very good here, but you get the gist), so perhaps the rod was similar to a sacramental.

The bigger question, though, from my son’s perspective is that Jacob deceived Laban. Some of the information all of the respondents here have provided will, I think, be helpful in that regard. It sure is disconcerting, though, when you read the Old Testament and see that so much of Israel’s history–which was directed by God–is a result of so many deceptions.
 
Larry1700 said:
The bigger question, though, from my son’s perspective is that Jacob deceived Laban. Some of the information all of the respondents here have provided will, I think, be helpful in that regard. It sure is disconcerting, though, when you read the Old Testament and see that so much of Israel’s history–which was directed by God–is a result of so many deceptions.
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Your son doesn’t seem to have minded that Jacob worked seven years, and Laban tricked him and gave him the wrong wife. 🙂 He also doesn’t seem to have minded that he worked seven more years, and finally got the correct wife. And he doesn’t seem to have minded that Jacob finally decided enough was enough, and decided to take his wives and twelve kids and go home, and asked for the spotted goats as wages— and Laban ran off with all the marked goats, leaving Jacob with a solid herd and consequently nothing. He had to grow his own herd over the course of five or six years from the nothing that Laban had left him with. 🙂

Jacob was certainly a trickster-- but Laban was a stingy trickster, and certainly made Jacob work hard for everything he ever got from him, whether it was sheep, goats, or wives. 🙂 Jacob was a good steward of Laban’s flock, even though Laban gave him the short end of the stick in every bargain… if Laban had a loss, Jacob was the one who ate the cost. Jacob was the one who worked in the heat of the sun and the freezing cold of the night. And Laban was the one who changed the rules of how Jacob’s wages were calculated ten times over the course of 20 years.

Lots of unpleasantness goes on in the OT. Jacob certainly wasn’t without his own sins, but God took care of him. I strongly suspect all of his ordeals under Laban were some sort of penance. But it’s also good to recognize that we have our own sins, and God still takes care of us, too.
 
Excellent points, Midori_.

Larry1700 – The whole point of salvation history is that humans very often do sleazy things. We lie, we steal, we rape, we murder. God made a Covenant with a sometimes-good, sometimes-faithful, sometimes-trusting man in order to make sleazy, lowdown, good-for-nothing people holy. He became incarnate and died and rose for us to give sleazy people eternal life. So of course Providence has to work with sleazy people as well as good people.

It’s not wrong to find humanity’s part a bit depressing, or God’s sticking around with us a bit shocking and scandalous. But there’s the other side too. Jacob did become a better man. Israel did have good and wise men like Joseph in its history. We are led by God towards eternal glory.
 
Mintaka said:
Excellent points, Midori_.

Larry1700 – The whole point of salvation history is that humans very often do sleazy things. We lie, we steal, we rape, we murder. God made a Covenant with a sometimes-good, sometimes-faithful, sometimes-trusting man in order to make sleazy, lowdown, good-for-nothing people holy. He became incarnate and died and rose for us to give sleazy people eternal life. So of course Providence has to work with sleazy people as well as good people.

It’s not wrong to find humanity’s part a bit depressing, or God’s sticking around with us a bit shocking and scandalous. But there’s the other side too. Jacob did become a better man. Israel did have good and wise men like Joseph in its history. We are led by God towards eternal glory.
Click to expand...
Great insight. Thanks!
 
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