Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #5 of Genesis, chapter 29, and we will begin reading in Genesis 29:10-14:

And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, and that he was Rebekah's son: and she ran and told her father. And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these things.

And Laban said to him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him the space of a month.

We are continuing to look at this true historical account.  Of course, everything in the Bible is true and faithful.  Thousands of years ago, Jacob journeyed from the land of Canaan and came to Haran.  He came to a well in the field, and he soon met Rachel.  He removed the stone and rolled it away from the well, and he watered the flock of Rachel.  Actually, the flock belonged to Laban, his mother’s brother.  That was pointed out three times in verse 10: “the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother;” and “the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother;” and at the end of the verse, it said,  “watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother.”  Why is God emphasizing that?  He certainly is underscoring the family tie between Rebekah, Jacob’s mother, and Laban, Rebekah’s brother. 

You know, Laban is a difficult individual to understand, as far as a spiritual meaning, and it could be that there is no single spiritual meaning for Laban.  And that is true of many historical characters in the Bible, even Jacob.  Jacob is a picture of the elect: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”  And he is also a picture of Christ, and there are times when he pictures him as both.  But Laban is difficult, and it is Laban’s flock of sheep that Jacob is watering, and the picture of the watering of sheep is a picture of the Gospel, and bringing the Gospel to God’s elect as they become saved.  But they are Laban’s sheep, and Laban is not always viewed in a positive way.  For, example, later on he will deal deceitfully with Jacob, and Jacob has to flee away in order to escape from Laban and his household.  So that is one thing that complicates our understanding of who Laban spiritually represents.

Then again, Laban’s name is related to the word for “white,” which can identify with “manna,” like the manna that fell from heaven during the 40-year wilderness sojourn.  Remember that God said that the manna was like coriander seed and white, and the word “white” is the identical Hebrew spelling to “Laban.”   So the word “Laban” is identified with “white,” and that in itself can be positive.  Of course, “manna” is like the Word of God, the Gospel, and it provided nourishment to the Israelites when they came out of Egypt.

There are also other positive relationships, and we will look at this later to see why Laban is so difficult.  But, on the other hand, the name “Laban,” which is the Hebrew word translated as “white,” although it is a different Strong’s number, but they are the identical word, as far as consonants and vowel pointing, and you cannot tell the difference between one word and the other.  This word translated as “white” is used in Leviticus to describe leprosy.  It was one way they could tell if someone had leprosy, if there was a certain “brightness” and a “white” aspect to the sore, and leprosy identifies with sin.  But, also, in Leviticus, when a certain leprosy had turned all “white,” it meant there was no more leprosy.  So even with that picture, there is some confusion because in some cases, the “whiteness” can indicate sin, but the “whiteness” can indicate that someone has been cured of leprosy, which would point to the curing of sin through salvation.  So Laban is a difficult character to pinpoint, spiritually, so I think this will be a work-in-progress as we go on.

Laban has already been mentioned in Genesis 24 when the servant of Abraham was sent to find a wife for Isaac.  He came to a well, and at that well he met Rebekah.  Let us look at this, again, in Genesis 24 where the servant is praying to God, in Genesis 24:12-21:

And he said, O JEHOVAH God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and shew kindness unto my master Abraham. Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water: And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master. And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, my lord: and she hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink. And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels. And the man wondering at her held his peace, to wit whether JEHOVAH had made his journey prosperous or not.

So he had prayed that certain events would happen, and as soon as he had done praying, Rebekah came and did the very things he had been praying about to the Lord.  So they both went back to the house, and that is when Laban came into view.  He was actually the main spokesman in the house, even though, apparently, his father Bethuel was still alive, but the main representative of that house was Laban, and that is where we were first introduced to him.  So it is interesting that here in Genesis 29, Jacob arrived at a well, just as Abraham’s servant had done, and he does not have to wait long at all.  He began a conversation with the herdsmen of the other flocks of sheep, asking them why they had not watered the sheep, and they said they could not do so because all the flocks were not gathered.  Then it said in verse 9: “And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep: for she kept them.”  So it was very soon after he had arrived at the well that Rachel came, just as what had happened to that servant of Abraham after he came to a well and he implored the Lord to let the damsel be the one that would give him and his camels drink.  And it was exactly that, and Rebekah would become the bride of Isaac.  Again, that was a spiritual picture of the elect, as the servants of God go forth to find the bride of Christ.

So that was the first time where an individual from the house of Abraham had gone to find a wife, and this is now the second time.  Now we have seen God demonstrate this with a few different figures to picture the two outpourings of the Holy Spirit.  First, there was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost in 33 A. D., and it spanned the length of the church age.  Then in 1994, the second Jubilee, was the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the Latter Rain period when the great multitude became saved out of the Great Tribulation.  So when we reach the proper “time and season” in God’s program for things, the Lord “does not mess around,” and that is an expression meaning that the Lord will not delay.  He gets right to the job at hand, and He brings the elect under the hearing of the Word of God so that they become saved by the Spirit of God through the Word of God, and the bride is found.  The bride is formed, as all those that are saved come together spiritually, in a sense, to form this “woman” that Christ had purchased to be His bride.

So we are not surprised that Jacob did not have to wait long.  It seemed almost instantaneous.  Here came Rachel.  Here came the flock, and he watered them.  Then it says in Genesis 29:11:

And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept.

He had already heard the report that she was the one, apparently, as Rachel came with her father’s sheep.  As he rolled away the stone, he must have known it was her, as it said back in Genesis 29:4-6:

And Jacob said unto them, My brethren, whence be ye? And they said, Of Haran are we. And he said unto them, Know ye Laban the son of Nahor? And they said, We know him. And he said unto them, Is he well? And they said, He is well: and, behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep.

So she was pointed out, and he saw her coming before she was there.  And once she arrived, he acted and rolled the stone away and provided water for the sheep.  Again, that is a picture of 1994 and the time thereafter of the Latter Rain in which God acted to save the last of His elect, the great multitude.  Then following the providing of the water, it says, “And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept.”  He was treating her like she was family (as she was), but, more importantly, on the spiritual level it is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ who is searching for His bride, and He has found her.

I think we can understand from the language that we read here that it did not take Jacob long to determine that Rachel was the one for him, the one he wanted to marry.  And we know she was a beautiful woman, but whether it was her physical beauty or whatever it was, when he met her, he soon made the decision that he wanted to marry her.  Actually, he loved her, and we see this in Genesis 29:18-20:

And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter. And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man: abide with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.

From what we can read, he had only been there a month, as it said in verse 14: “And he abode with him the space of a month.”  Literally, that would be translated “a month of days.”  He had been there 30 days, and then Laban said, “You are my brethren.  What kind of deal can we arrange for you to do work for me?”  Then after this month, Jacob said, “I will work seven years, as I want to marry Rachel.”  He already loved her. 

You have heard the expression, “love at first sight,” and that could be what happened, historically, with Jacob’s feelings toward Rachel.  Of course, with the love that God has for His people, we cannot say that it was “love at first sight,” because that would be too late.  With the tremendous love God has for His people, the Bible says it is an everlasting love.  He has loved us from eternity past, from everlasting.  At the point of the foundation of the world, which occurred at some point in that eternal past (or maybe from all eternity past), the sins of the elect were laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ and He died for them.  He paid the penalty of death for the sins of His people that would not be born for “eons.”  Who knows how events pass in eternity?  But it was from everlasting that God determined to love His people and to have mercy upon them, and to have their sins laid upon Himself and die for them, and then rise from the dead before they were even born and before the world was even created.  That is the love of God, and it is not “love at first sight.”  He had not yet seen them because they did not exist.  Of course, God knew everything about them and what each one would look like.  That is true.  But, certainly, God did not die for any of His people because of their outward appearance.  That had nothing to do with it.  It was all according to His good pleasure.  He determined, “I will love Jacob (the elect),” before he was born and before he could do good or bad, and He determined not to love Esau before he was born. 

You know, in painting a picture through a historical parable, the best way God could show it in this situation was to have Jacob fall in love with Rachel as soon as he beheld her, and I think that is what the language here indicates.  He loved her so much that his service to Laban, Rebekah’s brother, for seven years seemed but a few days because he had such a great love for her. 

On the other hand, we know that when the seven-year period expired, Laban gave him Leah, the older sister, to be his wife.  Lord willing, we will discuss that later on, but after realizing that trickery, Jacob was given Rachel to wife in exchange for another seven years of service, although he was able to marry her at the beginning of that seven years.  In other words, he did not have to wait 14 years to enter into a marriage relationship with Rachel.  He married Leah after seven years, and then, perhaps, days later, he married Rachel, and he worked for the next seven years after that.

So the Lord tells us some interesting things concerning Jacob’s relationships with Rachel and Leah.  We read in Genesis 29:31:

And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years. And when JEHOVAH saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived, and bare a son…

God said that He saw that Leah was hated.  This is put in a nicer way in verse 30, where it said that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.  He loved Rachel more than Leah.  But this is the Word of God, and this is the God who knows the hearts of men, and God said that Leah was hated.  We do not have to understand this to mean that Jacob despised her and loathed her in any way.  I am sure he was upset at what Laban had done, but I do not think he would have held that against Leah.  Leah was just listening to her father, so it was not her fault, but her father’s fault for being deceitful about the whole thing.  But Jacob had strong emotional feelings and strong attraction toward Rachel.  He wanted Rachel.  He desired Rachel.  Rachel was the one he wanted for his wife.  He did not want Leah to be his wife.  He had no plans for her to be his wife.  It just turned out that way, so he had no feelings or desire to love her as a wife, and I think that is understandable, although she was his wife. 

That is one thing the Bible teaches us, and we can see it here: no matter what the circumstances are regarding a marriage or how someone ends up being married, once they marry, they are married in the eyes of God, even in this case where there was deception.  You know, sometimes you hear of people that drank way too much and they were “in lust,” and they were so drunk that they go to a chapel, and they go in and get married.  It seemed like a good idea at the time because they were “out of their normal minds” because of how much they drank.  Then they wake up and discover that they had gotten married.

Some churches would probably cater to them and say that it was not a legitimate marriage and say, “There is no problem to get a divorce or annulment.”  But, no.  Men do that, and they can certainly have a church certify their divorce or annulment, or they could have the government certify their divorce or annulment, and in the eyes of the church or the government, they are divorced or that there was no marriage.  But this is not the case in the eyes of God, because God takes marriage very seriously.  Once someone gets married – whether they were drunk, or deceived, or whatever – they are married in the eyes of God.  That is one thing we can see clearly here.  There is no backing out or saying, “I am not married to her because I made a deal for the other sister.”   So he was married to Leah, and in that marriage, there was no love; he loved Rachel.  That is where his heart was, and his feelings were toward her.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will discuss the similarity between Jacob’s feelings or love toward Rachel and what God said was hatred toward Leah, and compare it to the similarity of what God said about Jacob and Esau.  It is an interesting similarity that Jacob has married someone and has love toward her, but he married someone else and does not love that person, but has hatred toward her.