Scripture Daily

Context No. 4124 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 31:36-42: in context

36Jacob was angry, and argued with Laban. Jacob answered Laban, “What is my trespass? What is my sin, that you have hotly pursued me? 37Now that you have felt around in all my stuff, what have you found of all your household stuff? Set it here before my relatives and your relatives, that they may judge between us two. 38“These twenty years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not cast their young, and I haven’t eaten the rams of your flocks. 39That which was torn of animals, I didn’t bring to you. I bore its loss. Of my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. 40This was my situation: in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep fled from my eyes. 41These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. 42Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty. God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked you last night.”

After twenty years of hard service under his father-in-law Laban, Jacob finally pours out his grievance. He recounts his faithful, exhausting labor: how he bore the losses, endured the drought by day and frost by night, went without sleep, and served faithfully, while Laban changed his wages ten times and would have sent him away empty-handed.

But at the end of his complaint comes a testimony: if the God of my father had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty; God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands. Jacob, exploited and cheated by an unfair master, knew that God had seen it all. His hard, faithful labor had not gone unnoticed by heaven, even if his employer took advantage of him. God had seen his affliction, the injustice, the toil, the sleepless nights, and God had been with him and protected him. There is comfort here for anyone who labors faithfully and yet is treated unfairly, taken advantage of, underpaid, unappreciated. God sees.

When I labor faithfully and yet am treated unfairly or taken advantage of, do I trust, like Jacob, that God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands, and that he is with me to protect and, in his time, vindicate me?

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