31One day Jacob heard Laban’s sons talking. They said, “Jacob has taken everything our father owned, and in this way he has become rich.” ²Then Jacob noticed that Laban was not as friendly as he had been before. ³The Lord said to Jacob, “Go back to the land where your ancestors lived, and I will be with you.”

⁴So Jacob told Rachel and Leah to meet him in the field where he kept his flocks. ⁵He said to them, “I have seen that your father is not as friendly with me as he used to be, but the God of my father has been with me. ⁶You both know that I have worked as hard as I could for your father, ⁷but he cheated me and changed my pay ten times. But God has not allowed your father to harm me. ⁸When Laban said, ‘You can have all the speckled animals as your pay,’ all the animals gave birth to speckled young ones. But when he said, ‘You can have all the streaked animals as your pay,’ all the flocks gave birth to streaked babies. ⁹So God has taken the animals away from your father and has given them to me.

¹⁰“I had a dream during the season when the flocks were mating. I saw that the only male goats who were mating were streaked, speckled, or spotted. ¹¹The angel of God spoke to me in that dream and said, ‘Jacob!’ I answered, ‘Yes!’ ¹²The angel said, ‘Look! Only the streaked, speckled, or spotted male goats are mating. I have seen all the wrong things Laban has been doing to you. ¹³I am the God who appeared to you at Bethel, where you poured olive oil on the stone you set up on end and where you made a promise to me. Now I want you to leave here and go back to the land where you were born.’ ”

¹⁴Rachel and Leah answered Jacob, “Our father has nothing to give us when he dies. ¹⁵He has treated us like strangers. He sold us to you, and then he spent all of the money you paid for us. ¹⁶God took all this wealth from our father, and now it belongs to us and our children. So do whatever God has told you to do.”

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