There are some parts of the Bible that I can’t make sense of logically, and one of them is this passage in Genesis 30:

“Now Jacob took for himself rods of green poplar and of the almond and chestnut trees, peeled white strips in them, and exposed the white which was in the rods. And the rods which he had peeled, he set before the flocks in the gutters, in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink, so that they should conceive when they came to drink. So the flocks conceived before the rods, and the flocks brought forth streaked, speckled, and spotted. Then Jacob separated the lambs, and made the flocks face toward the streaked and all the brown in the flock of Laban; but he put his own flocks by themselves and did not put them with Laban’s flock. And it came to pass, whenever the stronger livestock conceived, that Jacob placed the rods before the eyes of the livestock in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods. But when the flocks were feeble, he did not put them in; so the feebler were Laban’s and the stronger Jacob’s. Thus the man became exceedingly prosperous, and had large flocks, female and male servants, and camels and donkeys.” (Gen 30: 37-43)

How??

There is a lot of “How?” in the Bible that is difficult to explain, but fortunately the Bible was not given to us for our natural minds to make sense of, so much as a lens through which we can see the eternal truths of the spiritual realm. 1 Cor 2:14 tells us that “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” So how peeled bits of wood can govern the fertility of a flock of sheep is surely beyond anyone’s natural thinking, but what we can see is that God gave Jacob an instruction (I don’t believe he could have made that one up himself!), Jacob did what he was told, and God did what only He can do, putting His life into Jacob’s portion and bringing about both the present material dimension of the blessing that He had promised through Abraham, and a separation between God’s people and the world.

As the narrative unfolds we see this separation becoming more evident as Jacob takes his family and sets off to return to his father Isaac in the land of Canaan. Jacob had already met with God at Bethel, where he dreamt of the ladder reaching to heaven; and he had already made his own relationship with the Lord:

“Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God. And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.” (Gen 28: 20-22)

Jacob tends to be type-cast as a schemer, but behind all his apparent scheming is not only the blessing of Abraham that has been handed down to him, but his own relationship with God, and the sure knowledge that God is with him in all that he does. When Jacob first asked Laban for all the streaked and spotted animals as his wages, the first thing Laban did was take everything streaked and spotted in his flocks, give them to his sons, and put three days between them and Jacob. (Gen 30: 35-36) If we are discerning anything spiritual in this story, it is that Laban represents the world system that God wants His people to be separate from: his actions throughout the story – until God appears to him and intervenes (Gen 31:24) – are dishonest, deceitful and self-seeking.

Laban eventually catches up with Jacob and they confront each other. Jacob rebukes Laban for how he treated him over twenty years – “Unless 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-handed. God has seen my affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked you last night.” (Gen 31:42) However Laban justifies himself  and says “These daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children, and this flock is my flock; all that you see is mine.” (Gen 31:43)

 Laban’s words look forward to Satan’s temptation of Christ in Luke 4:6: “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.” They bring us to what I think is a key point in this story. The world, its kingdoms and its systems have been relinquished to Satan through sin, and they can always justify their claims to our allegiance. Or to bring it right down to Earth, if we want to do something self-centred, we can always find a good reason to justify it. However “The kingdoms  of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!” (Rev 11:15). Who owned Jacob’s possessions: the kingdoms of this world, or the Lord and His Christ? How often do we face situations where we have two choices, and although we may not see it, one will lead us into darkness and one into the light? We can either listen to the justifications of the world, or we can listen to the Lord. Who do we belong to? 

The story closes with Jacob and Laban making a covenant to keep within their own borders and not to harm each other, and they sealed the covenant with a pillar and a heap of stones that was named Mizpah. Mizpah means “Watch-tower:” Laban said “May the LORD watch between you and me when we are absent one from another.” The Lord had appeared to Laban in a dream and warned him not to harm Jacob: had it not been for His intervention Laban’s words and actions would no doubt have been different, and he would have reclaimed all that he deemed his own. When the enemy’s claims want to take us back into his territory we too have a mizpah where we can discern the source of the enemy’s arguments, and it stands there because God has intervened on our behalf at Calvary. It is only here that we can separate the two dominions: on one side is self  – “all that you see is mine” – and on the other side self is dead, and it is Love that reigns.

When there is conflict in our souls we need to go to Mizpah to see again the borders of the two dominions: Laban’s, the way of the world, and Jacob’s, the Way of God’s people who, like Jacob, have separated themselves from it. It’s the place of discernment, and it’s where we can discern the way of Love and walk in it.