1And he heard Laban’s sons’ words, saying, “Jacob has taken everything that was our father’s, and he has made all this wealth from what was our father’s.”
2And Jacob saw Laban’s face; and, here, he was not like the day before yesterday with him.
3And YHWH said to Jacob, “Go back to your fathers’ land and to your birthplace, and I’ll be with you.”
4And Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field, to his flock,
5and said to them, “I see your father’s face, that he’s not like the day before yesterday to me. And my father’s God has been with me,
6and you know that I served your father with all my might,
7and your father has toyed with me and changed my pay ten times, and God hasn’t let him do bad with me.
8If he would say this: ‘The speckled will be your pay’, then all the flock gave birth to speckled. And if he would say this: ‘The streaked will be your pay’, then all the flock gave birth to streaked.
9And God has delivered your father’s livestock and given them to me.
10And it was at the time of the flock’s being in heat, and I raised my eyes and saw in a dream: and here were the he-goats that were going up on the flock: streaked, speckled, and spotted.
11“And an angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob.’
“And I said, ‘I’m here.’
12“And he said, ‘Raise your eyes and see all the he-goats that are going up on the flock: streaked, speckled, and spotted. Because I’ve seen everything that Laban is doing to you.
13I am the God at Beth-El, where you anointed a pillar, where you made a vow to me. Now get up, go from this land, and go back to the land of your birth.’”
31:13. the God at Beth-El. The Hebrew construction is unclear. The Septuagint reads: “I am the God who appeared to you at Beth-El,” which is presumably what the Hebrew means.
14And Rachel and Leah answered, and they said to him, “Do we still have a portion and legacy in our father’s house?
15Aren’t we thought of as foreigners by him, because he sold us and has eaten up our money as well?!
16Because all the wealth that God has delivered from our father: it’s ours and our children’s. And now, do everything that that God has said to you.”
17And Jacob got up and carried his children and his wives on the camels.
18And he drove all his cattle and all his property that he had acquired, the cattle that were in his possession that he had acquired in Paddan Aram, to come to Isaac, his father, at the land of Canaan.
19And Laban had gone to shear his flock. And Rachel stole the teraphim that her father had.
31:19. teraphim. These are icons (Septuagint has eidolon, meaning “image”), which may relate to ancestor worship. Ancestor veneration was common in Israel at least until the reign of King Hezekiah (c. 700 B.C.E.). King Josiah burns teraphim along with other items related to communicating with the dead (
and 
) in 2 Kings 23:24.
20And Jacob stole the heart of Laban, the Aramean, by not telling him that he was fleeing.
31:20. stole the heart of Laban … by not telling him. Note the pun, a string of plays on the consonants of the name Laban: 
. Some puns in the Torah convey subtle or ironic messages. This pun may have no purpose other than the artistry for its own sake, or it may suggest a comeuppance: the play on language here describes a deception of Laban, a person who uses language to deceive others.
21And he fled, he and everyone he had, and he got up and crossed the river and set his face toward the mountain of Gilead.
22And it was told to Laban on the third day that Jacob had fled.
31:22. And it was told to Laban … that Jacob had fled. And he took … and pursued … and caught up. Compare the words describing Egypt’s pursuit of Israel to the Red Sea: “And it was told to the king of Egypt that the people had fled … and he took … and he pursued… . And they caught up” (Exod 14:5–9). The Laban episode prefigures the flight from Egypt, and it hints once again that the merit of the patriarchs lies in the background when Israel is saved from dangers.
23And he took his brothers with him and pursued him seven days’ journey and caught up to him in the mountain of Gilead.
24And God came to Laban, the Aramean, in a night dream and said to him, “Watch yourself in case you speak with Jacob: from good to bad.”
25And Laban caught up to Jacob, and Jacob had set up his tent in the mountain, and Laban set up with his brothers in the mountain of Gilead.
26And Laban said to Jacob, “What have you done, that you’ve stolen my heart and driven off my daughters like prisoners by the sword?
27Why did you hide so as to flee, and you stole from me, and you didn’t tell me? And I would have sent you off with happiness and with songs and with a drum and with a lyre.
28And you didn’t permit me to kiss my sons and my daughters. Now you’ve been foolish to do this.
31:28. to do this. The Hebrew 
puns on the name of Esau (
), who returns to the story in the next chapter (32:4).
29The god at my hand has the means to do bad to you. But your father’s God said to me yesterday saying, ‘Watch yourself from speaking with Jacob: from good to bad.’
31:29. your father’s God. Hebrew 
. “Your” is a plural here, and “father” is singular. The text as it is does not appear to make sense. To whom would the plural “your” refer? Is it Jacob and his wives? But then “your father” would be Laban himself. Is it Jacob and his sons? But then “your father” would be Isaac. But why would Laban formulate it this way, since he has the same relationship as Isaac with Jacob’s sons? We would rather have expected Hebrew 
, “the God of your fathers.” This may possibly be one of the very few grammatical errors to be transmitted in the biblical text. Presumably, the wrong element of the word has been pluralized. Or: Perhaps the error should be understood to be Laban’s! As he tries to make a dignified speech, claiming the moral high ground in this matter, calling Jacob the foolish one, he undermines his pretensions by making a clumsy mistake in the middle of his sentence.
30And now, you went, because you longed for your father’s house. Why did you steal my gods?”
31And Jacob answered, and he said to Laban, “Because I was afraid. Because I said, ‘In case you’ll seize your daughters from me.’
32Let the one with whom you’ll find your gods not live. In front of our brothers, recognize and take what of yours is with me.” And Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them.
31:32. Let the one with whom you’ll find your gods not live. By saying this, Jacob unwittingly puts a curse on Rachel, who has the teraphim.
33And Laban came in Jacob’s tent and Leah’s tent and the two maids’ tent, and he did not find them. And he came out from Leah’s tent and came in Rachel’s tent.
34And Rachel had taken the teraphim and put them in the camel’s saddle and sat on them. And Laban felt around the whole tent and did not find them.
31:34. felt around. This is the same verb that Jacob used in the context of deceiving his father in order to get Esau’s blessing: “Maybe my father will feel me.” The treatment he receives from his wives’ father here is the first hint that his deception of his own father still remains unsettled. Recompense for that deception is coming (Genesis 37).
35And she said to her father, “Let it not offend in my lord’s eyes that I’m not able to get up before you, because I have the way of women.” And he searched and did not find the teraphim.
31:35. I have the way of women. Rachel tells her father that she is menstruating, which keeps him away, so he does not search where she is sitting. But she is deceiving him. She cannot in fact be menstruating, because we find out below that she must be pregnant at this time. Her deception is a recompense for Laban’s having substituted Leah for her and made her share her husband with her sister.
36And Jacob was angered, and he quarreled with Laban, and Jacob answered, and he said to Laban, “What is my offense? What is my sin, that you blazed after me,
37that you felt around all my belongings? What did you find out of all of your house’s belongings? Set it here, in front of my brothers and your brothers, and let them judge between the two of us.
38This twenty years I’ve been with you, your ewes and your she-goats haven’t lost their offspring, and I haven’t eaten your flock’s rams.
31:38. ewes, rams. In Hebrew, a ewe is a r
k
l, i.e., a “Rachel.” And a ram is an ‘ayil, which is a play on “Leah.” Jacob’s words to Laban thus have a double meaning. He has protected Laban’s animals and has done right by his daughters as well. Moreover, they give Laban a hint that Jacob has paid him back for the Rachel-Leah deception—just as Laban’s words to Jacob (“We don’t give the younger before the firstborn”) once gave Jacob a hint that he was being paid back for getting his brother’s birthright.
39I haven’t brought you one torn up. I would miss it: you would ask it from my hand, be it stolen by day or stolen by night.
40I was … In the daytime heat ate me up, and ice in the night. And my sleep fled from my eyes.
31:40. I was … In the daytime heat. The first words of the verse, “I was,” have no referent or continuation in the rest of the sentence. Commentators and translators have taken it to mean “Thus I was: in the daytime heat ate me up,” etc. But perhaps the confusion that results from this break in the sentence is precisely the point. Jacob is speaking up after twenty years. He is rattling off a list of his complaints as fast and as strongly as he can. And, as people often do in such bursts of anger, he starts a point and then interrupts himself and says something else that occurs to him. Indeed, it is at this juncture that Jacob changes directions. He has been listing his merits; now he suddenly switches and points out the abuses that he has been suffering.
41This twenty years I’ve had in your house: I worked for you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flock, and you changed my pay ten times.
42If I hadn’t had my father’s God, the God of Abraham and Awe of Isaac, by now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my degradation and my hands’ exhaustion, and He pointed it out last night.”
43And Laban answered, and he said to Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters, and the sons are my sons, and the flock is my flock, and everything that you see: it’s mine. But what shall I do to my daughters, to these, today, or to their children to whom they’ve given birth?
44So now, come and let’s make a covenant, I and you, and let it be a witness between me and you.”
45And Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar,
46and Jacob said to his brothers, “Collect stones.” And they took stones and made a pile and ate there at the pile.
47And Laban called it y
gar sh
d
ta’, and Jacob called it gal-‘d.
48And Laban said, “This pile is a witness between me and you today.” On account of this he called its name Gal-Ed.
(49And Mizpah, because he said, “May YHWH observe between me and you when one is hidden from the other.”)
50“If you degrade my daughters and if you take wives in addition to my daughters, no man is with us. See: God is witness between me and you.”
51And Laban said to Jacob, “Here is this pile, and here is the pillar that I’ve cast between me and you.
52This pile is a witness, and the pillar is a witness that I won’t cross this pile to you and you won’t cross this pile and this pillar to me for bad.
53Let Abraham’s God and Nahor’s gods, their father’s gods, judge between us.”
And Jacob swore by the Awe of his father, Isaac.
31:53. Abraham’s God and Nahor’s gods, their father’s gods. Since the Hebrew word for God, ‘l
hîm, can be singular or plural, and since there is no capitalization to distinguish between references to the God of the patriarchs and the pagan gods, Laban’s meaning is uncertain.
54And Jacob made a sacrifice in the mountain and called his brothers to eat bread, and they ate bread and spent the night in the mountain.
