Genesis 31:34-55
Heavenly Father
give us grace to resolve conflicts today,
and when it is time to go separate ways, give us grace to do so with love and blessings
36 Jacob was angry, and argued with Laban. “What is my sin, that you have hotly pursued me?
37 Now 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.
41 These 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.
42 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.
God has seen my affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked you last night.”
43 Laban answered Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine! What can I do today to these my daughters, or to their children whom they have borne? 44 Now come, let’s make a covenant, you and I. Let it be for a witness between me and you.”
45 Jacob took a stone, and set it up for a pillar.
46 Jacob said to his relatives, “Gather stones.” They took stones, and made a heap. They ate there by the heap.
47 Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, but Jacob called it Galeed. (the covenant was the same covenant but they saw it and named it differently)
48 Laban said, “This heap is witness between me and you today. 49 Yahweh watch between me and you, when we are absent one from another. 50 If you afflict my daughters, or if you take wives in addition to my daughters, no man is with us; behold, God is witness between me and you.”
51 Laban said to Jacob, “See this heap, and see the pillar, which I have set between me and you.
52 May this heap be a witness, and the pillar be a witness, that I will not pass over this heap to you, and that you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, for harm.
53 The God of Abraham (Jacob’s relative), and the God of Nahor (Laban’s relative), the God of their father (their common relative), judge between us.” Then Jacob swore by the fear of his father, Isaac. 54 Jacob offered a sacrifice in the mountain, and called his relatives to eat bread. They ate bread, and stayed all night in the mountain. 55 Early in the morning, Laban rose up, and kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them. Laban departed and returned to his place.