Laban Pursues Jacob and His Family

31:22-42

22 And on the third day it was told to Laban that Jacob had fled. 23 So he took his relatives with him and pursued after him a seven-day journey and overtook him in the mountains of Gilead. 24 But God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream that night and said to him, “Watch yourself that you do not speak with Jacob either good or bad.”

25 And Laban overtook Jacob, and Jacob had pitched his tents in the mountains, so Laban with his relatives pitched theirs in the mountains of Gilead. 26 Then Laban said to Jacob, “What have you done? And you have stolen my heart and carried away my daughters like captives of the sword! 27 Why did you secretly flee and deceive me and not tell me? For I would have sent you with joy and with songs, with tambourines and with lyres! 28 And you did not let me kiss my grandchildren and my daughters! Now you have acted foolishly by doing that! 29 It is in the power of my hand to do harm to you, but last night the God of your father said to me, saying, ‘Keep yourself from speaking with Jacob either good or bad.’ 30 So now, you have surely gone because you greatly long for the house of your father. Why did you steal my gods?”

31 Then Jacob answered and said to Laban, “Because I was afraid, because I said that perhaps you would seize your daughters from me. 32 Whomever you find your gods with will not live! In front of our relatives, observe for yourself what is with me, and take what belongs to you.” Now Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them.

33 Then Laban went into the tent of Jacob and into the tent of Leah and into the tent of the two slave women, but he did not find anything. Then he came out of Leah’s tent and went into Rachel’s tent. 34 Now Rachel had taken the idols and put them inside the camel’s saddle and was sitting on them. And Laban felt throughout the entire tent, but he did not find them. 35 And she said to her father, “Do not let it burn in the eyes of my lord that I am not able to stand up in your presence, because the way of women is on me.” So he searched, but he did not find the idols.

36 Then it burned within Jacob, and he disputed with Laban, and Jacob responded and said to Laban, “What is my crime? What is my sin, that you have hotly pursued after me? 37 Since you have felt through all my things, what have you found from any of the things of your house? Put it here in front of my relatives and your relatives, and let them judge between the two of us!

38 “These twenty years I have been with you! Your ewes and your she-goats did not miscarry, and I have not eaten rams from your flocks. 39 I did not bring torn animals to you; I bore the loss of it myself. You required it from my hand, those stolen by day and those stolen by night. 40 There I was: In the day, heat devoured me, and in the night the frost, so that my sleep fled from my eyes. 41 That is how it was for me twenty years in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flocks, and you changed my wages ten times. 42 If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God has seen my affliction and the toil of my palms, and he judged you last night.”