Genesis 31:36-42 He rendered judgement!

36Then Jacob became incensed and challenged Laban. “What is my crime?” he said. “For what sin of mine have you so hotly pursued me? 37You have searched all my goods! Have you found anything that belongs to you? Put it here before my brothers and yours, that they may judge between the two of us.

38I have been with you for twenty years now. Your sheep and goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten the rams of your flock. 39I did not bring you anything torn by wild beasts; I bore the loss myself. And you demanded payment from me for what was stolen by day or night. 40As it was, the heat consumed me by day and the frost by night, and sleep fled from my eyes.

41Thus for twenty years I have served in your household—fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks—and you have changed my wages ten times! 42If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the One Feared by Isaac, had not been with me, surely by now you would have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my affliction and the toil of my hands, and last night He rendered judgment.”

Jacob endured Laban’s unfairness for twenty years and he became incensed and lashes out. How long did he rehearse this speech? It was the custom of the culture that the sheepherder would bring a torn carcass to the owner to prove a loss but instead Jacob endured the loss and replaced it with his own stock. Laban was so unjust that if any of the stock came up missing he demanded payment from Jacob.

Jacob acknowledges if God of his father, the God of Abraham and the One feared by Isaac had not been with him Laban would have sent him away empty handed.

I love this part of verse 42; “But God has seen my affliction and the toil of my hands, and last night He rendered judgment.”

God witnesses our affliction and toil of our hands too and one day He will render judgement!

2 Thessalonians 1:6-7 After all, it is only right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are oppressed and to us as well, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels.

Blessings, David