Three flocks of sheep were lying near by and Jacob asked the shepherds if they knew Laban and why they did not water their flocks.  The men told him that they knew Laban and that they were waiting for his sheep to arrive and then all the flocks would be watered.

Just then Rachel, one of the daughters of Laban, appeared with her father’s sheep, and the shepherds told Jacob who she was.  Then Jacob went to the well, rolled the stone away, and watered Laban’s sheep.  Then he told Rachel who he was and she hastened away to tell her father.

When Laban heard who had come to visit him he ran to meet Jacob and made him welcome just as he had done years before when his sister Rebekah had told him of her meeting with her uncle’s steward outside the city of Nahor.

[Illustration:  Meeting of Eliezer and the maiden who became Jacob’s mother.]

Jacob staid with Laban for a month, helping him with his flocks and becoming more and more in love with Rachel.  Then Laban asked him if he would like to be his shepherd and if so what wages he would wish.  Jacob told Laban he would serve him seven years for his daughter Rachel and so the bargain was made.  We are told that, “Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.”

But Laban was as crafty as Jacob had been when he obtained his brother’s birthright and robbed him of his blessing.  He tricked Jacob and made him work seven more years for Rachel.

After the second seven years had passed and Jacob had married Rachel, he made another bargain with Laban and this time it was greatly to his own advantage.  He lived with Laban for a number of years and then God appeared to him, saying, “I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me:  now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred.”

So, without letting Laban know anything about it, Jacob took his family, his flocks and herds and all his possessions, and started for his father’s home in the land of Canaan.  He had been gone three days before Laban knew that he had left him.  After seven days he overtook Jacob camped on Mount Gilead.

When they met, Laban accused Jacob of carrying away some of his possessions, and searched his tent for them; but after a while, not finding them, they talked over all that had occurred since Jacob first came to Laban’s house, and in the end they made a covenant or agreement of friendship and set up a heap of stones for a witness to it and called it “Mizpah,” which means, “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.”

[Illustration:  Laban searched Jacob’s tent.]

So Jacob and his family kept on their way to the land of Canaan.  He had now eleven sons and one daughter and was a rich man, for God had kept His promise and blessed him abundantly.  On the way he heard that his brother Esau was coming to meet him with a band of four hundred men.  Jacob remembered how he had taken advantage of his brother and was afraid the time for Esau’s promised revenge had come.