I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 29-30.

Reading this passage today, I wanted to look at part of it that I have often wondered about, but never really thought through.  When Jacob suggested that the shepherds should water the sheep and take them back to the pasture, they told him that they needed to wait for all of the sheep to be gathered and the stone to be rolled away.  Yet, as soon as Rachel arrived with Laban’s sheep, Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Laban’s sheep.  So, was Rachel the last of the shepherds to arrive with their flocks?  In which case, why didn’t someone other than Jacob roll the stone away from the well?  Or, did Jacob roll the stone away in order to water Laban’s sheep in violation of protocol?   In either case, we can conclude that Jacob rolled the stone away and watered Laban’s sheep in order to impress his cute cousin.  Another thing which is unstated, but apparent, is that Jacob and Rachel spent the time it took to water the sheep to talk, and probably to flirt.

It is really worth the time to look at the relationship between Jacob, Leah, Rachel, and their two handmaids which they sent to Jacob’s bed, but I will leave that to you.  I want to talk about how old Jacob and Rachel (and by inference Leah) were in this passage.  We do not really know how old they were.  What we do know is that Laban was Rebekah’s brother and was more or less running the household when Abraham’s servant showed up looking for a wife for Isaac. So, Laban was probably younger than Isaac, but older than Rebekah.  I wrote all of that and realized it does not really lead us to any firm conclusions, except that Rachel was almost certainly not a young girl any longer by the time she married Jacob.  Actually, when combined with the fact that Rachel was herding some of Laban’s sheep when Jacob arrived, it leads me to believe that Jacob was not exaggerating when he told Laban that Laban had little when Jacob first arrived.  Now, about Jacob’s age, we do not know how old he was either, but we have a little more information on that.  There are those who conclude that Jacob was 84 when he married Rachel.  This is based on working back from when Jacob went to Egypt, but I believe that involves making assumptions which those who wrote this would question.  What we do know is that Jacob went to Laban’s some significant number of years after Esau got married.  Esau was 40 years old when he got married, and, since Jacob was his twin brother, Jacob would also have been 40 at that point.  Personally, I would guess that Jacob was about 60 when he went to Laban’s.