The angel of God said to me in the dream. In breeding season I once had a dream in which I looked up and saw that the male goats mating with the flock were streaked, speckled or spotted. So God has taken away your father’s livestock and has given them to me. However, God has not allowed him to harm me. The biblical answer to the mystery of how Jacob’s peeled poles resulted in speckled sheep is found in the next chapter: Jacob says to Rachel, “I’ve worked for your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me by changing my wages ten times. ![]() Jacob may have relied on his own efforts, tainted as they were by pastoral folklore, but God had determined to bless him. ![]() He placed the branches strategically to breed those animals more likely to produce speckled and spotted offspring.Ī better view is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob supernaturally intervened to increase Jacob’s flocks. Some theorize that Jacob, through a lifetime of experience with sheep, knew that something in the branches would cause the animals to be sexually stimulated and to mate more often. Some try to find a natural explanation to the account of Jacob’s striped branches and the resulting speckled flocks. In the end, Jacob “grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks” (verse 43). The result was that the stronger of the flock were multi-colored, and the weaker were normal colored. He only placed the branches in the troughs when the stronger females were in heat, “but if the animals were weak, he would not place them there” (Genesis 30:42). In addition to increasing the number of spotted animals, Jacob also wanted to make sure that the spotted ones were stronger than the rest. This breed is called “Jacob sheep” because some trace its origin to the story of Jacob’s selective breeding of sheep in Genesis 30. The black-and-white spotted wool is highly prized for handspinning, or roving. The Bible simply records what Jacob did and the result in the flock, with no explanation.Īn ancient breed of sheep, still raised today, is the Jacob sheep, which has the distinction of having multi-colored fleece. It is unclear how or if these striped branches impacted the mating of the animals. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted” (Genesis 30:38–39). ![]() When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. ![]() “Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. He took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond, and plane trees and peeled the bark to create white stripes on them. To increase his flocks (and diminish Laban’s), Jacob instituted some sort of folk-medicine selective breeding process. The agreement seemed to favor Laban, as speckled or spotted sheep and goats were the exception, not the rule. Laban separated out the multi-colored animals, leaving only the solid-colored animals for his son-in-law to tend. Laban agreed, and the animals were divided. any goat in my possession that is not speckled or spotted, or any lamb that is not dark-colored, will be considered stolen” (Genesis 30:32–33). In Genesis 30 Laban asked Jacob to “name his wages,” and Jacob said, “Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat.
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