These chapters read like the script for a soap opera. Something is always going on behind someone else's back. Rebekah and Jacob conspire to get Isaac to bless Jacob rather than Esau, his favorite, and as the first born the one who should have received Isaac's blessing. Esau is so angry that Jacob has to run away to keep from being killed. He runs to Laban, Rebekah's brother. After he has worked seven years to win the hand of Rachel, the woman he loved, he wakes up the morning after the wedding to see that it was Leah, the weak eyed sister he has bedded instead. Laban then extracts a promise from Jacob to work an additional seven years for Rachel, After that time, Laban will still not let his daughters go, so Jacob performs his own trickery, promising to give Laban all of the unmarked goats and figuring out a way to make sure that all of the goats born are speckled or spotted.
In the meantime, The women are having jealousies, each sending their servants to sleep with Jacob so he will have their children and constantly taunting each other; Leah taunts Rebekah because she can have children and Rebekah cannot, and Rebekah taunts Leah that she is loved by Jacob rather than Leah. Then there is the story of the mandrakes, a supposed seasonal aphrodisiac. When Leah's son Reuben finds mandrakes, a plant that was said to provide soothing sleep, heal wounds, induce love, and facilitate pregnancy, Rachel trades Leah a night with Jacob for a portion of the mandrakes. It didn't do Rachel any good, Leah was the one who became pregnant again.
Where does all of this conniving end. With the one who ran away from his brother now running away from his father-in-law. Jacob may have prospered; he has many wives and children, great herds of cattle, but he is still running. He is trying to move a large company with Laban in hot pursuit and one of his wives has stolen Laban's gods. Each act of cunning has resulted in an even greater act of conniving.
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