Leaving Laban

After twenty years Jacob runs, with his wives, his children, and the flocks he has bred away from Laban. Rachel steals her father’s household gods on the way out, and Laban gives chase. What they finally build at Mizpah is not a reconciliation but a boundary, a heap of stones and the famous line, may the LORD watch between you and me, which sounds like a blessing and is really a fence: two men who do not trust each other agreeing on where the line is. Jacob leaves the long school of Laban changed, his cunning worn down, on his way to a harder appointment at the river.