For twenty years Jacob had served his father-in-law, Laban. When Laban’s attitude toward Jacob changed, it was time to go. God told him, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you” (Genesis 31:3). When Jacob revealed to his wives what God had said, they began to pack their camels for the journey to Canaan. Unknown to Jacob, Rachel stole her father’s household gods (31:19) and put them in her camel’s saddle (31:34). Three days after the caravan left Paddan-aram, Laban discovered that his children had left him, and he pursued them. On his way, however, the God of heaven gave him a warning (31:22-24).
When Laban finally overtook Jacob, the meeting was very emotional and frightful. It seems that Laban could understand Jacob’s longing for his father’s house even though he had tricked him and secretly taken his children and grandchildren away, but he could not understand why Jacob had stolen his gods (31:30). Certain that the pagan gods had not been taken and not knowing that Rachel had done so, Jacob allowed a search. When the idols were not found, Jacob became irate and charged his father-in-law with abuse. In the tirade, he finally gave proper credit to the Source of his prosperity and cheerfully confessed to his unbelieving father-in-law that God was the One. “If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night” (31:42). In calling God “the God of my father” Jacob reminded Laban that while he (Jacob) had remained true to the ancestral religion of truth, Laban had departed from it. Laban’s love of false gods was certainly evidence of that. So for emphasis, Jacob also designated God as the God of Abraham and “the Fear of Isaac” or the One Whom Isaac revered, feared, and worshiped.
Though he would not give up rights to the children, grandchildren, and flocks in Jacob’s possession, Laban still wanted to “bury the hatchet.” When the stones (i.e. a heap and a pillar) were set up as memorials and witnesses of the covenant they made, Laban revealed his polytheism again. “The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us,” he said (31:53). For “judge” he used a plural verb in the Hebrew, which suggested that two different deities were under consideration, i.e. the true God and Nahor’s god, Laban’s idol. Evidently, he was thinking that the more gods to bind the pact, the better, but Jacob differed. He swore instead by the true God, “the Fear of his father Isaac” (31:53), the Object of fear or reverence of his father. Jacob associated “the God of Abraham” with the “Awesome One of Isaac.” Perhaps the renegade Laban sought to identify his own god with the true God of Abraham. If so, Jacob rebuffed such an identification.
There is only one God. He is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6; Matthew 22:32), and we, as did Isaac, should fear Him (1 Peter 2:17). “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). What God said to Isaiah were actually comforting words, i.e. “…do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread” (Isaiah 8:12, 13).
–Andy