Juicier than an issue of US Weekly, Genesis 30 gives us all the intimate details of Jacob's love life. As you may recall in the previous installment, Jacob's first wife Leah has already given him four sons.
Well, this angers Rachel, Jacob's barren second wife, so she makes Jacob sleep with her maidservant. Because for some reason Jacob having children with her maidservant is somehow like him having children through Rachel herself. I don't know, Old Testament logic is hard to follow sometimes.
Jacob has two sons with Rachel's maidservant. Not to be out done by her sister, Leah makes Jacob sleep with her maidservant, giving Jacob two more sons. Then Leah pops out two more sons and a daughter, and finally God allows Rachel to give birth to her own son, Joseph.
The second half of Genesis 30 concerns itself with how Jacob acquires his flock. Jacob asks his deadbeat uncle Laban for some payment for all the work he's been doing for the last several years. Jacob makes him agree to what appears to be a modest compensation: Every goat or sheep of Laban's that has a spotted coat will go to Jacob. Since not many of Laban's flock have this kind of coat, he agrees.
Shortly after, Jacob pulls some kind of magical scheme where he is able to speckle Laban's unspeckled flock by putting branches from poplar trees into their drinking water. Don't ask me, I've tried to do some research to figure out how this works but have come up with nothing. Anyway, the point is, Jacob scams Laban out of more goats and sheep than he had bargained for. The upshot is that Jacob becomes a rich man.
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FYI: "Jacob sheep" is a kind of sheep that still exists today, and is distinguished by its spotted coat.
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