Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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to ministers; they also are shepherds, of whom it is required that they be true to their trust and willing to take pains.
Those also are bad masters who deny to their servants that which is just and equal. This Laban did, Ge 31:41. It was unreasonable for him to make Jacob serve for his daughters, when he had in reversion so great an estate secured to him by the promise of God himself; as it was also to give him his daughters without portions, when it was in the power of his hands to do well for them. Thus he robbed the poor because he was poor, as he did also by changing his wages.
42 Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of
Isaac, had been with me, surely thou hadst sent me away now empty. God hath seen mine affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked thee yesternight.
The care of providence for the protection of injured innocence, Ge 31:42. God took cognizance of the wrong done to Jacob, and repaid him whom Laban would otherwise have sent empty away, and rebuked Laban, who otherwise would have swallowed him up. Note, God is the patron of the oppressed; and those who are wronged and yet not ruined, cast down and yet not destroyed, must acknowledge him in their preservation and give him the glory of it. Observe,
1. Jacob speaks of God as the God of his father, intimating that he thought himself unworthy to be thus regarded, but was beloved for the father's sake.
2. He calls him the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac; for Abraham was dead, and had gone to that world where perfect love casts out fear; but Isaac was yet alive, sanctifying the Lord in his heart, as his fear and his dread.
43 And Laban answered and said unto Jacob, These daughters are my
daughters, and these children are my children, and these cattle are my cattle, and all that thou seest is mine: and what can I do this day unto these my daughters, or unto their children which they have borne?