Genesis 31:1 - Exposition

And he —Jacob had now served twenty years with Laban, and must accordingly have been in his ninety-seventh or seventy-seventh year ( vide Genesis 27:1 )— heard the words of Laban's sons ,—who were not at this time only small youths about fourteen years of ago (Delitzsch), since they were capable of being entrusted with their father's flocks ( Genesis 30:35 )— saying (probably in a conversation which had been over. heard by Jacob), Jacob hath taken away (by fraud is what they meant, an opinion in which Kalisch agrees; but it is not quite certain that Jacob was guilty of dishonesty in acting as he did) all that was our father's ;—this was a manifest exaggeration; sed hoe morbo laborant sordidi et nimium tenaces, ut sibi ereptum esse putent quicquid non ingurgitant (Calvin)— and of that which was our father's hath he gotten (literally, made, in the sense of acquiring, as in Genesis 12:5 ; 1 Samuel 14:48 ) all this glory . כָּבוֹד (from כָּבַד , to be heavy, hence to be great in the sense of honored, and also to be abundant) signifies either glory, splendor, renown, δόξα ( LXX .), as in Job 14:21 ; or, what seems the preferable meaning here, wealth, riches, facultates (Vulgate), as in Psalms 49:13 ; Nahum 2:10 . The two ideas appear to be combined in 2 Corinthians 4:17 ; βάρος δόξης (cf. Wordsworth, in loco ).