Now Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, "Please give me [some] of your son's mandrakes."
But she said to her, "[Is it] a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also?" And Rachel said, "Therefore he will lie with you tonight for your son's mandrakes."
When Jacob came out of the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, "You must come in to me, for I have surely hired you with my son's mandrakes." And he lay with her that night.
And Leah said, "God has endowed me [with] a good endowment; now my husband will dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons." So she called his name Zebulun.
And Laban said to him, "Please [stay,] if I have found favor in your eyes, [for] I have learned by experience that the LORD has blessed me for your sake."
"For what you had before I [came was] little, and it has increased to a great amount; the LORD has blessed you since my coming. And now, when shall I also provide for my own house?"
So he said, "What shall I give you?" And Jacob said, "You shall not give me anything. If you will do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep your flocks:
"Let me pass through all your flock today, removing from there all the speckled and spotted sheep, and all the brown ones among the lambs, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and [these] shall be my wages.
"So my righteousness will answer for me in time to come, when the subject of my wages comes before you: every one that [is] not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the lambs, will be considered stolen, if [it is] with me."
So he removed that day the male goats that were speckled and spotted, all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had [some] white in it, and all the brown ones among the lambs, and gave [them] into the hand of his sons.
Now Jacob took for himself rods of green poplar and of the almond and chestnut trees, peeled white strips in them, and exposed the white which [was] in the rods.
And the rods which he had peeled, he set before the flocks in the gutters, in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink, so that they should conceive when they came to drink.
Then Jacob separated the lambs, and made the flocks face toward the streaked and all the brown in the flock of Laban; but he put his own flocks by themselves and did not put them with Laban's flock.
And it came to pass, whenever the stronger livestock conceived, that Jacob placed the rods before the eyes of the livestock in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.