Genesis 31:9

Gen 31:9 Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given [them] to me.

Ver. 9. Thus God hath taken away, &c.] He is the true proprietary, and gives and takes away these outward things at pleasure; as Hannah hath it. {1Sa 2:7} And, "promotion cometh neither from the east nor west," saith David; "nor yet from the south," {Psa 75:6} where the warm sunshine is: much less from the north (for, Ab Aquilone nihil boni); "but God is the judge; he puts down" Laban "and sets up" Jacob; {Psa 75:7} he spoiled the Egyptians, and enriched the Israelites with their jewels; {Exo 12:36} which yet proved a snare to them, perhaps, in the matter of the golden calf; as riches always do, when sent to men by God’s providence only, and not out of his favour, as here to Jacob, and by virtue of the promise.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen 31:9. God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me — Thus the righteous God paid Jacob for his hard service out of Laban’s estate, as he afterward paid the seed of Jacob for the service of the Egyptians with the spoils of that people.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

This declareth that the thing, which Jacob did before, was by God’s commandment, and not through deceit.

Or, cattle.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

And it came to pass, at the time that the cattle conceived,.... Whether in spring or in autumn cannot be said, for it seems this was twice a year; this probably was at the beginning of the six years' servitude, or just before the agreement was made between Laban and Jacob, and was an instruction to the latter how to make his bargain with the former:

that I lifted up mine eyes, and saw in a dream; in a vision of the night, so things were represented to his fancy and imagination:

and, behold, the rams which leaped upon the cattle were ringstraked,

speckled, and grisled; from whence he might conclude, that the cattle they leaped upon would bring forth the like, and so be a direction to him to make his agreement with Laban to have such for his hire; not that the rams in the flock were really of those colours, for they were all white, but so they were represented to Jacob in the vision, to suggest to him, that such would be produced by them; and it is not improbable by the artifice Jacob was directed to, and took, that the ewes, when they came to the watering troughs to drink, upon seeing the party coloured rods in the water, these made such an impression upon their imaginations, that they fancied the rams that leaped upon them were of those colours, and so conceived and brought forth the like. Here is another colour mentioned, not taken notice of before, at least by this name, "grisled"; it stands in the place of "spotted", and seems to be the same with that, and signified such as had spots on them like hailstones, and distinguishes them from the speckled: the speckled were such as were white with black spots, these such as were black, and had white spots like hail.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Thus literally, and (as the result of this)God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me. In ascribing to God what he had himself effected by (so-called) fraud, this language of Jacob appears to some inexcusable (Kalisch); in passing over his own stratagem in silence Jacob has been charged with not telling the whole truth to his wives (Keil). A more charitable consideration of Jacob"s statement, however, discerns-in it an e vide nce of his piety, which recognized and gratefully acknowledged that not his own "consummate cunning, "but Jehovah s watchful care had enabled him to outwit the dishonest craft of Laban (Rosenm Ainsworth, Bush, Candlish, Murphy).

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

God hath taken away the cattle of your father and given them to me - Thus the righteous God paid Jacob for his hard service out of Laban's estate; as afterwards he paid the seed of Jacob for their service of the Egyptians with their spoils.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

אביכם: for אביכן as in Gen 32:16, etc. - "Ten times:" i.e., as often as possible, the ten as a round number expressing the idea of completeness. From the statement that Laban had changed his wages ten times, it is evident that when Laban observed, that among his sheep and goats, of one colour only, a large number of mottled young were born, he made repeated attempts to limit the original stipulation by changing the rule as to the colour of the young, and so diminishing Jacob's wages. But when Jacob passes over his own stratagem in silence, and represents all that he aimed at and secured by crafty means as the fruit of God's blessing, this differs no doubt from the account in Gen 30. It is not a contradiction, however, pointing to a difference in the sources of the two chapters, but merely a difference founded upon actual fact, viz., the fact that Jacob did not tell the whole truth to his wives. Moreover self-help and divine help do not exclude one another. Hence his account of the dream, in which he saw that the rams that leaped upon the cattle were all of various colours, and heard the voice of the angel of God calling his attention to what had been seen, in the words, "I have seen all that Laban hath done to thee," may contain actual truth; and the dream may be regarded as a divine revelation, which was either sent to explain to him now, at the end of the sixth year, "that it was not his stratagem, but the providence of God which had prevented him from falling a victim to Laban's avarice, and had brought him such wealth" (Delitzsch); or, if the dream occurred at an earlier period, was meant to teach him, that "the help of God, without any such self-help, could procure him justice and safety in spite of Laban's selfish covetousness" (Kurtz). It is very difficult to decide between these two interpretations. As Jehovah's instructions to him to return were not given till the end of his period of service, and Jacob connects them so closely with the vision of the rams that they seem contemporaneous, Delitzsch's view appears to deserve the preference. But the עשׂה in Gen 31:12, "all that Laban is doing to thee," does not exactly suit this meaning; and we should rather expect to find עשׂה used at the end of the time of service. The participle rather favours Kurtz's view, that Jacob had the vision of the rams and the explanation from the angel at the beginning of the last six years of service, but that in his communication to his wives, in which there was no necessity to preserve a strict continuity or distinction of time, he connected it with the divine instructions to return to his home, which he received at the end of his time of service. But if we decide in favour of this view, we have no further guarantee for the objective reality of the vision of the rams, since nothing is said about it in the historical account, and it is nowhere stated that the wealth obtained by Jacob's craftiness was the result of the divine blessing. The attempt so unmistakeably apparent in Jacob's whole conversation with his wives, to place his dealing with Laban in the most favourable light for himself, excites the suspicion, that the vision of which he spoke was nothing more than a natural dream, the materials being supplied by the three thoughts that were most frequently in his mind, by night as well as by day, viz., (1) his own schemes and their success; (2) the promise received at Bethel; (3) the wish to justify his actions to his own conscience; and that these were wrought up by an excited imagination into a visionary dream, of the divine origin of which Jacob himself may not have had the slightest doubt. - In Gen 31:13 האל has the article in the construct state, contrary to the ordinary rule; cf. Ges. 110, 2b; Ewald, 290.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

ויצל, a form of removing something (in order to save it). מקנה אביכם, seeing that he was robbing me, G’d arranged it so that most of the sheep gave birth to young ones whose skin bore the markings which we had agreed should be mine. Not only this, but G’d showed me in a dream that my good fortune was due to His intervention on my behalf and was not due to a fortuitous natural event. G’d takes a personal interest in what happens to those who revere Him, and He saves them from those who unjustly oppress them.

Radak on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash” (CC BY 4.0); “Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology” (CC BY 4.0); and “R. David Kimhi on the first book of Psalms, Translated by R.G. Finch, London, 1919” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.