Rachel got angry that she couldn’t bear any children, and blamed Jacob for it, even though he was obviously not the problem since Leah was over there popping out kids like crazy. So Jacob and Rachel had a big fight. Having learned nothing from the Sarai and Hagar situation several chapters back, Rachel gave Jacob her servant to screw so she could sort of have kids by proxy. Because apparently if your servant has kids by your husband, those kids are actually yours. Right.
Leah, not wanting to be upstaged in the whole baby-making game, gave her servant to Jacob too, and Jacob had the time of his life impregnating one servant after the other for the next several years.
Later, Leah’s son Reuben was harvesting wheat when he found a patch of mandrakes, which are a narcotic plant. Wanting to get high, Rachel asked Leah if she could have some of them. Leah, still pissed about her husband dumping her for her sister, refused to let Rachel have any of her son’s stash. Rachel, apparently the world’s first drug addict, offered to get Jacob to fuck Leah in exchange for some of that sweet, sweet mandrake.
When Jacob came back from the fields, Leah told him that she had purchased a night with him in exchange for feeding Rachel’s mandrake addiction. Apparently finding nothing unusual about this, Jacob went in and did the deed with Leah. After this, Leah, thanks to God’s meddling, bore 2 more sons and a daughter. Then, God got Rachel to have yet another son.
After all this baby making, Jacob went to Laban and asked to be released and allowed to take his wife and ludicrous number of children away to start a new life. Laban, not wanting to get rid of a good employee, begged Jacob to stay. Not having any more daughters to whore out, Laban agreed to pay Jacob by allowing him to take any of his cows that had spots, any of his brown sheep, and any of the speckled goats.
Jacob and Laban then separated to tend the flocks: Jacob the speckled and brown animals, Laban the not so speckled and not so brown. Unfortunately for Laban, Jacob was not only a scheming bastard but also an expert in animal husbandry. Through a scheme so convoluted reading about it would surely put you into a coma, Jacob assured that his flocks got stronger while Laban’s flocks got weaker. Thus, Jacob ended up with a bunch of animals and servants and was able to care for his giant flock of children.
