Genesis 31:31 · World English Bible
Genesis 31:31 Meaning Jacob Answered Laban
Jacob answered Laban, “Because I was afraid, for I said, ‘Lest you should take your daughters from me by force.’
What does Genesis 31:31 mean?
The traveler names the true engine of his flight, and it is fear. Every departure made in secret, every guarding of what one loves against a feared seizure, springs from the conviction that another will take by force what is cherished.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Genesis 31:31 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
The traveler names the true engine of his flight, and it is fear. Every departure made in secret, every guarding of what one loves against a feared seizure, springs from the conviction that another will take by force what is cherished. This is the mind picturing loss before it comes and fleeing an attack that lives only in imagination.
Honesty about the fear is already the beginning of its undoing, for once a mind sees that it ran from a threat it invented, it can begin to ask whether the taker it dreaded was ever really coming for it at all.
Laban: the imagined aggressor, the projected figure a fearful mind expects to seize what it holds dear. Thy daughters: the loved and vulnerable within the mind, what the self believes must be defended from a coming attack.
Christian Psychology lensGo deeper in the app
Christian Psychology lens
Live Genesis 31:31 today
- Write down in one plain sentence the thing you are afraid will happen, and beside it what you actually know right now. Let the gap be visible.
- Say the real reason out loud to one person today. "I think I have been scared of this" is a whole sentence and it is enough.
- Before you send the careful, guarded email, ask yourself what attack you are defending against and whether it is actually on its way.
What have I been protecting, and from a threat that has yet to arrive?
The same truth in other traditions
Stoicism · Seneca
We suffer more in imagination than in reality. Most of what we flee has not happened and never will.
Taoism · Zhuangzi
A man fled his own shadow and ran himself to death. The faster he moved, the more closely it kept up.
Buddhism · the Buddha
Fear has a shape only while it stays unexamined. Turn and look straight at it and it loses its size.
Free · No account needed
Read all of Genesis 31 through 17 lenses
Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.
Get Lensightful on the App Store