Gen 30:1And Rachel having perceived that she bore Jacob no children, was jealous of her sister; and said to Jacob, Give me children; and if not, I shall die.
Gen 30:14And Ruben went in the day of barley-harvest, and found apples of mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother Lea; and Rachel said to Lea her sister, Give me of thy son's mandrakes.
Gen 30:15And Lea said, Is it not enough for thee that thou hast taken my husband, wilt thou also take my son's mandrakes? And Rachel said, Not so: let him lie with thee to-night for thy son's mandrakes.
Gen 30:16And Jacob came in out of the field at even; and Lea went forth to meet him, and said, Thou shalt come in to me this day, for I have hired thee for my son's mandrakes; and he lay with her that night.
Gen 30:20And Lea said, God has given me a good gift in this time; my husband will choose me, for I have born him six sons: and she called his name, Zabulon.
Gen 30:30For it was little thou hadst before my time, and it is increased to a multitude, and the Lord God has blessed thee [fn]since my coming; now then, when shall I set up also my own house?
Gen 30:31And Laban said to him, What shall I give thee? and Jacob said to him, Thou shalt not give me anything; if thou wilt do this thing for me, I will again tend thy flocks and keep them.
Gen 30:32Let all thy sheep pass by to-day, and separate thence every grey sheep among the rams, and every one that is speckled and spotted among the goats—this shall be my reward.
Gen 30:33And my righteousness shall [fn]answer for me on the morrow, for it is my reward before thee: whatever shall not be spotted and speckled among the goats, and grey among the rams, shall be stolen with me.
Gen 30:35And he separated in that day the spotted and speckled he-goats, and all the spotted and speckled she-goats, and all that was grey among the rams, and every one that was white among them, and he gave them into the hand of his sons.
Gen 30:37And Jacob took to himself green rods of storax tree and walnut and plane-tree; and Jacob peeled in them white stripes; and as [fn]he drew off the green, the white stripe which he had made appeared alternate on the rods.
Gen 30:38And he laid the rods which he had peeled, in the hollows of the watering-troughs, that whensoever the cattle should come to drink, as they should have come to drink before the rods, the cattle might conceive at the rods.
Gen 30:40And Jacob separated the lambs, and set before the sheep a speckled ram, and every variegated one among the lambs, and he separated flocks for himself alone, and did not mingle them with the sheep of Laban.
Gen 30:41And it came to pass in the time wherein the cattle became pregnant, conceiving in the belly, Jacob put the rods before the cattle in the troughs, that they might conceive by the rods.[fn]
Gen 30:42But he did not put them in indiscriminately whenever the cattle happened to bring forth, but the unmarked ones were Laban's, and the marked ones Jacob's.
The meaning of the Hebrew seems to be, when the cattle were weak from any cause. The LXX. by assigning the yeaning time as the cause, have obscured the passage. Of course Jacob would not put them in then.
Translation of the Greek Septuagint into English by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, originally published in 1851 and is now in the Public Domain
