But we have the women and the children of Padan-aram, as well as Laban the Syrian. The women and the children of the Book of Genesis are all mysteries. We see this in Eve and her three children--in Abraham’s Sarah, and Abraham’s Hagar, and Abraham’s Keturah, and the seed of each of them. And we noticed in Isaac (see page 152) the same mystic character in Rebecca his wife, and Esau and Jacob his children. Each and all tell out parts and parcels of the purpose of God, as in figures. And now, in the women which become connected with Jacob in Padan, whether it be his wife the elder sister, or his wife the younger sister, or the handmaids given to them, and in the children of each of them, there are mysteries again. In the children of Israel, that is, the nation, the seed of Abraham, we find three classes. 1. There has already been Israel _after the flesh_, set in the land under title of their fleshly alliance with Abraham. 2. There is now, at this time, the nation _in bondage_, made to know the service of the Gentiles. 3. There will be, by-and-by, the nation _set in grace_, Israel redeemed and accepted, established in the promises made to the fathers. These are three generations in the nation of Israel, as that nation either has been, now is, or is to be hereafter. And the shadowing of this, I judge, we see in the families of Jacob in Padan; that is, in the children of Leah, who had her title in the flesh; in the children of the handmaids; and in the children of Rachel the beloved, who had no strength in nature, but whose seed was all of promise or of God. The way of the wisdom of God is thus learnt in the women and children here, in chapters xxix.-xxxi., as it had been in the earlier family scenes of this wondrous book. As soon as Joseph, the child of promise, the son of Rachel the beloved, is given to him, Jacob speaks of leaving Padan, the place of his exile and bondage. See xxx. 25, 26. And this, simple as it seems to be, has character in it. The condition of an alien and servant did not suit him, as soon as he got the seed that witnessed to him the power of God in his behalf. He may have felt somewhat instinctively, that it became him now to assert his freedom, and to bethink himself of his home and his inheritance. I say not whether Jacob really entered into this, or whether it was something of an inspiration that he breathed, and which, in its full meaning, was beyond him. But so it was that he said to Laban, immediately upon the birth of Joseph, "Send me away, that I may go to my own place and to my country."