# God Told Jacob 'I Will Be With You' Before He Said I AM (Genesis 31:1–16)

**Author:** Garth Watson
**Published:** 2026-10-31
**Last updated:** 2026-10-31
**Canonical URL:** https://doxa.app/blog/daily-deeper-dive-66-genesis-31-1-16

![A thorn bush burning without being consumed on a sunlit rocky mountainside in early morning, no text, no people](https://doxa.app/images/blog/daily-deeper-dive-66-genesis-31-1-16-hero.jpg)

In the Hebrew of Genesis 31, the same small word describes Laban's face and God's promise, and the verb inside that promise is the one God later gave Moses as His name.

## No longer with him

The Hebrew of Genesis 31:2 says Laban's face was no longer "with" Jacob as it had been "yesterday and the day before", and the very next verse uses the same word "with" for God's promise. Jacob looked at the [panim (H6440)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h6440), the face, of Laban, and it was not [im (H5973)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h5973), with him, [temol (H8543)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h8543) [shilshom (H8032)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h8032), "as yesterday and three days ago", the Hebrew way of saying "as it had always been". The BSB gives the sense well: "his attitude toward him had changed" ([Genesis 31:2](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/31#v2)).

Then God spoke: "Go back to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you" ([Genesis 31:3](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/31#v3)). "With you" is *im* again. When Jacob explained it to his wives he put the two side by side: Laban's face was not toward him as before, "but the God of my father has been with me" ([Genesis 31:5](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/31#v5)). An English reader sees "attitude" in one verse and "with" in the next and never hears that one Hebrew word set a man's turning face beside God's steady presence. Jacob measured what he could see, and God told him what he could not.

## The name from the bush

The words "I will be" in Genesis 31:3 are *ehyeh*, a form of [hayah (H1961)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h1961), to be, the same form God used at the burning bush when He promised Moses, "I will surely be with you" ([Exodus 3:12](https://doxa.app/bible/EXO/3#v12)), and then gave His name: "I AM WHO I AM" ([Exodus 3:14](https://doxa.app/bible/EXO/3#v14)). In Hebrew that name is *ehyeh asher ehyeh*.

God had said "I will be with you" to Isaac ([Genesis 26:3](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/26#v3)), then to Jacob, then to Moses. When Moses asked for His name, God answered with the verb of that promise. His name and His presence came in the same word, so every Israelite who heard Genesis 31:3 read aloud heard the Name tucked inside it.

Scripture uses *im* again in a name. The child promised in Isaiah carries it in his name, [Immanuel (H6005)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h6005), built from *im*, "us" and *El*, God. Matthew wrote, "they will call Him Immanuel" (which means, "God with us") ([Matthew 1:23](https://doxa.app/bible/MAT/1#v23)). The promise God gave Jacob in Haran became a person. In Haran that promise had a price attached, and Rachel and Leah knew what it was.

## What was paid for us

Rachel and Leah said their father had sold them because he took Jacob's fourteen years of work as their bride price and kept all of it. A groom paid a bride price, the [mohar (H4119)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h4119), to the bride's family, and marriage records from that region often set part of it aside for the bride herself, her security if her husband died. Jacob had no silver, so he paid in years.

The sisters asked, "Are we not regarded by him as outsiders?" ([Genesis 31:15](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/31#v15)). The word is [nokri (H5237)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h5237), foreigner, the word for a stranger with no family claim. They went on, "Not only has he sold us, but he has certainly squandered what was paid for us" ([Genesis 31:15](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/31#v15)). Sold is [makar (H4376)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h4376), the verb for selling goods or slaves, and squandered is [akal (H398)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h398), to eat: their father had eaten up their [kesef (H3701)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h3701), silver. So when they said "all the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children" ([Genesis 31:16](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/31#v16)), they were naming God as the one who had paid them the portion their father ate.

## My father was a wandering Aramean

Israel first heard this chapter as their own story, because every Israelite family that brought its firstfruits to the LORD said, "My father was a wandering Aramean" ([Deuteronomy 26:5](https://doxa.app/bible/DEU/26#v5)). The father in that confession is Jacob, who spent twenty years in Aram serving an Aramean.

Their own fathers had served a master who changed the terms too. Pharaoh took away their straw and ordered, "require of them the same quota of bricks as before" ([Exodus 5:8](https://doxa.app/bible/EXO/5#v8)). Then God spoke at the bush: "I have indeed seen the affliction of My people in Egypt" ([Exodus 3:7](https://doxa.app/bible/EXO/3#v7)). The verb is [raah (H7200)](https://doxa.app/bible/strongs/h7200), to see, the same verb the angel used in Jacob's dream: "for I have seen all that Laban has done to you" ([Genesis 31:12](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/31#v12)).

Jacob left with flocks God had taken from Laban ([Genesis 31:9](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/31#v9)). Israel left Egypt with silver and gold: "In this way they plundered the Egyptians" ([Exodus 12:36](https://doxa.app/bible/EXO/12#v36)). God had told Abram it would happen: "afterward they will depart with many possessions" ([Genesis 15:14](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/15#v14)). The people at Sinai heard in Genesis 31 that the God who saw them in Egypt had seen their father in Haran first, and had brought him out the same way.

## The face that turns toward you

God's face is how Scripture speaks of knowing Him, and on his way home Jacob met God face to face, and then Esau. At Peniel he said, "I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared" ([Genesis 32:30](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/32#v30)). Meeting Esau, he said, "I have seen your face, and it is like seeing the face of God" ([Genesis 33:10](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/33#v10)). Israel's priests blessed the people with the same word *panim*: "may the LORD lift up His countenance toward you and give you peace" ([Numbers 6:26](https://doxa.app/bible/NUM/6#v26)).

Laban's face turned away from Jacob, and God lifted His face toward His people. Paul wrote that God "made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" ([2 Corinthians 4:6](https://doxa.app/bible/2CO/4#v6)). We come to know Him as He turns His face toward us in Jesus and speaks, and as we keep what He says. When He says "I will be with you" to you through Scripture or an encouragement, record it in the [Doxa app](https://doxa.app/download) with the day it came, read it back when the faces around you change, and tell the people who walk with you, as Jacob told Rachel and Leah. The God whose name is I AM is with His people still.

This goes with today's Doxa Daily Lift: [Rachel and Leah Say 'Do Whatever God Has Told You' (Genesis 31:1–16)](https://doxa.app/blog/daily-lift-66-genesis-31-1-16)