The phrase, "what goes around comes around," has become a bit of a mantra among Americans. It deals with karma and the expectation that the way you treat someone else will be the way you will be treated. Somehow the universe knows when something is unfair, and it works itself to bring fairness back. This kind of thought isn't at all Biblical in nature because the very heart of the Gospel is not that people get what they deserve but that people get the very thing that they don't deserve.
That being said, such was not the case with Jacob. It's ironic to me that Jacob received a similar treatment from his uncle as he gave to his brother. As much as Jacob was deceptive in pretending to be his older brother when their father was handing out blessings, so was his uncle deceptive in offering the wrong daughter in marriage to Jacob. In both cases, the parents (i.e. Laban and Rebekah – who were brother and sister) talked their children into pretending to be someone else, and it makes one wonder if Laban and Rebekah had been taught deception as they were raised, too.
In both cases, too, the responses of the people wronged are less than admirable. Esau plots to kill his brother, and Jacob shows little respect for his accidental wife. Rather than making the best out of a bad situation, Jacob continued his immature behavior by playing favorites. It seems that a good lesson from this is that we should seek to honor God and others in spite of the wrongs that are done to us.
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