Msg #2604 Jacob the Supplanter and a Huck Finn Raft
What The Bible Says
Good Samaritan’s Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice
Background: Supplant means the bottom of the foot, to trip up the heels, to displace and take the place of, to overthrow, to undermine; and all these definitions have their root in the Bible and its life of Jacob account. Note particularly Genesis 25:19 through 23 along with the birth of the twins in verse 24 through 26 and with supplanter connected to a heel capture. Then there’s a dysfunctional family and despised birthright in verses 27 through 34, and the Genesis 27 stolen blessing. The drama continues with Genesis 29 and the stolen bride, along with Genesis 30:1 through 26 depicting Jacob’s conglomerated home life. Through all this God is providentially working on Jacob the supplanter’s deceitful character flaws.
Genesis 30:27-43 is the stolen cattle caper that captures our attention in this essay. Key verses are 30:37 through 39. Rods of green popular, and of the Hazel and Chestnut trees with pilled white streaks in them, … peels which made the white appear, is exhibit A.
In the summer of 1965 my best friends Bernie Walker, Dougie Taft, and Tim Rose, were Huck Finn fans and we took our hatchets, wit, and knives to the back side of Gang Mills New York to build a raft on the shores of the Tioga River. The four of us were going to sail down the Tioga from the railroad bridge to the Conhocton River, park our raft and hike 3 miles back home. You couldn’t cut the excitement with a knife, especially Tim Rose’s knife.
A Huck Finn raft is made from logs tied together with strips of bark. For the first month of our summer vacation from school the four of us cut down trees with hatchets, broke blisters, and stripped great lengths of bark from the logs. … We “pilled white strakes in them” and for 30 days our hands, our arms, our feet, our legs, and every stitch of clothing we wore, were “ringstraked, spotted, and speckled.” Those bark juices stained all they way through the epidermis.
No matter how my mom washed and scrubbed we remained that way until school started in September; in fact mom called us ringstraked, speckled and spotted, being familiar with the Bible chapter, and I will never forget the language that came straight from Genesis 30.
Consequently I have known since childhood how Jacob got Laban’s fine white newborn cattle to appear ringstraked, speckled and spotted! There has never been a doubt in my mind. In the 1970s while tending dairy cattle on our dairy farm in Addison New York I learned that when a cow drop their calf while out to pasture, it would be found down by the creek near the “gutters in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink”, just as recorded in Genesis 30:38. Jacob was no slouch; but the modernist ecumenical “scholars” who make up a diatribe of other wildly imagined explanations of this scripture, surely are. Most of them are citidiots as well. (“Citidiots” is my own slanderous title for city people who know nothing about farming or country life, think eggs and whole milk are bad, and live a lowsalt lowbrain existence. Some even still suppose “global warming” is truth!)
One more thing, look at what the LORD said to Jacob in Genesis 31:3, then look at what Jacob said that he said in Genesis 31:11 through 12. Take a note: people (especially supplanters) lie about what “God told them!” That’s why we use the Holy Bible for truth and need to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2Tim.2:15).
A 600 word Essay for week #4 Jan 25, 2026
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