Genesis 31:43
And Laban answered and said unto Jacob, These daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children, and these cattle are my cattle, and all that thou seest is mine: and what can I do this day unto these my daughters, or unto their children which they have born?
Laban claimed that the daughters were his daughters and the children his children, and that the cattle were his cattle and all that could be seen was his, yet he admitted that on that day he could do nothing against his daughters or against the children they had borne. The saying belongs to his pursuit of Jacob and to the covenant they made together, when they met at Gilead. It stands within Jacob's visit to Laban his mother's brother, his marriage to Leah and Rachel in which he who had deceived his father was himself deceived, his sojourn with Laban, and his departure from Syria for Palestine.
He spoke of the daughters and of the children they bore as his own daughters and children because he was head of the family. Daughter and child here include grandchild and later descendant, for kinship names are used broadly for members of the household under its head, which explains how Zipporah is called the daughter of Reuel though she is one of his descendants, and supports that Hobab is the same as Jethro, Moses' father-in-law. It is part of the account in which the deceiver is deceived and Jacob sets his face homeward, calling for readiness to obey God's leading.
It belongs to the continuing story of Abraham and his family, showing Abraham's gradual development of faith, Isaac and his two sons with their defects, and finally Jacob's victory. It closes this unsatisfactory part of the history of the family through which the Seed was to come, with the promises extended from Abraham to Isaac and from Isaac to Jacob. Jacob's later trouble grows out of his earlier failure, out of his aged father's overfond affection for Esau demanding stronger sympathy from the mother for neglected Jacob, out of her knowing that God's promise would be manifest through Jacob and ever keeping before him the importance of the Seed in a material way without the fullest appreciation of the spiritual blessings, and out of his own material overreaching that demonstrates the fitness of his name supplanter.
The context shows God's care over Jacob as promised, notwithstanding all his selfishness and unfaithfulness. The chapter illustrates his checkered and unsatisfactory experience of selfish plotting and overreaching: he overreached others and in turn encountered overreaching and suffered its consequences. God's providence may seem slow, but retribution comes sooner or later. The record of his trials and victories culminates in a complete change of heart and victory which made him Israel, prevailer with God, with a place among the Israel of God, which God in His mercy brings afterward.
His humility and faithfulness were reflected in his faithful service to Laban, and he remembered God by offering sacrifice, but his rash accusation about the person who had taken Laban's images showed that he trusted Rachel's goodness too much. The chapter is an instance of the great unhappiness that polygamy brought into families.