33. So shall my righteousness answer for me. Literally it is, “My righteousness shall answer in me.” But the particle בי ( bi) signifies to me or for me (86) The sense, however, is clear, that Jacob does not expect success, except through his faith and integrity. (87) Respecting the next clause, interpreters differ. For some read, “When thou shalt come to my reward.” (88) But others, translating in the third person, explain it of righteousness, which shall come to the reward, or to the remunerating of Jacob. Although either sense will suit the passage, I rather refer it to righteousness; because it is immediately added, “before thee.” (89) For it would be an improper form of expression, “Thou wilt come before thine own eyes to my reward.” It now sufficiently appears what Jacob meant. For he declares that he hoped for a testimony of his faith and uprightness from the Lord, in the happy result of his labors, as if he had said, “The Lord who is the best judge and vindicator of my righteousness, will indeed show with what sincerity and faithfulness I have hitherto conducted myself.” And though the Lord often permits sinners to be enriched by wicked arts, and suffers them to acquire abundant gain by seizing the goods of others as their own: this proves no exception to the rule, that his blessing is the ordinary attendant on good faith and equity. Wherefore, Jacob justly gave this token of his fidelity, that he committed the success of his labors to the Lord, in order that his integrity might hence be made manifest. The sense of the words is now clear, “My righteousness shall openly testify for me, because it will voluntarily come to remunerate me; and that so obviously, that it shall not he hidden even from thee.” A tacit reproof is couched in this language, intimating that Laban should feel how unjustly he had withheld the wages of the holy man, and that God would shortly show, by the result, how wickedly he had dissembled respecting his own obligation to him. For there is an antithesis to be understood between the future and the past time, when he says, “ Tomorrow (or in time to come) it will answer for me,” since indeed, yesterday and the day before, he could extort no justice from Laban.
Every one that is not speckled and spotted. Jacob binds himself to the crime and punishment of theft, if he should take away any unspotted sheep from the flock: as if he would say, “Shouldst thou find with me anything unspotted, I am willing to be charged as a thief; because I require nothing to be given to me but the spotted lambs.” Some expound the words otherwise, “Whatsoever thou shalt find deficient in thy flock, require of me, as if I had stolen it;” but this appears to me a forced interpretation.
(86) In the Amsterdam edition the particle is כי, evidently the printer’s mistake. In Hengstenberg’s edition, it is לי, which looks as if the editor, instead of turning to the original, had, at a venture, translated Calvin’s Latin words mihi, or pro me, into Hebrew. — Ed
(87) Vide Vatablus in Poli Syn.
(88) That is, to see that I receive my reward or wages, at the time when the flock is divided according to our compact. — Ed.
(89) This seems to be the sense in which the English translators understood the passage. “So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it (my righteousness) shall come for my hire (or reward) before thy face.” Coramto. — Ed.