37. Then Jacob took rods of fresh-cut poplar, almond, and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white which was in the rods.
38. He set the rods which he had peeled before the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink, so that they would mate when they came to drink.
39. The flocks mated before the rods and gave birth to young that were striped, speckled, and spotted.
40. Jacob separated the lambs and made the flocks face toward the striped and all the brown in the flock of Laban. He put his own flocks by themselves and did not put them with Laban’s sheep.
41. Whenever the stronger sheep mated, Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the sheep in the troughs, so that they might mate among the rods.
42. But when the livestock were feeble, he did not put them in. So the weaker were Laban’s and the stronger Jacob’s.