To me, this account shows a couple of things. The first being related to what this series is pointing out: that the Law written down by Moses was in place long before Moses. If you have been following this series, this is now the 7th instance of a law being mentioned/performed before the Law was given. At some point it has to stop being a coincidence or "this and this culture thing" and we have to let the Bible interpret the Bible. If this was any other book, ANY OTHER BOOK, and while reading something in later chapters that explained something in the previous chapters; we would have that "mind-click" moment and be like "AHHH, that is what that was." Why do we not do this with the Bible? Why do we read it in bubbles and think the text is only relevant to just the immediate surrounding chapters? Why do we then go to the original languages and break down words to make them fit our bubble narrative?

The second thing I think it shows is when we read about "the nations" or people in sin, we think of the world around us right now. People that have no regard for God and aren't doing anything godly. We see here, and from when we first meet Laban in Genesis 24, that he seems to be following God, in part at least. In between these two accounts did he backslide and start worshipping false gods? Did he make idols to worship God with? The text doesn't tell us the details, but we can see from these accounts that he was trying to live right in some things at least.

http://thestraightandnarrow.cfw.me/comics/436

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