3. When all the flocks gathered there, they rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the sheep; then they put the stone back in its place, at the mouth of the well.

The well was the property of several owners, and therefore the arrival of the herds of all owners was expected to open the stone; Laban was probably one of the last (when Rachel arrives, the well opens immediately, 9-10).

4. Jacob said to them (the shepherds), "My brothers! Where are you from? They said, "We are from Harral."

5. He said to them, "Do you know Laban the son of Nahor? They said, "We know."

Jacob addresses his fellow craftsmen in a friendly way, calling them "brothers." Hearing about Haran, Jacob gladly asks about Laban; he calls him the son of Nahor, while the latter was his grandfather, and the father of Bethuel (22:20-23; 24:24-29) – no doubt according to the ancient Oriental custom of naming instead of the little-known nearest ancestor, in this case Nahor, as the progenitor (11:27[873]) of the younger line of Terah's descendants; Moreover, the Hebrew names of father (ab), brother (ach), son (ben), and the like are very widely used.

6. And he said to them, "Is he well?" They said, "Hello; and behold, Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep.

Γrec. Υγιαίνειν, Slav.-Rus. "To be healthy" somewhat narrows the meaning of the Hebrew schalom lο, which means well-being in general: to live and be healthy. That Rachel comes with the sheep to the well as the shepherds told Laban about her father is not just a writer's device (Gunkel's opinion), but a real, quite plausible coincidence.

7. And (Jacob) said, "Behold, the day is still many; It is not the time to gather the cattle, but water the sheep and go and graze.

A shepherd himself, James advises not to waste time and, having watered the flock, continue to feed it until sunset. Perhaps, however, Jacob deliberately wants to remove the shepherds, not wanting to have outside witnesses to his first meeting with his cousin.

8. They said, "We cannot, until all the flocks are gathered together and the stone is rolled away from the mouth of the well; then we will water the sheep.

To Jacob, who is not familiar with the customs of the area, the shepherds of Harran explain that the well (probably as the common property of several owners) is opened only after the arrival of all the flocks.

9. Jacob meets Rachel.

9. And he was talking to them, when Rachel (Laban's daughter) came with her father's flocks, because she was tending (her father's flocks).

That Rachel was a shepherdess (Hebrew roah – adj. Greek and Slav, added: "her father's sheep") was not humiliating for her, since in the ancient and modern (according to Burckhardt) East, shepherding was and remains a common occupation for the unmarried daughters of even noble sheikhs.