Verse 32 has several problems of text and vocabulary. Revised Standard Version follows the Hebrew text with its extra wording. See Good News Translation footnote.

Let me pass represents the Hebrew text. The Vulgate has “[You] go through.” Most modern translations follow Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation.

Removing from it: this just means “taking out” or “taking away.” However, people who keep herds of animals often have special words or expressions for the way a flock or herd is divided; for example, one translation says “… if you let me go and cut out all the….”

Every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb: Jacob’s plan is to take out of Laban’s flocks all the sheep and goats that are of mixed colors. Sheep were normally white, and goats were brown or black. Jacob would separate out all the animals that were speckled and spotted (sheep that had dark spots on their white wool, or among goats, those that had white or other light colored spots on their dark hair). The words every speckled and spotted sheep are omitted by the Septuagint. Kidner says that these words “seem to have crept into the text from the second half,” while Speiser comments, “At this point, the Heb. text reads redundantly ‘speckled and spotted, and every sheep’ evidently added through conflation with the following verse.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project agrees with Revised Standard Version‘s wording except that it translates spotted sheep as “spotted lamb.” Besides Good News Translation, Speiser, New Jerusalem Bible, and Revised English Bible also omit the additional words.

And the spotted and speckled among the goats: if the addition in the Hebrew is really part of the text, then it simply repeats information already given in the previous sentence, since the word translated sheep refers to one of a flock and may mean both sheep and goats or either sheep or goats.

Such shall be my wages: such refers to the colored animals: “they will be my wages” or “you must give me those ones as my pay for working for you.”

A suggested model for translating verse 32 is “Let me take out of your herd today every black lamb and every [sheep or] goat that has more than one color. That is all the payment I ask.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .