Jacob gets wives- Gen 29
Jacob’s
name comes from the word for “heel”. Jacob was a twin and when he was born he
was grasping his brother Esau’s heel, as if he was hoping to pull him back into
the womb so he could be the firstborn of the twins. That moment defined his
relationship with his twin brother. He desired to supplant and to overtake his
brother.
We
spoke last week about how Jacob manipulated his starving brother, Esau, into
selling him his inheritance for a bowl of stew. Then we spoke about how Jacob
stole his brother’s blessing by cooking a meal and tying goat hair to his arms
to fool his nearly blind father, Isaac, into believing he was his brother, Esau.
Isaac gave him the blessing reserved for the firstborn to be spoken before he
died. Esau was rightly furious to have all of his birthright pulled out from
under him by his trickster brother, so Jacob fled for his life because Esau was
planning to kill him. Jacob flees under the guise of finding himself a wife.
Jacob
goes back to his mother’s family- Abraham’s old stomping ground. He meets Laban
his mother’s brother, but more importantly he meets Rachel and it seems to be
love at first sight. Jacob works for his uncle and as payment Jacob asks
instead for the hand of his younger daughter Rachel in marriage. So Jacob works
for 7 years to be able to marry Rachel. Seven years of anticipation. Seven
years of yearning. Seven years of seeing her coming and going doing her chores.
Seven years could seem like a lifetime, but we read “Jacob served seven years for Rachel,
and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” (Gen
29:20).
Finally
the big day came. Laban puts on a feast and invites everyone he knows. He
spares no expense. There is an enormous amount of food and drink. There are
musicians and dancing. Jacob sits through the feast held in honour of the love
he shares with Rachel. She sits near him throughout the feast. She is dressed
beautifully. She is wearing a beautiful veil and their eyes sneak glances at
each other that express their longing for each other that has grown over the
seven years of waiting. The feast lasts
into the night and finally there is a ritual where Rachel is led by firelight
into Jacob’s dark tent. The darkness is one last veil of modesty before Rachel becomes
a married woman. The feasting and drinking and celebrating and seven years have
led to this moment. She is welcomed into his dark tent through a ritual
procession of torches that cut through the darkness. The night is full of
passion that matches the 7 years of longing.
As the sun rises Jacob
wakes up. He reaches over to run his fingers along the cheek of his sleeping
bride, seeing her for the first time as his wife. His eyes are sticky with
sleep and still unable to focus, but suddenly he sees it is Leah! He doesn’t believe
his eyes at first, but as the sleep leaves he sees with eyes fully awake. The sleeping woman is Leah! It is the older
sister- Rachel’s sister! Horrified, Jacob leaves her still asleep and runs to see
Laban. He sees Rachel in the corner of the tent making bread. His eyes lock with
hers, the passion he thought they shared the night before he knows is an
illusion now. Her eyes are red and swollen by tears shed throughout the night. She
looks down as more tears fill her eyes that were full of such joy during the
previous day’s feast.
Enraged,
Jacob confronted Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with
you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” Laban responds saying, ‘This is
not done in our country—giving the younger before the firstborn. Complete
the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving
me for another seven years.’
The
climax of the last seven years was twisted. The passion he reserved for Rachel
was given to Leah. The thought of having to live the last seven years over
again was hardly bearable. It was cruel and unusual.
There is
a strange justice at work. Jacob has stolen the inheritance of the firstborn
and the blessing reserved for the firstborn. Through his deceit he has denied
the rights of his brother. And now he is deceived into fulfilling the
obligation to the firstborn daughter. His deceit has come back to him. The trickster
has been tricked. The firstborn has finally prevailed over Jacob. There is a
poetic justice at work here.
Laban promises
Rachel to him if he will work an additional seven years. Is this deception to
honour Leah, the firstborn? Or, does
Laban not want Jacob to leave and knows he can get his services for another
seven years through this deception? Regardless,
the trickster is tricked and Laban will have his way. Rachel is given to Jacob
a week later, but it seems impure and anticlimactic. Leah know she has been
part of a deception and that the passion she felt from her husband that first
night together never really belonged to her. It was a taste of a passion she
would never feel again because it rightfully belonged to her sister Rachel. Leah’s
tragedy is that she would never again feel that loved and desired again. Leah
would be the third wheel. She would forever feel like the intruder. Perhaps she
secretly loved Jacob all those years and thought that if she was given the chance
she could win his heart. Maybe the deception was her idea. Even if it was her
father’s idea, she was a part of the deception. It was tragic though. Now Leah
was trapped in a loveless marriage, forever competing with her sister for the
attention of their husband. The poet Eva Avi-Yonah wrote a poem called “Leah”:
If I had a little sister,
Rachel with sparkling eyes,
wooed for seven years
and loved by him,
I’d swathe myself in her mantle,
enwrap myself in her night. …
One single night! Rachel,
to taste his tender touch
till day unmasks.
One single night, till dawn.
You will be loved another seven years
and more.
Red are my eyes and filled with tears,
Rachel.
His glances never follow me.
But I shall bear his sons,
Oh, yes, Rachel!
and bear the harrowing memory
of one night.
One night when I was you, Rachel,
and Leah sat inside her tent and wept.
It is amazing that the history of God’s
chosen family is such a mass of deception and lies and dysfunction. It is full
of sibling rivalry and family infighting and competition. It seems strange to
have stories like this in the Bible. Where is the hero of the story? Where is
the lesson to be learned? Many of us can relate to the sibling rivalry, the
conflict between parents and children, manipulative parents, and tension with
in-laws. This is not an idealized story. It is an incredibly messy story. And
there is no lesson here to be learned about how to deal with sibling rivalry. The
only true hero in this story is God.
Through it all the invisible hand of
God is moving. God is making His promises come true in spite of the messiness
and deception. God is bringing His blessing into the world even through them, and
so we can be confident that though the world seems unbelievably messy, that it
will not thwart God’s plan. God’s invisible hand will move through the mess,
bringing His promises into reality as He always has. As messy as we see the
world to be- as messy as we see our lives to be- God’s promises will not be
stopped.
There is one thing I want us to
notice. We read that “Jacob … loved Rachel more than Leah”. I want us to especially
notice the tragedy of Leah. We don’t know how much choice she had about the
deception. It may have been forced on her. Perhaps her father thought she wouldn’t
get married unless some poor sap was tricked into it. Regardless, Leah was
trapped in a marriage where she was not first choice. She was a trick, and now
she was trapped.
I want us to notice that God noticed
Leah. We read that, “When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he
opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and bore a son, and
she named him Reuben; for she said, ‘Because the Lord has looked
on my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.’ She
conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘Because the Lord has heard that
I am hated, he has given me this son also’; and she named him Simeon. Again
she conceived and bore a son, and said, ‘Now this time my husband will be
joined to me, because I have borne him three sons’; therefore he was
named Levi. She conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘This time I
will praise the Lord’; therefore she named him Judah; then she ceased
bearing.” We can feel the pain of
rejection in the naming of her children. God notices her pain and the thing we
learn about God here is that God takes sides. God loves everyone, of course,
but God has a preference. God is for the afflicted, for those who are hated for
no fault of their own, the despised, the rejected, the unloved, and unnoticed.
Through the words of the prophets we
will see God’s preference for the poor- the widow, the orphan, the alien
immigrant, and the rejected. We see this preference in Jesus too. In Matt 25
Jesus teaches us that the way we have treated the hungry, the thirsty, the naked,
the sick, and the imprisoned will be how we have treated Jesus. To reject them
or ignore them is to ignore Jesus. God takes sides. To be on the side of the
poor and rejected is to be on God’s side. To be against the poor and rejected
is to pit yourself against God.
Jacob, the trickster, stumbles
along and is himself deceived as he has deceived others. Leah is a relatively
innocent bystander, but is a continuous reminder to Jacob of the way he has been fooled.
The promise will flow through her children and she will receive love from them
and from God that she did not receive from her husband. This is all incredibly
messy, like real life, but God works through the mess.
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