When we last left Jacob, he was in the place he called Bethel, 'House of God,' where he'd undertaken a vow in the wake of a remarkable vision: a stairway for angels between earth and heaven, and the LORD was there to make promises to be with Jacob to guard, support, and prosper him till his homecoming and to multiply his seed and make them a blessing to all families of the earth (Genesis 28:10-22). Now, with a spring in his step, Jacob lifted his legs and sped off toward the north, past Damascus, through the kingdom of Qatna, into the lands of Yamhad, crossing the Euphrates to “the land of the sons of the east” (Genesis 29:1), confident all the way.
How he navigated all these places he'd never been without once in his life having seen a map, I can't begin to imagine. But after weeks of travel, he comes one day to a stop at a well in the open field, surrounded by three men with flocks and capped with a big stone to keep the water free from dust, stop people from falling in, and regulate the use of the precious water within (Genesis 29:2-3).1 Jacob thrusts his staff in the earth, his robes flowing in the breeze, and strikes up a conversation with the men, learning quickly they're from his destination, his mom's hometown of Harran, just a half-mile to the southeast.2 What a coincidence – and Laban's daughter Rachel, Jacob's cousin, just whom he's come to seek, is on the way with the family sheep (Genesis 29:4-6).
Hoping to talk with her alone, Jacob points out that it's a silly time to have all the flocks just standing around a closed well; open it, water them, and take them back out to pasture (Genesis 29:7)! Annoyed at the implied critique of their laziness, the men shoot back that the stone's weight and local custom alike mean that only when all the flocks assemble can the shepherds together move the stone cap off the well to water the sheep (Genesis 29:8). As they argue, who should arrive but Rachel (Genesis 29:9)? Just as, many decades back, Rebekah had spent hours charitably hauling water from a well for Abraham's camels (Genesis 24:28), Jacob wants to do the same for her brother's sheep – so, adrenaline pumping, Jacob approaches the well, and, “with help from on high,” he “succeeded in doing what they could not.”3 The same hands that weeks ago raised up a stone to stand at Bethel now rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well (Genesis 29:10) – a miracle of God!4 But, unlike Abraham's steward, Jacob offers no word of thanksgiving, no acknowledgment of the LORD.5
Adding to this manly strength a show of chivalry, Jacob hauls up water only for the sheep brought by Rachel. Jacob proves “doubly indifferent to law and custom.”6 Jacob, whose last kiss was Isaac while deceiving him (Genesis 27:27), now kisses Rachel and, as from Bethel he'd lifted up his legs and walked, now he closes his journey by lifting up his voice and weeping (Genesis 29:11).7 Rachel is, after all, “his first reminder of home and the warm feeling of a secure environment.”8 Jacob explains who he is, and, like her Aunt Rebekah who ran home to tell mom all about Abraham's steward, Rachel runs home to tell dad all about Rebekah's son (Genesis 29:12) – or maybe she runs from the stranger who kissed her and started crying.9
The last time we saw Laban, he'd run to find Abraham's steward, but only after seeing the shiny gifts he'd given Rebekah (Genesis 24:29-30). Now, hearing that Rebekah's son was nearby, Laban runs once more – no doubt expecting a second haul of treasure. Old Laban throws his arms around Jacob, kisses him like a prodigal son come home, and leads him back to the house where Rebekah grew up (Genesis 29:13). As Rebekah once “told her mother's household about all these things” (Genesis 24:28), Jacob “recounted to Laban all these things” (Genesis 29:14). I wonder, did Jacob lay out the prophecy before his birth? His trade of stew for his brother's birthright? His trickery of Isaac at Rebekah's behest? His hasty escape, his dream at Bethel, his promises from God? Laban's response, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh” (Genesis 29:14), means at least their kinship by blood – but, we wonder, if Laban heard what a trickster Jacob had been, does he see a kinship in character?10
Jacob resides with Laban “a moon of days,” a big deal in the moon-god's city Harran, no doubt, and Laban can see that Jacob's a gifted shepherd with strength and grit, but also that he came empty-handed, unburdened by the gold and silver and fine fabrics Laban would've hoped. Jacob, meanwhile, learns that, while he'd been told to get a wife from “the daughters of Laban your mother's brother” (Genesis 28:2), he's got two options to choose from (Genesis 29:16). Rachel's the younger of two, just as Jacob's the younger of Rebekah's sons. But there's a 'bigger' sister, Leah – just as the stone blocking the well was 'big.'11 Laban named both like livestock: Rachel's name means a female sheep, while Leah's name means a cow.12 Leah... well, her eyes are soft, tender. We can't decide whether they were her one bad feature, her one good feature, or whether she was “devoid of beauty.”13 Rachel, on the other hand... she's a Middle Eastern Marilyn Monroe (Genesis 29:17). Jacob's head over heels.
At the end of the month, Laban takes his nephew aside. Laban isn't content with Jacob's freedom to leave as he pleases; he's too useful. Laban's words can be taken several ways, but he effectively denies their kinship and presses Jacob to become a contract worker: “Are you my brother, that you should serve me for free? Tell me, what will be your wages?” (Genesis 29:15).14 Here's the moment when we shift from family to commerce, and also when we introduce the word 'serve,' which shows up seven times exactly, suggesting Jacob's entering into “a dark night of slavery, a foreshadow of Israel in Egypt.”15 Jacob answers keenly that, for seven years of labor, he'd like to be paid with the younger of Laban's girls, Rachel, as his wife (Genesis 29:18). There's no other kind of bride-price Jacob could offer, and we know of such contracts in their world.16 Seven years is a steep price.17
Laban answers that “it's better I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me” (Genesis 29:19) – Laban doesn't explicitly say yes, and avoids mentioning 'her' name.18 But the Jacob who once made Esau swear oaths is now so love-struck that he takes Laban's hints as if graven in tablets of stone.19 For the next seven years, he serves as a hired shepherd over Laban's flock (Genesis 29:20). Rebekah had assured him he'd be there just “a few days” while Esau's anger cooled (Genesis 27:43-44), and in Jacob's eyes they were just that, “a few days,” since he's smitten with infatuation for Rachel,20 who as a shepherdess would've been his co-worker this whole time, letting them bond over being the less-favored children of their fathers.21 Plus, “it is not onerous to weary for the sake of love, even though deferral brings pain,” as a wise man once said.22
Seven years go by. Laban seems in no hurry to notify Jacob their contract is up. Jacob rather testily approaches Laban, noting that he's put in his time, so “give me my wife..., that I may go in to her” (Genesis 29:21). Jacob's been mighty patient over his many decades as a bachelor, and he's ready for marriage with all its perks. We get no verbal answer from Laban, only that he gathers the townsfolk together for a party. Wedding feasts lasted a full week, doubling as a kind of honeymoon for the couple (Genesis 29:22). The first day's festivities kick off with eating and drinking, and after night's fallen on the tipsy groom, Laban leads the veiled bride to his dark tent. He welcomes her in (Genesis 29:23). In the pitch-black, he lifts away her veil, leads her to bed, and does with her what you might imagine on a wedding night, thereafter falling asleep contented and madly in love.
Dawn's rays begin to stir his eyes. As he slowly wakes and sobers, he rolls to his side to see his darling Rachel. But she isn't there. In her place, like a stone unexpectedly capping a well, is her sister. “In the morning, behold – it was Leah!” (Genesis 29:25). For all Rachel's superior beauty, Jacob couldn't tell the difference, “for where is visible beauty in the dark?”23 “Laban's deceit was unmasked to Jacob,”24 and in fury he stormed out and went after Laban. The words Jacob spits at his devious uncle are familiar, if we remember how Abraham was caught by Pharaoh pretending that his wife was his sister (Genesis 12:18); now, when Laban pretends a sister is a wife, Jacob echoes the befuddled outrage of the pagan king: “What is this you have done to me?”25 Jacob protests that this wasn't the deal (he thought) they had, so “why, then, did you defraud me?” (Genesis 29:25).
In that very question, Jacob sets himself up to fall. Not only does the word 'defraud' sound in Hebrew a lot like 'Aramean,' which is what Laban is, but it's from the same root as the word Isaac used to explain to Esau how Jacob “came with fraud and has taken away your blessing” (Genesis 27:35).26 Laban's self-serving reply, going on the offensive to shift blame to Jacob, unwittingly hammers the point home: “It is not done thus in our place to give the littler one before the firstborn” (Genesis 29:26). Jacob can't miss the subtext. He's on the run since his mom Rebekah orchestrated a plan whereby Jacob would exploit Isaac's loss of sight by disguising a younger brother and sending him into the tent in the firstborn's place (Genesis 27:6-10); now, Rebekah's brother has just orchestrated a plan whereby soft-eyed Leah would exploit Jacob's impediments to sight by disguising a firstborn sister and sending her into the tent in the younger one's place. Here in civilized parts, says Laban with a tone of sharp disapproval of Jacob's custom-bending ways, it just isn't okay to pass by the rights of the firstborn.27 The Jacob who'd schemed so to swipe the birthright from his family can't get around Leah's birthright in hers.28
Jacob, that fraudster extraordinaire, has – for the first time in his life – found himself on the other side of things. “His cunning has been matched, its ugliness exposed” like a monster first beholding his reflection.29 How could this happen to Jacob? Didn't God promise to be with him? Yes, absolutely. God's protection is over Jacob. But Jacob's experiences will still be shaped by his past character and conduct, and the same God who protects him is also determined to lead him through the consequences of who he's been. Jacob finally “experiences what both Esau and Isaac had experienced before him” at his own hands; and, however angry Jacob may now be, he can't escape the bitter fact that “when Jacob looks at Laban, he sees himself.”30
While Jacob takes it all in, Laban lays out a proposal. In light of the fraud, Jacob could leave in the middle of the wedding feast, saying, “Take your daughter, and I will go, because you have done evil against me.”31 He'd leave in shame and poverty, without fulfilling his father's charge, and never see Rachel again. Lose-lose. Or, Laban suggests, Jacob can finish the wedding week for Leah, accepting her as his lawful wife after the fact;32 and Jacob can renew his contract with Laban for another term, “and we will give you also this one, for the service you serve with me still seven years further” (Genesis 29:27). Laban will let him have Rachel at the end of this week, saving on a second banquet down the line, while securing Jacob's lucrative services for seven more years and delaying his daughter's departure to distant Canaan where his sister was led away.33
Resentful but defeated, Jacob silently complies. He finishes his wedding week with Leah, receives Rachel as a second wife, and begins yet another seven-year term in servitude to Laban (Genesis 29:28-30). Isaac had once blessed Jacob to be “master over your brothers,” a man whom many peoples would “serve” (Genesis 27:29) – “All his brothers I have given to him as servants,” said Isaac (Genesis 27:37) – yet here, against the grain of the blessing, Jacob is for seven more years a servant under his 'brother' Laban.34 These seven don't fly by.
The Law of Moses, yet future, will forbid any man to “take a woman as a rival wife to her sister” (Leviticus 18:18), and the turmoil of Jacob's accidentally polygamous household shows why. He's become the husband of two sisters, and just as his parents played favorites with him and his brother (Genesis 25:28), Jacob can't help but have a favorite wife: Rachel, the second one. But while we've heard how Jacob loves Rachel, we actually haven't been told how she feels about him.35 Leah, on the other hand, longed for him, perhaps loved him.36 Yet, though Jacob might understand from experience that Leah was just following Laban's orders as he'd had to obey Rebekah, he clearly resents her and doesn't feel warmly about her; he would've never married her uncoerced. It has all the drama of a soap opera, this love triangle between Jacob and his two sister-wives.
Only now do we hear the name of God read out for the first time since Jacob reached Harran: “The LORD saw that Leah was hated” – whether actively despised or just not favored is unclear (cf. Deuteronomy 21:15)37 – but now, in her emotional affliction and isolation, God has compassion on this firstborn sister. As is his prerogative – “it is the Creator of all who manages all things, awaking even nature itself to childbirth”38 – God opens Leah's womb but not Rachel's, balancing Rachel's favor by Leah's fertility (Genesis 29:31). Then, as it turns out, “each woman wants what the other has.”39 Leah, gifted with children, just wants to be the wife who has Jacob's love and favor; Rachel, gifted with Jacob's love and favor, just wants to be mother of many children.40
The next few verses list four sons whom Leah conceives and bears in sequence over the first several years, and there's a real tragic quality to them, as Leah works through her longings. Jacob and Leah's firstborn is Reuben, for “the LORD has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me,” she hopes. When that doesn't pan out, Simeon is born, for “the LORD has heard that I am hated.” When Levi's born, Leah wishes that “now this time my husband will be attached to me, since I have borne him three sons.” She's driven, all this time, “to win the love of her husband,”41 and yet Jacob remains stubbornly “completely disposed towards Rachel.”42 Yet when she names her fourth son Judah, all reference to Jacob has dropped away: “This time I will praise the LORD” (Genesis 29:32-35). Her progression is from sight to hearing to attachment to praise.43 And remarkably, given that she and her sister had so recently been “ignorant of religious truth, the daughters of a pagan,”44 she gives glory “not to the gods of Laban” but to the God of Jacob's family,45 the same God who earlier saw and heard Hagar in her affliction and abandonment (Genesis 16:11-13).
In the meantime, while the LORD saw how Leah was hated, Rachel comes after a year or two to see that she herself is barren, falling short of her big sister who's become a mom. So Rachel “envied her sister” (Genesis 30:1). This is just the second time we've read of envy, after the Philistines “envied” Isaac for his prosperity in their land (Genesis 26:14). Lovely Rachel has Philistine eyes for her tender-eyed sister. So Rachel approaches Jacob and, much as Jacob had demanded Laban turn over the wife who'd been promised, Rachel shockingly blurts out, “Give me sons – and, if not, I shall die!” (Genesis 30:1).46 Not only does she share Aunt Rebekah's and Cousin Esau's flair for the dramatic, but she's demanding of Jacob something beyond his power, unlike his demands of Laban. Children aren't a thing that can be promised, only a gift that can be welcomed.
But, as one old saint remarked, “A terrible evil is jealousy: it induces stupidity.”47 While we empathize deeply with Rachel's pain, we can't help but contrast her quick lashing out to the gracious sufferings of Sarah and of Rebekah over decades, and in light of her impetuous foot-stomping, we begin to wonder a bit whether Rachel's beauty is more than skin-deep. She's the younger sister; is she also the immature sister? “Jacob loved Rachel more,” someone put it, “but was Rachel more lovable?”48
Jacob, whose love for her is the wind beneath his wings, now for the first time snaps back at her, frustrated by her blame for him and disappointed by her muddled faith. “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” (Genesis 30:2). It's the first time we've heard Jacob address either of his wives, and the first thing Jacob's said since his humbling realization that he isn't the smartest and cleverest man in Harran. For maybe the first time in his life, Jacob admits his limitations, confesses that he and his household are reliant entirely on the will of God.49 Rachel's infertility is one stone Jacob doesn't have strength in him to roll away.50 But even if Jacob seems to be learning, he doesn't imitate his father who began praying for Rebekah's plight; he doesn't seek the help of the One who can roll away the stone (Genesis 25:21).51
Rachel is neither humbled by his rebuke nor dissuaded by his apparent indifference. She devises the same plan Sarah thought up fourteen chapters back. She and Leah had both received, as their dowry, one each of Laban's maidservants as their own (Genesis 29:24, 29). Now, Rachel puts the services of hers, Bilhah, on the table, as Sarah had with Hagar, offering Bilhah as a concubine-wife to Jacob (Genesis 30:3-4). Rachel's dream is to “be built up through her” (Genesis 30:3; cf. 16:2), establishing a Rachel bloc within the growing Jacob household.52 And “to console her, he did not refuse her request.”53 Bilhah bears Jacob exactly two sons, whom Rachel calls Dan and Naphtali. Where Leah's naming pointed to 'the LORD,' Rachel only references 'God.' Her declarations over these kids are edgier; she sees them as means to an end: victory over her sister (Genesis 30:5-8).
Meanwhile, Leah had stopped having children after her four sons (Genesis 29:35); but now, seeing Rachel's gambit and hearing her taunts, Leah stoops to the same level, exchanging her former solidarity with Hagar to become another Sarah. With no pressing need other than to rebut her little sister's gloating, Leah shoves forth her own maidservant Zilpah – who, in some Jewish traditions, was Bilhah's sister54 – into the mix (Genesis 30:9). Jacob again accepts, “lest he grieve Leah and cause a schism between the sisters” to grow ever wider.55 Zilpah, like Bilhah, bears exactly two sons for Jacob, making a second set of four; but this time, Leah's accounts for their names are totally pagan and secular, referring to neither the LORD nor Jacob at all.56 The first is Gad, named for the Aramean god of good luck; the second is Asher, meaning to go straight or be happy and fortunate (Genesis 30:12-13). Leah doesn't directly reference her sister in either name, but implicitly exalts herself; the two are now mutually locked in a “fight for domestic supremacy” over each other.57 And the man who dueled his brother from the womb has been rewarded by living with two sisters whose wombs are at war.58
Suddenly, a story interrupts. It's May, time for the wheat harvest, and little Reuben has toddled out to the fields, where he founds some pretty flowers with their twisty roots and tiny fruits, and he brought them back to mom. These were mandrakes, which in Hebrew sound something like 'love-fruits,' since the resemblance of their roots to a couple embracing prompted people to use them as aphrodisiacs or as fertility enhancers (neither of which they actually do, though they can poison you and make you hallucinate).59 But both sisters would believe they'd have a use for them – Leah, to entice Jacob; Rachel, to boost her chances of conception.
When Leah receives these mandrakes from young Reuben, Rachel approaches and, with an air of pleading, asks for a share – and now Leah's pent-up frustrations come bursting out (Genesis 30:14-15). “Sis, isn't enough that you already stole my husband away from me? And now you've got the audacity to want to take away these mandrakes that my little boy picked for me?” Rachel counters with a suggestion. In exchange for a share of the mandrakes, Rachel will sell something to Leah. What? A night with Jacob, whose attachment to Rachel is what Leah resents and covets most. The deal is struck between the sisters – and it reminds us of a deal between two brothers. Jacob once took advantage of Esau, as he came in exhausted from the field, by selling him vegetables in exchange for a precious birthright (Genesis 25:29-34). Now, Leah takes advantage of her desperate sister by selling her vegetation from the field in exchange for restored access to a precious husband.60 In her own way, Rachel “recapitulates Esau's ravenous hunger... for worldly goods” at the expense of what matters more.61
Now, much as Laban dubbed his daughters livestock to be sold off, the servile Jacob is himself bought and sold,62 reduced to “a pawn in other people's conflicts.”63 Coming in from the field as Esau did after a day's hard work (maybe helping with harvest), Leah intercepts him and demands he comply with her contract with Rachel: “You must come in to me, for I have absolutely hired you with the mandrakes of my son” (Genesis 30:16). Leah uses the language of 'come in to me,' as on their wedding nights, but both Rachel and the narrator use different language: “he lay with her that night” (Genesis 30:15-16), a more scandalous phrase familiar from when Lot's daughters intoxicated and raped him (Genesis 19:34-35), and which we never hear of a married couple outside David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12:24). Effectively, Rachel is prostituting Jacob to Leah. This is his lowest point, the direst fruit of the way he's treated family up to now, “one more measure-for-measure punishment.”64
Rachel expected that, by trading Jacob to her lately-barren sister for a fertility treatment, she'd be helped. But it doesn't work. Instead, “God heard Leah, and she conceived and bore to Jacob a fifth son” of her own, Issachar (Genesis 30:17). This resumes her marital relations with Jacob, and the next time she gets pregnant, it's with twins, a daughter Dinah and, before her, her last son Zebulun, whose name expresses a continuing hope that Jacob will, if he can't love her as his wife, at least honor her as mother of six of his sons (Genesis 30:19-21).
In the midst of all this, Rachel – having loosened her grip on her husband – finally has her own turn. “And God remembered Rachel,” we read (Genesis 30:22), just as “God remembered Noah” amidst the flood (Genesis 8:1) and “God remembered Abraham” while judging Sodom (Genesis 19:29). Having at last turned his saving attention on the barren beauty, “God heard her and opened her womb, and she conceived and bore a son” after all this (Genesis 30:22-23). Only after Leah's children have all been born, and only once Jacob completes his humbling discipline of seven years of added service for her, can Rachel herself give birth.65
This son, Joseph, is the climax of the son sequence recorded here, and Rachel explains his name twice. First, Joseph means that “God has taken away,” subtracted, “my reproach,” since after seven long years, she's no longer Rachel the barren, but Rachel the mother, the status she coveted most. And second, Joseph is her prayer: “May the LORD add to me another son!” (Genesis 30:24). Addition – just as her father added people to make a party, the LORD can add together sons to make a family. Though her saying expresses that more will be needed to satisfy her, this is also the first time the Bible puts the LORD's name on Rachel's lips, suggesting that, whereas Leah has degenerated, Rachel has gained a keener piety before the God of Abraham.
In its broadest strokes, this is a story about how Jacob “receives his comeuppance” for his past character and his prior conduct.66 Jacob had lived as a smooth operator, a man determined from birth to get ahead even if it meant drawing his own flesh-and-blood back and tripping them up. In Laban, he meets his match. For deceiving his father Isaac in the dark with a brother switcheroo, he's chastised through being deceived in the dark with a sister switcheroo. For his careful art with words to trap people, he's misled by ambiguities and half-truths. For his quarrelsome sibling rivalry, he's plunged into the middle of two sisters' sibling rivalry over him. For inducing exhausted Esau to sell his invaluable birthright for a mess of pottage, he's himself sold between wives for useless mandrakes. All these things that befall Jacob are calculated responses – calculated beyond the power of Laban or Leah or Rachel or anyone on earth – to the disruptive things Jacob himself has done to others.
The Apostle Paul preached: “Do not be deceived! God is not mocked! For whatever one sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). He could've been talking about Jacob in Harran. But the sentiment he proclaimed to the Galatians was one he found warned in his Bible. “Those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same,” said Eliphaz to Job (Job 4:8). “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity,” said Solomon (Proverbs 22:8). And the prophet explained: “For they sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). It all adds up to the rule that “people cannot escape the consequences of their own actions.”67 That isn't because of some impersonal law of karma, but because of the justice of a very personal God, writing the world with the artistry of an author.
Jacob is under God's watchful eye; Jacob has profound promises and blessings; and yet, for the way he's treated others thus far, he's now reaping things he himself has sown, each fruit matching the species of the seed he's grown it from. It just fits Jacob's trickery in darkness that he be tricked in darkness. It just fits Jacob's crass commercialization of family relationships that he be trapped in the commercialization of his family life. These things hunt him down, because the God who is with him to protect him is also hunting him down. There is no contradiction between the two, because both are dimensions of a greater whole.
We live by grace abounding, and yet the Apostle still says that we sow what we reap. Someone who sows to his own flesh, investing in his or her own impulses, can be sure to reap the decay that naturally follows (Galatians 6:8). We can't be astonished that living by the sword leads to dying by the sword (Matthew 26:52). And even when saved from the deadly penalty, consequences of sin often stick around for us to work through and heal from. In poetic fashion, we live in a world we sculpted. David, though repentant and forgiven over Bathsheba, still paid with the life of their first son (2 Samuel 12:13-14). Call it penance, if you please, or pick a prettier word, but the character-shaping actions we undertake have to be bent back if we're to be made finally whole. That's the costly grace of God. “Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12).
Throughout these experiences of reversal and defeat and shame, “Jacob's character is being tested and refined.”68 His smooth curves are being, uncomfortably but needfully, hammered backwards by these chaotic Aramean tools in the hands of his LORD. He's being reshaped into the patriarch he's destined to become; his tendencies are being corrected and redirected so that he can be the man God means for him to be. Taking these tastes of his own medicine will prove to be for Jacob's good health, not for his ruin – and so is it for us.
One of God's promises to Jacob at Bethel was that his seed would burst forth in all directions like the dust of the ground (Genesis 28:14). And this is how God is keeping that promise: through Laban's trickery, through the competition between Leah and Rachel. God isn't endorsing their vices, but he's using them to further his will for Jacob's destiny. By the time Joseph's born, Jacob has more sons than Abraham and Isaac put together. “Jacob's disastrous household is amazingly fruitful, and the promise to Abraham is fulfilled, only because God, the source of life, chooses to bless this family” in all its dysfunction.69 There's no picking and choosing required between the children of Jacob. Through Leah and Rachel, and Bilhah and Zilpah, there come to be “multiple children of the promise,” on their way to becoming the 'great nation' promised to the patriarchs (Genesis 12:2).70
It's as the people later said: “Rachel and Leah... together built up the house of Israel” (Ruth 4:11). See, while the womb of Rachel would lead to the likes of Joshua, King Saul, and the Apostle Paul, the fruit of Leah's womb will one day encompass the likes of Moses, Aaron, Samuel, David, Solomon, Jeremiah, and our Savior. In the end, each of these women will receive what she wanted most. When Leah dies, she'll be buried in the cave with Abraham and Sarah, with Isaac and Rebekah; there, Jacob will join her, their bones touching through the ages, and we'll see that Leah was “Jacob's full partner in life.”71 Rachel will be buried “on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem” (Genesis 35:19), where, when the people are being carried into exile, Jeremiah hails “Rachel weeping for her children” (Jeremiah 31:15), having adopted the whole nation as their mother.72 The Lord belays her tears with renewed hope, and when she cries again over the babes of Bethlehem slain on Herod's orders (Matthew 2:16-18), it's only because, so near her bones, Leah's line has revealed Christ.
None of these things was without deeper meaning. To the early Christians, Jacob at the well became a symbol of the Messiah. “He beheld sin lying upon the wellspring of the world..., he beheld the nations like flocks in great thirst..., and, like that stone, he rolled away the heavy weight of sin.”73 Then “the well is called 'baptism,' which was being awaited by the generations and tribes.”74 Early Christians from near the beginning took Leah and Rachels as symbols of Synagogue and Church, or Jews and Gentiles, for both of whom Christ had labored hard in service.75 They described how Christ loved the whole Church from before creation, but that in the course of time, “Leah, like the Law, entered in secretly,” veiled by Moses, and that Christ wouldn't relent until the reign of grace was fulfilled when he claimed the Church as his own.76 They sang, “That beautiful thing which was done was not Jacob's doing, nor was it Laban who invented that great discovery.... God has called all nations into communion with himself.”77 It was for this that heavenly hands rolled the stone from the tomb.
What Jacob's twin marriages to Leah and Rachel reveal is this truth, that from two sisters would come a single family, ultimately united despite its fractured and diverse history. Jacob here, though reduced to his lowest for the sake of God's plan for him, shows how Jesus Christ, having emptied himself and taken the form of a servant (Philippians 2:8), “himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” between Leah and Rachel, between her children and her children, “that he might... reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross..., being built together into a dwelling place for God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:14-22).78 God sees us, hears us, joins us to himself – praise God! He justifies us and makes us prevail, luckily sets us straight, rewards us and endows us with eternal blessings; for, having taken all the shame of the world away, he'll at last add us and gather us to the “assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” (Hebrews 12:23), the “great multitude that no one could number, from every nation,” joined as one and lifting up a loud voice to cry: “Salvation belongs to our God... and to the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9-10)! Amen.
1 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 202; Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 400; Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 264-265.
2 Edward Lipinski, The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion (Peeters, 2000), 73.
3 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 55.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:109.
4 Targum Neofiti Genesis 28:10, in Aramaic Bible 1A:140.
5 Paul D. Vrolijk, Jacob's Wealth: An Examination into the Nature and Role of Material Possessions in the Jacob-Cycle (Gen 25:19–35:29) (Brill, 2011), 126; Philip H. Kern, Jacob's Story as Christian Scripture (Cascade Books, 2021), 40.
6 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 421.
7 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 219.
8 Nechama Price, Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel (Maggid Books, 2020), 3.
9 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 220.
10 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 422-423.
11 John E. Anderson, Jacob and the Divine Trickster: A Theology of Deception and YHWH's Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob Cycle (Eisenbrauns, 2011), 95.
12 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 222.
13 Jubilees 28:5, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:109; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.301, in Loeb Classical Library 242:145; Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 405; Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 266.
14 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 423.
15 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 403.
16 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 204.
17 Philip H. Kern, Jacob's Story as Christian Scripture (Cascade Books, 2021), 41-42; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 260.
18 John E. Anderson, Jacob and the Divine Trickster: A Theology of Deception and YHWH's Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob Cycle (Eisenbrauns, 2011), 98.
19 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 424.
20 Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: The Unexpected Patriarch (Yale University Press, 2012), 63.
21 Nechama Price, Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel (Maggid Books, 2020), 5.
22 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 26.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 107:176.
23 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 426.
24 Jacob of Serugh, Homily 75.189, in Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 58:72.
25 Philip H. Kern, Jacob's Story as Christian Scripture (Cascade Books, 2021), 43; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 262.
26 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 205.
27 Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: The Unexpected Patriarch (Yale University Press, 2012), 64.
28 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 427.
29 Philip H. Kern, Jacob's Story as Christian Scripture (Cascade Books, 2021), 44.
30 Paul D. Vrolijk, Jacob's Wealth: An Examination into the Nature and Role of Material Possessions in the Jacob-Cycle (Gen 25:19–35:29) (Brill, 2011), 147, 150.
31 Jubilees 28:4, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:109.
32 Peter Lombard, Sentences IV, D.30, c.1, a.3, in Medieval Sources in Translation 48:174.
33 Augustine of Hippo, Questions on the Heptateuch 1.89, in The Works of Saint Augustine I/14:48; Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 27.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:175; Targum Neofiti Genesis 29:22, in Aramaic Bible 1A:144; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.299, in Loeb Classical Library 242:145.
34 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 203; James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 144-145.
35 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 223.
36 Targum Neofiti Genesis 29:17, in Aramaic Bible 1A:143; Jacob of Serugh, Homily 75.319, in Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 58:84; Shaul Bar, Daily Life of the Patriarchs: The Way It Was (Peter Lang, 2015), 142.
37 Nechama Price, Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel (Maggid Books, 2020), 6-8.
38 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 56.15, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:125.
39 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 411.
40 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 270; Philip H. Kern, Jacob's Story as Christian Scripture (Cascade Books, 2021), 49.
41 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 228.
42 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 56.17, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:127.
43 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 428 n.41.
44 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 87, in Library of Early Christianity 1:171.
45 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 410.
46 Paul D. Vrolijk, Jacob's Wealth: An Examination into the Nature and Role of Material Possessions in the Jacob-Cycle (Gen 25:19–35:29) (Brill, 2011), 156.
47 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 56.18, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:127.
48 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 427.
49 Philip H. Kern, Jacob's Story as Christian Scripture (Cascade Books, 2021), 51.
50 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 220 n.14.
51 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 28.1.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:176.
52 Steffan Mathias, Paternity, Progeny, and Perpetuation: Creating Lives after Death in the Hebrew Bible (T&T Clark, 2020), 141.
53 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 86, in Library of Early Christianity 1:171.
54 Testament of Naphtali 1.9-12, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:811.
55 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 28.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:177.
56 Paul D. Vrolijk, Jacob's Wealth: An Examination into the Nature and Role of Material Possessions in the Jacob-Cycle (Gen 25:19–35:29) (Brill, 2011), 158.
57 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 431.
58 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 145.
59 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 209; Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: The Unexpected Patriarch (Yale University Press, 2012), 71.
60 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 430 n.45.
61 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 240.
62 Paul D. Vrolijk, Jacob's Wealth: An Examination into the Nature and Role of Material Possessions in the Jacob-Cycle (Gen 25:19–35:29) (Brill, 2011), 160.
63 Philip H. Kern, Jacob's Story as Christian Scripture (Cascade Books, 2021), 53.
64 Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: The Unexpected Patriarch (Yale University Press, 2012), 72-73.
65 Isaiah of Scetis, Ascetical Discourse 4, in Cistercian Studies Series 150:64.
66 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 144.
67 Peter Oakes, Galatians (Baker Academic, 2015), 182.
68 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 404.
69 Philip H. Kern, Jacob's Story as Christian Scripture (Cascade Books, 2021), 55.
70 John E. Anderson, Jacob and the Divine Trickster: A Theology of Deception and YHWH's Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob Cycle (Eisenbrauns, 2011), 101, 105.
71 Shaul Bar, Daily Life of the Patriarchs: The Way It Was (Peter Lang, 2015), 142.
72 Nechama Price, Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel (Maggid Books, 2020), 9 n.18.
73 Jacob of Serugh, Homily 75.101-106, in Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 58:64.
74 Cave of Treasures 31.23, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures 1:564.
75 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 134.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 6:355-356; Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 4.2.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:214; Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 88.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 47:35.
76 Ambrose of Milan, Jacob and the Happy Life 2.5 §25, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 65:160-161.
77 Jacob of Serugh, Homily 75.231-237, in Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 58:76.
78 Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 88.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 47:35.
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