Leah and Rachel

Genesis 29 begins with Jacob arriving safely: “So Jacob went on his journey and came to the land of the people of the East” (29:1). The trip was hundreds of miles long, and God brought him all the way. God had promised, “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” (28:15), and He did. Another well. Jacob comes to “a well in the field” with three flocks lying by it and “a large stone” over its mouth (29:2). The shepherds are from Haran and know Laban. Then Rachel arrives with her father's sheep, “for she was a shepherdess” (29:9). Many years earlier, Abraham's servant had met Rebekah, Jacob's mother, at a well in this same area (Genesis 24). God was guiding this family again. Jacob's strength and tears. Jacob rolls the stone away by himself and waters the whole flock (29:10). Then he kisses Rachel and “lifted up his voice and wept” (29:11). These are not the tears of a tricky man. They are the tears of a lonely young man who has finally found his mother's family. Laban's welcome. Laban runs out, embraces him and says, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh” (29:14). For a month all is well. But this is the same Laban who ran to meet Abraham's servant after he saw the gold jewelry (24:29-31). Jacob would soon learn that his uncle could be tricky too.

29:1-14 shows God keeping His Bethel promise. Jacob arrives at a well near Haran, much as Abraham's servant did in 24:10-33. “Lifted up his feet.” 29:1 literally says Jacob “lifted his feet,” an idiom for setting off with energy after the encounter at Bethel. Jacob traveled hundreds of miles, and God brought him there safely. He had said, “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” (28:15), and He kept His word. Meetings at wells. In Scripture, wells are often the place where God brings a husband and wife together: Rebekah (Genesis 24), Rachel (29), and Zipporah, the wife of Moses (Exodus 2:15-21). But this meeting is different. In chapter 24 the servant prayed and Rebekah drew the water. Here Jacob does not pray, and he rolls the stone and waters the flock himself. Jacob is still leaning on his own strength, yet God is guiding him all the same. The stone. The shepherds waited until all the flocks were gathered so they could move the stone together (29:3, 8). Jacob moved it alone (29:10). The man who slept on a stone at Bethel now rolls one away. Kinship. 29:10 uses the words “Laban his mother's brother” three times, because this is the family Isaac had sent Jacob to find (28:2). Laban's words, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh” (29:14), echo Adam's words in 2:23 and mean that Jacob is his close family. Jacob stayed a month, and then the talk turned to wages.

Do you remember what God promised Jacob at Bethel? “I will keep you wherever you go.” Jacob walked hundreds of miles to his uncle's land. God led him to exactly the right well. The shepherds at the well knew his uncle Laban. Just then Laban's daughter Rachel came walking up with her sheep. Jacob rolled away the heavy stone and watered her flock. Then he kissed her and cried. He had been alone for a long time. Now he had found his family. God had kept His promise. Laban ran out and hugged him. “You are my own family,” he said.

Jacob came to a well. He met Rachel there. He helped water her sheep. God had led him safely to his family.

After a month, Laban raises the question of pay: “Because you are my relative, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what should your wages be?” (29:15). Two daughters. Laban had two daughters: “the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel” (29:16). Elder and younger are the same words Genesis used for Esau and Jacob (27:15). Jacob had pretended to be the elder son, and soon that would come back to him. Verse 17 says, “Leah's eyes were delicate, but Rachel was beautiful of form and appearance.” The Hebrew word for “delicate” may mean soft or gentle, or it may mean weak. The Bible does not call Leah ugly, and we should not either. Jacob's offer. “Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, ‘I will serve you seven years for Rachel your younger daughter’” (29:18). Jacob had no money or flocks to give. He came with nothing, so he offered his work instead. Love that waits. “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her” (29:20). Love made a long, hard wait feel short. Paul says, “Love suffers long and is kind” (1 Corinthians 13:4). Real love is patient, and it is willing to give.

29:15-20 shows Laban and Jacob making a deal, and it shows how much Jacob loved Rachel. Laban's question. “Should you therefore serve me for nothing?” (29:15). The language of service and wages (maskoret) runs through the next three chapters, all the way to Jacob's complaint that Laban “changed my wages ten times” (31:7, 41). The daughters. 29:16 introduces them by age, haggedolah and haqqetannah, “the elder” and “the younger,” the same words used of Esau and Jacob in 27:15. Jacob, the younger son who took the elder's place, is about to meet that pair of words again. In 29:17 Leah's eyes are rakkot, a word that can mean “tender, soft” or “weak.” We cannot be sure which is meant. What is clear is that Jacob loved Rachel. The bride-price in service. Jacob had left home with nothing, so he offered labor in place of the usual bride-price (mohar; compare Exodus 22:16-17). Seven years of a shepherd's work was a very high price, a measure of how much he loved Rachel. 29:20. “They seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her.” The word for love is ahavah (say: ah-hah-VAH), a deep, faithful love that made seven hard years feel light. “A few days” was also Rebekah's phrase in 27:44, when she promised Jacob he would only be away “a few days.” Her few days became twenty years; his seven years felt like a few days.

Laban asked Jacob what he wanted for pay. Laban had two daughters. Leah was the older one. Rachel was the younger one. Jacob loved Rachel. So he offered to work seven years to marry her. Seven years is a long time! But the Bible says it felt like a few days. That is how much he loved her. Real love is willing to wait and work hard. It does not give up. The Bible says love is patient and kind. Jacob's love for Rachel was patient. He kept working even when it was hot or cold.

Jacob loved Rachel. He worked seven years so he could marry her. It felt like only a few days!

Seven years are over, and Jacob asks for his wife (29:21). Laban “gathered together all the men of the place and made a feast” (29:22). The trick in the dark. “Now it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter and brought her to Jacob” (29:23). In the dark, perhaps with a veil, Jacob did not know who she was. In the morning he saw the truth: “behold, it was Leah” (29:25). Jacob's three questions. “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you? Why then have you deceived me?” (29:25). The word “deceived” is the same Hebrew word used when Isaac told Esau, “Your brother came with deceit” (27:35). The deceiver has been deceived. Laban's excuse. “It must not be done so in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn” (29:26). Jacob, the younger who pretended to be the firstborn in his father's dark tent, now receives the firstborn in place of the younger in the dark. Jacob must have remembered what he had done to Isaac and Esau. “Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). But this is not revenge. Laban was wrong too. God does not approve of Laban's trick any more than of Jacob's. Yet God used it to show Jacob what his own lie had done to others.

29:21-27 is the turning point of the Jacob story: the deceiver is deceived, and what happens matches chapter 27 point by point. The parallels. In chapter 27 a blind father cannot see which son stands before him; here darkness hides which daughter is brought to Jacob. There the younger was substituted for the elder; now the elder is substituted for the younger. A mother arranged the first substitution, and a father arranges the second. The vocabulary. Jacob's protest, “Why then have you deceived me (rimmitani)?” (29:25), comes from the same root as mirmah (say: meer-MAH), which means trickery or deceit. Isaac used that word to describe how Jacob stole Esau's blessing (27:35). Jacob used the very word that described his own sin. Laban's answer. “It must not be done so in our country, to give the younger (hatse'irah) before the firstborn (habbekirah)” (29:26). Bekirah sounds like bekorah, the birthright Jacob bought (25:31-34). Jacob had grabbed the place of the firstborn, and now the firstborn was handed to him in a way he never wanted. Reaping. Galatians 6:7 says, “whatever a man sows, that he will also reap,” and Jacob reaped what he had sown. But Laban was not doing God's work by lying. He was a deceiver himself, and 31:7 records God protecting Jacob from him. God can use even sinful acts to discipline His children without approving of the sin.

Seven years were over. Laban made a big wedding feast. But that night, Laban played a trick. He gave Jacob Leah instead of Rachel. It was dark, and Jacob did not know. In the morning he saw it was Leah! “Why did you trick me?” Jacob shouted. Do you remember Jacob's own trick? He pretended to be his older brother. Now Laban gave him the older sister. The trickster had been tricked. Now Jacob knew how Esau must have felt. But Laban was wrong too. Two wrongs never make a right. God wanted the tricks to stop.

Laban played a trick. He gave Jacob Leah instead of Rachel. Jacob had tricked his dad. Now someone tricked Jacob.

Laban offers a solution that keeps Jacob working: “Fulfill her week, and we will give you this one also for the service which you will serve with me still another seven years” (29:27). Two wives. A week later Jacob marries Rachel as well (29:28). Now he has two wives who are sisters. That was not God's plan. God's design from the beginning was one man and one woman (Genesis 2:24), and Jesus repeats it (Matthew 19:4-6). Later, God's law forbids marrying a woman as “a rival to her sister” (Leviticus 18:18). In the next chapters we see how much sadness it brought. Loved more. “He also loved Rachel more than Leah” (29:30). Jacob grew up in a family where each parent had a favorite. Now he does the same thing in his own home. Favoritism had hurt him; now it would hurt Leah, and later his own sons. But God sees. Our passage stops at verse 30, but the very next verse says: “When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb” (29:31). The one nobody chose, God saw. He cared for Leah, and He cares for anyone who feels left out.

29:28-30 closes the episode with a household already divided. Two wives was not God's design. From creation God's pattern was one man and one woman becoming one flesh (2:24), and Jesus reaffirmed it (Matthew 19:4-6). Leviticus 18:18 later forbids taking “a woman as a rival to her sister… while the other is alive,” and the rivalry of Leah and Rachel in 29:31-30:24 shows the harm it caused. The handmaids. Zilpah (29:24) and Bilhah (29:29) are mentioned only briefly here, but they will become mothers of four of the twelve tribes. God was building the family of Israel even through this troubled home. “Loved… more than.” 29:30 states the preference plainly, and 29:31 says it even more strongly: Leah was senu'ah, literally “hated,” translated “unloved.” The favoritism of Isaac and Rebekah (25:28) showed up again in Jacob's marriage, and it will show up again with Joseph (37:3). Service doubled. Jacob now owes fourteen years for the two sisters (31:41). The man who once bought a birthright for a bowl of stew is learning the cost of what he wants, and the cost of being deceived.

Laban said Jacob could marry Rachel too. But first he must finish the wedding week with Leah. And he must work seven more years. So Jacob married Rachel a week later. Now he had two wives who were sisters. That was not God's plan for marriage. God's plan is one husband and one wife. And Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah. Leah felt unloved. But the next verse in the Bible says something wonderful. God saw that Leah was unloved. God cared about her. God sees people who feel left out. He sees you too.

Jacob married Rachel too. He loved Rachel more than Leah. Leah was very sad. But God saw Leah and loved her.

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