Now I Will Praise the Lord

Looking for Love

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Leah's story is told through the names she gave her sons. Each one tells us what she was hoping for.

Reuben. “The LORD has surely looked on my affliction. Now therefore, my husband will love me” (Genesis 29:32). Leah knew God had seen her pain. But she hoped a baby would make Jacob love her.

Simeon. “Because the LORD has heard that I am unloved, He has therefore given me this son also” (29:33). God had heard her. But Jacob still did not.

Levi. “Now this time my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons” (29:34). Three sons, and still she was waiting for Jacob's love.

Judah. Then the fourth: “Now I will praise the LORD” (29:35). This time she did not mention Jacob at all. She had found something better than her husband's approval: God Himself.

Rachel was looking too. It was not only Leah. Rachel had Jacob's love, but she wanted what Leah had. “Give me children, or else I die!” she said (30:1). Both sisters had something good, and both were miserable because they kept comparing. Comparing is one of the quickest ways to lose your joy.

God saw all of it. The story begins with these words: “When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb” (29:31). Nobody in the family was paying attention to Leah's tears. God was. The same God who saw Hagar in the desert saw Leah in her tent. He sees you too.

We do this too. We look to friends, to being popular, to doing well, to a parent's praise, to make us feel loved and worth something. Those are good things, but they cannot fill the deepest place in our hearts. Only God can. David wrote, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take care of me” (Psalm 27:10).

God is enough. Asaph prayed, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25-26).

What it means for you. Think about what you are hoping will make you happy. Then do what Leah did. Turn to God and praise Him, even before anything changes. “I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1). Praise does not mean pretending everything is fine. It means telling God the truth about how you feel, and then thanking Him for who He is.

Genesis 29:31-35 tells the story of Leah's heart through the names of her four sons.

The pattern of the first three. Each naming begins with God's action (seeing, hearing) and ends with Leah's hope for Jacob's response (love, attachment). She attributes her sons to the LORD but measures her worth by her husband.

The break. Happa'am odeh et-YHWH, “this time I will praise the LORD” (29:35), repeats happa'am from 29:34, but this time Leah's hope is aimed at God. With the earlier names she gave a reason tied to Jacob. Here she gives none. Praise needs no further reason.

Love in the wrong place. Leah's longing for Jacob's love was not wrong in itself. It became a problem only when it took the center of her heart, the place that belongs to God alone. Psalm 73:25-26 shows a heart with God at the center: “there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.”

Divine faithfulness to the unloved. Psalm 27:10 promises, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take care of me.” Psalm 68:5-6 describes God who “sets the solitary in families.” Genesis 29 shows God giving Leah exactly that care, long before those psalms were written.

Praise as response. The New Testament takes up the vocabulary of praise as the believer's continual offering: “Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name” (Hebrews 13:15). Leah's odeh is an early instance of that sacrifice.

Rivalry and comparison. Genesis 30 shows the opposite of Leah's turn: “Rachel envied her sister” (30:1), and the naming of Naphtali keeps score. James 3:16 names the fruit of such envy, and Galatians 5:26 warns against “provoking one another, envying one another.” Leah herself slips back into the contest (30:9-13, 15), so 29:35 is not the end of her struggle, but it is a true moment of turning to God.

An echo later in Scripture. Hannah, the provoked and childless wife of 1 Samuel 1, follows a similar path from bitterness to praise, and her song (1 Samuel 2:1-10) celebrates the God who raises the lowly. Psalm 113:9 sums it up: “He grants the barren woman a home, like a joyful mother of children. Praise the LORD!”

Application. Ask yourself where you look for worth in other people's approval. Then answer, as Leah did, with praise directed to God, not as a denial of pain but as trust in the middle of it.

The Lion from the Tribe of Judah

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When Leah named her son Judah, she had no idea how important he would be. God had plans for Judah's family that would reach all the way to Jesus.

A promise of a King. At the end of his life Jacob blessed his sons. Over Judah he said, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet” (Genesis 49:10). A scepter is the staff a king holds. Judah's family would be the family of kings.

King David. Hundreds of years later, a shepherd boy from Judah's tribe, born in Bethlehem, became King David. God promised David that a King from his family would reign forever.

Jesus. Matthew's Gospel begins with Jesus' family line: “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers” (Matthew 1:2). Hebrews says, “it is evident that our Lord arose from Judah” (Hebrews 7:14). And Jesus was born in Bethlehem, near the place where Rachel was buried (Genesis 35:19; Matthew 2:6).

The Lion who is the Lamb. In Revelation, John hears, “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed.” But when he looks, he sees “a Lamb as though it had been slain” (Revelation 5:5-6). Jesus is the strong King from Judah, but He won His victory by dying on the cross for our sins. Then He rose again, and He reigns forever.

Judah the brother. Judah himself was far from perfect. He was the one who suggested selling his brother Joseph (Genesis 37:26-27). But years later, God changed him. When Benjamin was in trouble in Egypt, Judah offered to stay as a slave in his place so the boy could go home to their father (Genesis 44:33). The son of praise learned to give himself for someone else. That is a small picture of what Jesus, the greater Son of Judah, would do for us.

From an unloved mother. Think about where this line started: with Leah, the wife who felt unloved. God chose her son to carry the promise. God loves to work through people others overlook.

What it means for you. The King from Judah is not a king who keeps people away. He is the Lamb who gave Himself for us. You can come to Him, trust Him and praise Him, just as Leah did. Everyone who trusts Him becomes part of His family, a “royal priesthood” whose job is to “proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

The place of Judah in God's plan unfolds across the Bible, from Genesis 29 to Revelation 5.

Genesis 49:8-10. Jacob's blessing plays on Judah's name, “Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise” (49:8), and promises: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people” (49:10). Many Christians see “until Shiloh comes” as a promise of the Messiah, the King whom the nations will obey.

David and Bethlehem. The promise came true first in David, of the tribe of Judah and the town of Bethlehem. Micah 5:2 names “Bethlehem Ephrathah… little among the thousands of Judah” as the place of the coming Ruler, and Matthew 2:6 cites it at Jesus' birth.

The genealogy. Matthew 1:2-3 places Judah in Christ's line and pointedly includes Tamar; Hebrews 7:14 states that “our Lord arose from Judah.” The messianic line is traced through the son of the unloved wife.

Rachel's tomb and Rachel's tears. Rachel's burial near Bethlehem (35:19) is taken up in Jeremiah 31:15 and Matthew 2:18. The royal birth occurs amid grief, and the King enters a world of sorrow.

Revelation 5:5-6. The elder announces the Lion; John sees a Lamb “as though it had been slain.” Putting the two side by side shows that Christ is King through His sacrifice: the Lion of Judah wins as the crucified and risen Lamb. The tribe born of Leah's praise becomes the tribe of the One worthy of all praise (5:12).

Judah's own transformation. Within Genesis, Judah himself changes. He proposes selling Joseph (37:26-27), yet in 44:18-34 he offers himself as a slave in Benjamin's place, the first time one brother takes another's place. This change helps explain why Judah leads his brothers in 49:8-10, and it gives a small picture of the Son of Judah, who gave Himself in our place.

Grace through an overlooked line. The royal line passes not through Reuben the firstborn, nor through Joseph the favored son of the favored wife, but through the fourth son of the unloved wife. God often chooses in a way that overturns human ranking (25:23; 1 Corinthians 1:27-29), and this points ahead to the gospel's welcome of those whom others pass by.

Tracing the line. You can trace the line on a simple chart: Leah, Judah, Perez, David, Jesus (Matthew 1:1-16). The aim is not to memorize names but to see God keeping a promise across many centuries, through ordinary and flawed people.

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