It's Leah!

Written by Ed Kauffman

July 24, 2011

“It’s Leah!”

Genesis 29: 15-30

Ed Kauffman @ First Mennonite, Calgary

Maybe the partying went on just a little too long.  Maybe it was really late and the drink had been a little stronger than Jacob was used to.  Being out in the desert, it was really, really dark!  And after all, this was an arranged marriage – there wasn’t all the courtship and spending time together that we’re used to having.  And, in fact, maybe the sisters weren’t all that different anyway.  After all, it’s not really clear what the word means that describes Leah’s eyes when the Genesis writer describes her.  For a long time the translations were that Leah’s eyes were “weak” (NIV), whatever that means, a footnote in the NIV says it could also be “delicate”.  But other translations say Leah’s eyes were “lovely.” (NRSV) And the use of veils to disguise oneself was not an unknown practice, as we see it used numerous places throughout the Old Testament.

In any case, Jacob thought he was going to bed with Rachel, and in the morning “it was Leah!”  As one commentator said, to get the full effect of the Hebrew here, you probably need to insert your favourite expletive! 

I remember a few years ago when the final episode of the sitcom “Newhart” aired.  Bob Newhart had had an earlier sitcom called “The Bob Newhart Show” in which he played a psychiatrist and his wife, Emily, was played by Suzanne Pleshette.  In the later show, entitled “Newhart” Bob played an innkeeper in rural Vermont, with a different cast of characters, including a different wife, played by Mary Frann.  In the final episode, Bob stands in the doorway of his inn, and is hit in the head by a golf ball.  He regains consciousness in the bedroom, and Bob sits up in bed, startled, and shakes his wife, who sits up, and to the audience’s surprise, it’s Emily from the earlier show.  Bob explains that he’s just had the most fantastic dream, where he ran an inn in Vermont!  It was a memorable last scene that caught everyone by surprise.

But for Jacob, this was no dream.  He had been longing and waiting for this day, and here he was with the wrong sister!  How did it end up this way?

Well, you may remember from last week that Jacob was sent off to his ancestral home to seek a wife.  Rebekah and Isaac did not want him marrying any of those foreign girls, like his brother Esau.  (Which sounds a little like my mother’s concern when I went off to a Lutheran University.)  And, Jacob’s leaving had also been an escape from his brother who was not very happy over being cheated out of both his birthright, and his blessing.  We left Jacob last week, in the wilderness where he encountered God in a new way, at a “thin place” where God spoke to him and repeated the promise God had made to both his father and grandfather.

So our story today begins with Jacob arriving in Haran, the land his grandfather Abram had left many years before.  This was foreign territory to Jacob.  It wasn’t as though they had come back to visit from time to time.  He only knew that he was looking for a man named Laban, his uncle.  So how does one go about looking for an unknown person?  Well, you start asking around and what better place to ask than the local watering hole?  It’s where all the shepherds congregate in a dry and barren land.  And that is what Jacob does.

He finds a local well, and begins to ask, “Do you know a man named Laban?”  “Why yes, we do,” say the men, “and not only do we know him, but here comes his daughter with her sheep now.”  And so Jacob and Rachel meet at the well, and Jacob seems smitten from the first.  He opens the well and waters the sheep, greets Rachel and tells her he is her cousin from far away Gerar.  And she, in turn, runs home to tell her father, Laban, of Jacob’s arrival.  The scene is set.

After a month of Jacob staying with Laban, evidently helping out around the place, Laban comes to him with a proposal.  “After all,” Laban says, “you’re family, so you shouldn’t be working for free.  Let’s come to an agreement on wages.”  “Fair enough,” replies Jacob, “I will work for you for seven years, and you will give me your daughter, Rachel, as my wife.” 

You will recall that Jacob fled from home with almost nothing.  Therefore he had no dowry or wherewithal to outright buy himself a wife, so this seemed like a good deal to him.  And, for those whose sensibilities are somewhat offended by this buying and bartering for wives, well, that’s how it was done in those days.  And so the deal is struck, and we are told those seven years seemed to Jacob as “but a few days because of the love he had for her.”

And thus the wedding night, and the morning surprise!  It was Leah!  And Jacob protested.  “This was not the deal.” 

Laban however, has an answer.  And how ironic it is!  “In this country it is simply not done that the younger should be married first.  We must keep things in order.”  Whether Laban knew of Jacob’s shenanigans back home, we don’t know.  Perhaps Jacob had told him the story some evening sitting around the fire, or perhaps not.  In any case, not only is Jacob, the deceiver, himself deceived, but the deception seems especially sweet when it involves exactly the same issue as back home – the rights of the older versus the younger.  Something Jacob must have pondered long into the future.

You probably know the rest of the story.  Laban soothes Jacob by saying, “Look, wedding festivities here last a week.  Follow through on this marriage to Leah, and at the end of the week, I’ll also give you Rachel, and you only have to work another seven years to pay for her.”  And, as was the custom, a maid servant for each was thrown in for good measure.  Jacob seemed to have little choice, he didn’t just want a wife, he wanted Rachel, and so he agreed to the bargain and served Laban another seven years.  Over 14 years of his life had now been spent away from home, acquiring wives.

The next section of Chapter 29 and the first part of Genesis 30 then detail the rivalry now between Leah and Rachel, and the birth of Jacob’s 11 sons, and one daughter, Dinah, ending with the birth of Joseph – Jacob and Rachel’s favourite.  Benjamin, the final son of Rachel was born sometime later, and we are told of Rachel’s death while giving birth.

It’s a story as good as many daytime soaps, and even some evening drama’s (none of which I watch.)  But why would it be included in the Bible?  Of what value is it to us?  A question I pondered much of the week.  Is it to teach us that we shouldn’t marry sisters – an act that was actually prohibited in the later Jewish law, perhaps exactly from this precedent. (See Leviticus 18:18)

Is it here to tell us something about God?  Well perhaps, although there the story is somewhat mixed, as several commentators pointed out.  Does God grant children or not grant children based on who is loved more, as it seems here?  Hardly!  I don’t believe God is in the playing favourites game, even if all the other characters in the story are.

So what are we to make of this?  Well, I think there are several reasons why this is included in the genesis account.  You will recall that the story of the people of God begins with the call and promise to Abram that he will be the Father of a great nation.  So far in the account of his family, that promise has always, it seems, been on the verge of collapse.  People can’t have children; lives are threatened, and so on.  But finally it would seem that the promise of a great nation has a chance.  12 sons and a daughter are born to Jacob.  While Dinah figures in a later story, in Genesis 34, which is even more difficult to figure out why it’s included, the 12 sons of Jacob go on to populate the twelve tribes of Israel and do become a great nation.  So, at its most elemental level, the story gives us the genesis of the twelve tribes.

But perhaps there is a larger lesson for all of us.  In the story of God’s people told in the Old Testament, they felt it was important to tell all the story, both the good and the ugly.  While I’m sure we don’t have every story, after all this isn’t a diary, the OT writers did not whitewash the story and only tell us about how good things were, or how well behaved everyone was.  People cheat, deceive and kill.  There are stories of rape, incest, and even child sacrifice.  I sometimes wonder at those people who want to ban certain books from libraries.  I wonder if they’ve ever read the whole Bible.

Often when we tell our families stories, or more specifically when we tell our church stories, we are tempted to leave out the parts that don’t make us look very good.  I’ve been involved with numerous congregational anniversary celebrations, and congregations often like to gloss over the less favourable parts of their history – I suspect Ted would back me up on that.

But the reality is that God works through us, through God’s people, despite those parts of our history that we would rather forget or gloss over.  And the Biblical writers remind us of that.  Here is a family story laid out with all its faults and foibles, its intrigues and side stories.  And yet, this is the family through which God promised to bless all the peoples of the world.  These are the ancestors of Jesus!

One of the things I’ve learned over my years of ministry, it that God works through our stories, no matter what they are and thus we need to be honest about our story.  While we may not see God at work in the middle of those bad times, those times are just as much a part of our history as the good times, and they are always a part of who we are.  I have been in congregations where their story included murder, rape, and abuse, and know another where arson was committed by a pastor who then committed suicide.  Those are not easy stories to tell.

Yet, God has chosen to work through the church, God’s people to bring the Good News to the world.  And God will continue to work through us, no matter what our story, just as God worked through the families of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob; through Leah and Rachel and their maidservants, Zilpah and Bilhah.  So we can relax.  Not that we shouldn’t try to do the right thing and act properly.  But perhaps we don’t need to get quite as uptight about whether everyone else is acting as they should.  God has used some rather unlikely characters, and some stories we might like to leave out, to fulfill God’s purposes. God might even end up using you and I!

Prayer:  O God, I suspect we would not have chosen Jacob to carry on your work.  And that whole family system seems to be a mess.  Yet you saw something there, and used what we would call a dysfunctional family to bring about your purposes in the world.  Open our eyes to see you at work in the world, even in the most unlikely places.  Thank you that you have chosen us to be your people, despite who we are and even some of our dysfunctions as well.  May your will be done.

Amen