FIRST SIBLING RIVALRY GONE BAD
GENESIS 29-35
IMAGINE: Being two sisters living in your father’s house. Marriage prospects limited and sadly, all you want is what your sister has.
Jacob begins a 500 mile journey to his mother Rebekah’s relatives in Haran. He was told to marry one of the daughters of Laban, his mother’s brother.
Haran is where Abraham, Sarah and Lot had left their relatives, as instructed by God when told to go to the land of Canaan. Haran is also where Abraham instructed his servant to go and find a wife for Isaac. Which is where the servant found Rebekah. Rebekah had been gone from Haran and her family for decades when she sends her beloved son, Jacob, to her relatives.
As Jacob comes upon the well where the community would draw water, he meets some shepherds and learns his Uncle Laban is living there in Haran. As he is speaking with them, Rachel, Laban’s daughter, Jacob’s first cousin, appears with her father’s sheep. It is stated she is a shepherdess. Jacob explains to Rachel he is her father’s relative, son of her father’s sister, Rebekah.
After he waters her sheep, she runs to tell her father about Jacob. Jacob has already fallen in love with Rachel at first sight. His love for her never seems to fade up to the day she dies. The love she had or may not have had for Jacob is never mentioned. Jacob, at Laban’s request, remains with him and agrees to work seven years as payment to marry Rachel.
At the end of the seven years, Jacob requests Rachel be made his wife. Laban escorts his daughter to Jacob and the couple retire to the marriage tent. Because of the dark of night and drinking of wine, it is morning before Jacob realizes he has been tricked into marrying Rachel’s older sister, Leah.
How aware Leah or Rachel were of this deceptive plan, we do not know. Did Leah care how this could affect her relationship with her younger sister, Rachel? Was she just being obedient to her father’s plan? Was she afraid there would never be someone for her to marry?
Was the culture of that area as Laban explained? It was not the practice to marry the younger before the older. Had Laban just failed to share that information with Jacob while hashing out the bargain of seven years’ work for Rachel?
Larger questions than these arise. Where was Rachel? How would she have been so unaware of a large wedding feast? Unaware of her sister as a veiled bride? This was at night, so probability has it she was not too far from home.
Laban for sure tricked Jacob. Leah tricked Jacob. The question that comes to mind is, was Rachel unaware as to what was transpiring? Deception seems to have run strong in this gene pool. Just as Rebekah had deceived Isaac into believing Jacob was Esau, so he could receive the blessing given to the first born….now Laban deceives Jacob. Jacob had just worked seven years for Rachel, whom he loved. The deceiver had been deceived and he was not happy. Laban now promises Rachel to Jacob as a second wife for another seven years of work.
Leah had probably hoped that Jacob would fall madly in love with her. The only description the Bible gives of Leah is she is the eldest sister and her eyes are weak. (Gen. 29:16,17). Rachel, on the other hand, is the younger sister and described as beautiful and well favored. (Gen. 29:17).
As mentioned before, Rachel is a shepherdess. This profession would have had her outdoors obtaining tanned skin and toned muscles. Leah, it appears, was more the indoor, cook the meals type of person, causing her possibly to be pale and not as fit.
What did Rachel think when Leah was given to Jacob instead of her? What did Leah think when one week later Rachel was given to her husband as a second wife? Leah’s heart had to have hurt. In fact, we know her heart was broken as Genesis 29:21 states “now the Lord saw that Leah was unloved.” The Hebrew word used here for “unloved” means “hate” or “to be hated”. Jacob may have had some very negative feelings toward Leah because he had obtained her through deception.
Leah had been pushed into a loveless marriage by her father, so more than likely she felt very much unloved by him also. Laban appears to have arranged all this at the expense of both his daughter’s happiness due to his greed. God, seeing Leah in this circumstance had compassion on unloved Leah and “opened her womb”. Leah gave birth to a son, Reuben, which means “behold a son”. Leah states, “because the Lord has seen my affliction, surely now my husband will love me”. (Gen. 29:32).
Leah has a second son, Simeon. “The Lord has heard I am unloved”. (Gen. 29:33). Leah has a third son Levi, and her response is “now my husband will become attached to me”. (Gen. 29:34). Leah has yet a fourth son Judah, and her response this time is “I will praise the Lord”. (Gen. 29:35). Leah hoped that giving birth to three sons would draw her husband to her. It appears though that with the birth of her fourth son there was a true turning point in her life where she becomes satisfied to just praise the Lord. Even though Leah kept having children, Jacob did not love her and possibly did not trust her.
It was quite shameful in that day to be barren. Younger sister Rachel, even though the favorite wife, had not given birth to any children. So, Rachel plots a plan. As in most cases, when one decides to settle a matter on their own, instead of waiting for God to act, things go haywire.
Rachel may have had all the outside appearance of beauty, but inside she displays envy, jealousy, anger and bitterness from not having any children. She comes off as a self-serving, manipulative woman and instead of enjoying the company of her nephews, schemes to have children of her own.
Rachel does not give the appearance of one who wants children for love and the happiness they bring but, rather to cover her own shame of being barren. Even though Rachel was the love of Jacob’s life, Leah was the one to give birth to a number of male babies. In that culture giving birth to males increased a woman’s status within that society. Not conceiving children was considered shameful and an embarrassment. The sound of her sister’s children would have been a constant reminder of her own barrenness.
Rachel tells Jacob to take her maid, Bilhah(this name means bashful) as a concubine to bear sons for her. Rachel surely had heard the story of Sarah and Hagar and the trouble this very plan had brought to all concerned. Yet, in her desperate state to have a child she gives her maid, Bilhah to Jacob.
Leah immediately catches on to what her sister is doing and since she has stopped having babies herself, gives her maid, Zilpah to Jacob for a concubine. So, Bilhah had two sons, Dan and Naphtali, for Rachel and Zilpah bore two sons, Gad and Asher, for Leah.
Leah again becomes pregnant and bears a son named Issachar and then has another son named Zebulun. She becomes pregnant again, only this time with a girl and names her Dinah.
Finally, after a very long wait and many children born to Jacob, Rachel is remembered by God and gives birth to her first son, Joseph. (Gen. 30:22). Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your family, and I will be with you.” (Gen. 31:3). At this point Jacob’s life consisted of four very competitive women and crying babies everywhere.
Rachel has a second son on their way back into the promised land. Instead of rejoicing in the competition with her sister she names this child “Ben-oni”, meaning “son of my sorrow”. Rachel dies giving birth to this second son of hers. After all the years of competition with her sister, it all ended in sorrow for her instead of victory. Jacob renames the child Benjamin. He is the only son of the twelve belonging to Jacob who is born in the promised land. Rachel is buried between Bethel and Bethlehem.
Leah’s life, up to this point, had been difficult. She had a scheming father that apparently looked on her more as collateral than his own flesh and blood. She had a husband that gave her children but not of himself. Her daughter, Dinah, is raped by a gentile heathen and thus defiled for the rest of her life. Now, her sister, Rachel, whom she has been in competition with all these years, dies.
The story of these two sisters, one more beautiful and more loved than the other, does not always prove to be the one more blessed than the other. In God’s economy, the one suffering the most many times is the one to receive God’s many blessings.
There were probably not many days in Leah’s life that her heart did not hurt, her tears fall, and her hope fade. God did indeed bless Leah beyond anything she could have foreseen. From Leah came Israel’s priestly line through her third son Levi. From her fourth son, Judah’s ancestry, came the Messiah.
She could not have foreseen in her lifetime how greatly rewarded she was by her Heavenly Father. Leah had grown up in a culture where the pagan god nanna(sin), the god of the moon and wisdom resided. She came to know the One True Living God as He came to her, took away her heartache, and “opened her womb”. (Gen. 29:31).
Her descendants are Moses, Aaron, King David and Jesus Christ. The external does not necessarily reveal the eternal. Leah dies sometime after Rachel but before Jacob. (Gen. 49:31). Leah is buried in the tomb of the Patriarchs along with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, and Jacob. (Gen. 49:31).
Leah wanted the love of her father, the love of her husband, but came to know the love of God Almighty instead. She now knew the one who mattered the most, loved her. Leah appears to accept God’s grace as sufficient.
Rachel, on the other hand, had stolen her father’s household idols used for protection and assurance of inheritance rights. When Jacob and his wives and their children left Haran, Laban chased after them. After finding the Taraphim (household gods, idols) gone, Laban may have been concerned Jacob would return to Haran and claim Laban’s estate.
Rachel then lies to her father about not having them. She also hides them from her husband. She may have taken these “gods” as a precaution, as she had no other claim to her father’s inheritance once she left her homeland. All this indicates there was a pagan influence in Laban’s home. Jacob had lived there twenty years yet, Rachel still clung to these superstitious beliefs. She had lied to one and been deceptive towards the other.
It appears Rachel had learned the family trait of deception well. Her husband had deceived his father and brother. Her father, Laban had deceived her husband concerning his first marriage to the wrong woman. Rachel deceived her father about the household gods not being in her possession by telling him she was in the “way of a woman”. This is yet another piece of deception as it is later revealed she was pregnant with her second son, at the time of this tale being told.
Rachel, at one point in time, traded her husband off to her sister for a night in exchange for her sister’s mandrakes. This was apparently a desperate attempt to get pregnant. Mandrakes were superstitiously viewed as an aphrodisiac or fertility inducing narcotic. Rachel seemed to look more to household idols and superstition than the God of her husband.
The sadness that comes with these two sisters is, each had what the other wanted. Leah was married to a man who did not love her, choose her, or want her. God, however, noticed her, cared for her, chose her, loved her, and wanted her. Rachel, on the other hand, was beautiful with a husband who adored her even when she was incapable of bearing children for him. Yet, Rachel was willing to do anything to give her husband a child.
What we learn from both these sisters is: Instead of being miserable about what we do not have, we must focus, regardless of the circumstances, on what we do have. What we do have is the love of God, through His Son Jesus Christ, and the opportunity to serve and Trust Him with each day and every circumstance given. It doesn’t get better than that.
Something to consider:
What if you woke up today
with only the things
you Thanked God for yesterday?
Thought for the day:
“Oh! What a tangled web we weave,
when first we practice to deceive.”
Sir Walter Scott 1808
BIBLICAL PEOPLE 