Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“In the morning, behold, it was Leah! He said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Didn’t I serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” Laban said, “It is not done so in our place, to give the younger before the firstborn. Fulfill the week of this one, and we will give you the other also for the service which you will serve with me for seven more years.””
(Genesis 29:25-27)

In the dark, two women who are very much alike can be confused. But in the full light of the morning, when speaking one to another will have priority, there are no secrets. Light reveals the truth. Every time.

Jacob did not want Leah. That’s the core of his indignation. He had worked for seven years and it seemed to him like days (Genesis 29:20). He desired Rachel. He loved Rachel. Leah was nice, but she was no Rachel in his mind. He was angry. Very angry. He felt cheated. This was a partial harvest of his past deeds. He practiced deceit and now he was at the receiving end of deceit. Now he could see his brother’s point of view. Now he had the ability to have empathy with Esau.

Laban’s character is fully revealed here. So many opportunities over such a long time to come clean. To explain cultural traditions (if they indeed existed – I think they didn’t since no one Jacob interacted with for the seven years (including Rachel and Leah) said anything to him about this tradition). Instead, he lied and covered the truth over and over again. He got something falsely and benefited from it. More so, he arranged to get even MORE that he didn’t deserve. Because he knew how much Jacob loved and wanted Rachel. He knew what Jacob would do for her. He knew he could get another seven years of free labour out of Jacob. Laban didn’t care about anyone’s feelings. Laban didn’t care about anything except what he could get. How he could turn everything to his advantage. Laban was a selfish man and a poor father. He did wrong by his daughters. Very wrong.

My heart breaks for Leah. She loved Jacob (her behaviour throughout her life points clearly to this). We don’t know what she was told, but she clearly thought she was getting a husband. An actual husband. Someone who would love her back. Everyone knew Jacob loved Rachel, but she always harboured the hope that in some little way Jacob would love her as well. She hoped for it. Longed for it. She probably prayed for it. Leah was DESPERATE to be loved by Jacob. And here, the morning after what she must have thought was the manifestation of all her hopes and dreams, she is rejected. Jacob is furious that she isn’t Rachel. He leaves her and storms off to confront her father. How devastated she must have been. And in Leah’s behaviour and mindset we see Jesus. “But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only born Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10). Jesus did it all for us when we clearly loved someone else. Jesus still did it. God still made the sacrifice. And God is standing there. Every day. Seeking our love. Seeking our response to what He did. God is Leah, desperate for our love. For our acceptance. However with God, it is not for HIS benefit (His feelings don’t change whether we accept Him or not), but for OURS. Jesus is offering us everything, if only we will take it. Instead of insisting on our own way, walking hand in hand with Him in His.

Laban’s requirement before he would give Rachel was that Leah got her week. Marriage celebrations often lasted a week (Judges 14:12). Leah was owed more days – this was the morning of day 2. Laban was saying that if Leah got her full seven days of celebration, then Jacob could have Rachel the next week. ‘Tradition’ would have been upheld. After that, Jacob would owe him another seven years of free labour. Fourteen years in total just to get the woman he loved and desired. But what a bittersweet week Leah must have had. What a bitter week Jacob must have had. We have no idea what Rachel felt for this week, but if she had any real feelings for him this would not have been a happy week for her either. Thanks to Laban, this ‘celebration’ was a complete sham. What a horrible way to treat your own children.

It is possible that Jacob didn’t divorce Leah out of compassion, not wishing to shame her. He obviously didn’t blame HER for the swindle. He didn’t hate Leah, he just didn’t love her. Not like Rachel, anyway. So much strife occurred because he had two sisters for wives. This was not the will of God. God clearly forbids marrying a sibling while the other sibling remains alive (Leviticus 18:18). But since the Law wasn’t given yet, God didn’t impute this sin to them (Romans 5:13). But their lives are a clear lesson to us that God didn’t want us to marry siblings – and can be used to illustrate that God’s perfect plan is one woman and one man in marriage and no other versions or variables at all (Matthew 19:4-5).

The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 25.—26. You do not know the customs here. If here, with us, someone asks for the hand of a younger sister, he automatically includes an unmarried elder one, as here with us, it is not considered correct to marry a younger sister before an elder one. So that he can only get the younger through marrying the elder, and gets the elder one first and then the younger. It is all perfectly in order. After Leah’s marriage, comes Rachel’s. We shall “give her” to you then. In the “we” he tries to make it sound as if his lying trick was the accepted local legal procedure. “Of course then you will have to serve me for another seven years!”’

The sage Or HaChaim writes: ‘ויהי בבוקר. When morning came, etc. The reason the Torah uses the word ויהי which always relates to some painful experience is simply that Jacob experienced anguish that Rachel had been denied him. והנה הוא לאה, and behold it was Leah! The reason the Torah writes הוא with the letter ו, is best explained by Bereshit Rabbah 70,12 where the local people are described as singing all night long (in Aramaic) הא ליא, הא ליא. Jacob understood only in the morning what that singing had been all about. This explanation also explains the need for the word הנה satisfactorily. מה זאת עשית לי? What is this that you have done to me? We need to understand what exactly Jacob referred to with this complaint. If it referred to the fact that Laban had tricked him, he already mentioned this by saying: “why did you deceive me?” We must therefore search for something else that Jacob complained about. Jacob did indeed complain about two matters. 1) That Laban had given him Leah instead of Rachel. 2) That he had done so in such a deceptive manner. Jacob thereby revealed that had Laban forced Leah upon him he, Jacob, would have been less concerned than now that he slept with one woman while believing he slept with another. This deception had far-reaching spiritual consequences, as we already alluded to earlier on verse 23. It is also possible that Jacob referred to the humiliation experienced by Leah who now found herself Jacob’s wife and had to expect that her husband would hate her instead of love her. Jacob’s question “why did you deceive me?” indicates that he had immediately decided not to divorce Leah but to keep her as a wife. He also displayed wisdom by the choice of his words, realising that what had been done could not be undone. He realised that it would not have been moral to reverse what had been done but resolved to marry Rachel also. In this manner he hoped that Laban would not now demand an even higher price for Rachel by suggesting that they make a new agreement. He complained to Laban that the latter had seen fit to achieve something by deception which he could have achieved amicably (i.e. that Jacob marry Leah also). ויאמר לבן לא יעשה כן במקומנו. Laban said: “This is not the way things are done in our place, etc.” How could Laban expect now to get away with such an explanation when he and Jacob had entered into a specific agreement that Rachel was to be given to Jacob? Why would local customs override such an agreement? Actually, Laban argued that the local inhabitants had protested what he had agreed to. Inasmuch as the inhabitants were the majority and he was only a single individual, he Laban, had to bow to their wishes. This is why he spoke about במקומנו, “in our place.” He may also have argued that at the time he made the deal with Jacob there had not been a paragraph saying that he would receive Rachel as a wife without also marrying Leah. Their agreement therefore never violated the local custom that the elder daughter be married off first. It had been obvious that Jacob would first receive Leah. As soon as he had completed seven years of labour he would receive Rachel immediately after having married Leah. He, Laban, had taken it for granted that Jacob would first stay with him long enough to conform to the local custom and marry Leah. When Jacob had said: “give me my wife!” Laban had naturally understood that Jacob referred to Leah. After all, the local customs were no secret. Laban rejected the accusation that he had acted with subterfuge. Should Jacob be of the opinion that Laban differentiated between his two daughters, this was not so. He loved both equally and treated them both equally. To prove this, he would not ask a higher price for Rachel than he had been willing to accept for Leah. If Jacob was indeed so enamoured of Rachel that he could not wait another seven years, he would show his understanding by letting him have Rachel in another week, as soon as the wedding festivities in honour of Leah had been concluded, i.e. מלא שבוע זאת, when he had completed a week with this wife. In view of Laban’s argument we need to understand why the extremely careful Jacob had not even considered the local customs in this matter. Jacob considered that it was Laban’s duty to tell him about such customs. If Laban failed to do so it was proof he did not care about the local customs. Therefore, when he asked Laban to hand over his wife he had naturally referred to Rachel. It had been up to Laban to tell him at least at that moment that he could not hand over Rachel as long as Leah was not married, and that it was up to Jacob either to wait till Leah was married or to marry her himself. By failing to do so, Jacob maintained that Laban had lived up to his reputation as a swindler.’