It's not often that a biblical character makes you want to cry, but if you pay careful attention to the matriarch Leah, she can break your heart.Leah is married to Jacob, a man who does not love her indeed, who barely notices her.The digital display is a good way to know the heat of the oil cheapest schoolgirl lingerie and the timer to check your turkey is fully cooked. According to the book of Genesis, Jacob arrives at his uncle Laban's house and is soon smitten with Laban's younger daughter, Rachel, who is, the text tells us, "shapely and beautiful." As for Rachel's older sister Leah, we are told only that she had "weak eyes" and Jacob pays her no attention at all.
The way the story unfolds next is well-known. Jacob works almost breathlessly for the right to marry Rachel; the seven years he serves in order to win her hand "seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her". But Laban deceives him, and Jacob ends up married to Leah, whom he does not love. After arguing with Laban over being tricked, Jacob agrees to work for seven more years so that he can be with Rachel, his true love.Imagine Leah's predicament, and her humiliation. She is older and less physically attractive than her sister. Perhaps her father thinks he is doing his elder daughter a favor, protecting her honor by deceiving Jacob into marrying her. Perhaps Leah herself harbors the fantasy that Jacob will learn to love and appreciate her. Imagine her feelings when, on the morning after her wedding, her husband's only response to discovering that she, rather than her sister, is his wife is an excruciating mix of outrage and disappointment: "What is this you have done to me?" he demands of Laban.
Perhaps we have sympathy for Jacob, and perhaps also for Rachel lovers unjustly kept apart by a father's machinations. But what of poor Leah, so undesired, and likely feeling so utterly undesirable? Jacob is now married to two sisters. The text makes no secret of his preferences, and neither, ostensibly, does he. Genesis tells us simply that Jacob "loved Rachel more than Leah."
- Nov 14 Thu 2013 10:58
What We Learn from Leah
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