Gentle Reader,
“Surely now my husband will love me.”
That’s up there on the list of saddest sentences found in Scripture. Can you hear the hope in Leah’s voice? A hope tinged with a knowing. No, Jacob will not love her.
How many times have hoped to be loved by another? All while knowing it won’t happen.
We meet God and Leah in a new way on the pages of Genesis this week. When we last saw her, she’s played her part in Laban pulling one over on Jacob. Now she’s left with the fallout.
When the LORD Saw Leah: Outgunned – Reuben
“So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. He served Laban for another seven years.”33 Fourteen years in pursuit of Rachel: is Jacob passionately in love, or out to prove a point? It is impossible to say. What is known is that he has one wife too many; the wife he wants cannot have children, while the wife he doesn’t want but continues to have sex with readily conceives (reading 29:31 and what follows as synchronous with 29:30).34 The parental favoritism under which Jacob was formed finds its natural offspring in marital favoritism. The reader can sympathize with this to an extent. Even if Jacob’s attraction to Rachel is based on shallow criteria, it is Rachel whom he loves. He cannot be expected to feel the same way about Leah. (Of course, this again leads to questions about the wedding night and why Jacob kept Leah in the first place).
God sees Leah’s pain and opens her womb. This time, it is God who subverts the expectations and order. God asserts Godself as the One who is in charge. God will not control the choices of others, but God remains sovereign. God’s plan will not be thwarted. In a move of grace and mercy, God allows Leah to get pregnant (according to the author). Given the author’s understanding of God throughout the book of Genesis to this point, this pregnancy is an invitation to Leah from God, a drawing of Leah to Godself.
Instead of recognizing this loving action, moment of thanks to God aside, she focuses on her husband. “Surely now my husband will love me,” she says.35 Leah has given him Reuben – “see, a son.”36 Outgunned by Rachel in the beauty department, she wins in the childbearing department. What more can Jacob want? What more can she do?
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33 Gen. 29:30.
34 Hamilton, 264.
35 Gen. 29:32b.
36 Zucker and Reiss, 171.
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Katie Moum
A full list of references for this paper can be found here.