Gentle Reader,
For the next eight weeks, we’re doing something different.
Part of God’s call on my life involves building bridges between the seminary and the sanctuary. Between the professors and the pews. I don’t believe in such things as ivory towers. If theological discussions don’t translate into daily living – if theology is not practical – then I don’t see much point in the discussions. This is probably why philosophy was my most-hated class. I could not hide my frustration at having to discuss whether or not God can make a rock too heavy for God to lift. There is no answer to that. And who cares? (If that’s how your brain works, more power to you. The world needs you. I just don’t get it).
Below is the first of eight parts. This is the final paper I wrote for my semester-long class on the book of Genesis back in the fall of 2019. I remember being excited when we were told that we could pick any section from Genesis. While I love the absolute holy strangeness that is Enoch, I always come back to Leah. I think hers is simultaneously one of the saddest and hope-filled stories woven into the narrative of the patriarchs.
And so we begin.
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When the LORD Saw Leah: Introduction
“In the beginning, Shekinah, the Holy-One-Who-Dwells-in-This-World, spins the world into being: light, water, earth, heavenly bodies, seed-bearing plants, sea creatures, birds, animals – and Adam, the only creature cast in the divine image, double-gendered and unique.”1 Two people, alike and yet dissimilar. Each somehow, like a mirror, reflecting God’s nature back to Godself. Created to live in perfect harmony with each other, with all of creation, with God.
A sudden explosion, waves rippling through the unseen, as first one, then the other, takes a bite of forbidden fruit. Unity is no more. Relationship is fractured. They must hide. They must be covered. God must not know – yet God always knows. Sent away from paradise, they toil together, locked in a marriage marked by the before and the after. They mourn, for their children will never know the Paradise of before.
The events of Genesis 3 cast a long shadow. Nothing in the narratives that follow can be understood without acknowledging that shadow and considering its impact upon each of the characters involved. Again, and again, the reader is confronted with the breakdown of love and holiness, those twin bindings that hold together relationship. Cain and Abel. Noah. Hagar, Abraham, and Sarah.
Rachel and Leah.
Leah is a lesser-known character, always cast in contrast to her beautiful and beloved sister, Rachel. Always a step behind her famous husband, Jacob. Her secondary, seemingly less-than status stands as a striking example of a life that is “disrupted because sinfulness is rooted so deep in the human heart.” 2 Leah is one of the most tragic figures in all of Genesis. Used as a pawn in a game in which she had no choice but to participate. Desperate for the love of her husband, which she never receives. Locked in a rivalry with the sister who should be her biggest champion and supporter. Hers is a life of heartache and sorrow.
A tragic character operating within a difficult storyline, Leah has much to teach the people of God. Tucked inside a few straightforward verses about pregnancy and childbirth, we see a progression, a movement from exclusive focus on attaining the love of a man to a burning focus on the ever-present love of God:
When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and bore a son, and she named him Reuben; for she said, “Because the LORD has looked on my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.” She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the LORD has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also”; and she named him Simeon. Again, she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons”; therefore, he was named Levi. She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the LORD”; therefore, she named him Judah; then she ceased bearing. 3
The reader need not be intimidated by Leah here, though. She never ceases being human. A few verses later, she fights with her sister.
Her humanity comforts and encourages the reader, for it exists within the loving embrace of God. God moves toward Leah before there is any indication that Leah moves toward God. God sees Leah long before she has eyes to see God. “The Lord does not approve the favoritism Jacob shows Rachel,” 4 and God acts. Through Leah’s story the community of faith learns about the kindness and goodness of God. Leah is the mother of all who look for love and long for a place – the mother of all who find that love and place in relationship with God.
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1 Ellen Frankel, The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on the Torah (New York: HarperOne, 1996), 3.
2 Terence E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 95.
3 Gen. 29:31-35, NRSV.
4 The Wesley Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2009), 41.
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Kevin Young
A full list of references for this paper can be found here.
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