Christian Heroes Pt. 2

Weddings and Sharp Dealings.

 

Jacob comes to Paddan-Aram, the territory of his uncle Laban in Genesis 29. Laban is a cruel sort of devil. Jacob meets Rachel at a well. Lots of good meetings come at wells. (Go look up every story in the Bible that has women meeting some guy at a well. It will often result in a wedding.) He rolls a stone from the mouth of the well so she can water the flock, and voila! Love. They skip courtship and go straight to kissing, and then she runs off to tell pops about the young hunk at the well. No joke, it’s all in Genesis 29:11-12. Laban hears that his daughter just made out with a strange guy and runs to meet him. Laban seems to have been fine with the whole thing too. I’d have brought a shotgun to that meeting.

 

I digress.

 

Jacob goes to stay with Laban. A month later they get to negotiating wages. Jacob is to be a man of Labans’ house and he must be paid, but he is a nephew and must be paid well. Jacob wants Rachel. He figured his labour for seven years would be a good bride price for her, and they strike a deal. Seven years for the girl, and not a taxable wage either. Not too shabby. By Canadian wage standards, she cost half a million or so. (I didn’t adjust for inflation. It’s hard to know how differing currencies and inflation rates operated in the ancient world, so an accurate comparison is really hard.)

 

Time flies, as they say. Seven years pass and Jacob reminds Laban his wages are due. Time for a wedding. Laban does just that, but after the wedding when it was time for bedding, he pulls a switcheroo on poor Jacob and gives him Leah instead! How could that be? Leah was kinda ugly, Rachel was smokin’ hot! Jacob had been around both of them for seven whole years, really dude? What was he doing? To put this in perspective, Jacob didn’t know it was Leah till morning. He was deceived. A young horny groom drinks a little too much, doesn’t have the benefit of indoor lighting, and trusts his future father-in-law.

 

This is a perfect storm for the poor guy. In contract law a contract entered into in good faith is valid, but if there is deception than the contract is rendered null and void. Marriage is a type of contract called a covenant. Jacob could at this point have put Leah away, much like Joseph planned to do with the virgin Mary. Jacob had legal ground for that act, but he didn’t do it. Instead he kept Leah, and demanded Rachel too. I don’t know what Laban hoped to get out of this deal, but his hand was forced and he had to cave. It is likely that he knew he would never marry off Leah anyway, so he foisted her on Jacob in the hope Jacob would demand the marriage to be voided. Then Laban could kick Jacob down the road, thus getting seven free years of work, and blame Jacob for “spoiling” and “abandoning” his poor daughter, Leah. If she never married, it was now Jacobs’ fault, not Labans.

 

Jacob throws a wrench into the whole thing by keeping her and demanding Rachel too. Of course Laban got his pound of flesh. Jacob would work another seven years.

 

“When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.” This is the point Jacob comes in for some blame. It is an understandable thing that Jacob would hate Leah. She was an accomplice to his humiliation and deception. Leah did most of the work herself. Laban planned things, but Leah was the hatchet woman. She made a fool out of him. Even so, God saw her plight. If ever you think God never gives help or relief to bad Christians, look at Leah. He gives her children, and the Christ eventually comes from her womb.

 

After Judah was born the cat fight really gets going. I am of the opinion that a good deal of Jacobs’ family strife could have been avoided if he had the Law of Moses at hand. In Leviticus 18:18 marrying two sisters concurrently is forbidden. As it was, he was now at the center of a family feud. It devolves down to the sisters throwing their servant girls at Jacob, as a nasty sort of revenge politic. He gets drawn into this, which is a point at which we can learn from him by not imitating what he did. Adding two more women to the mix was not good. These rivalries would plague Jacobs’ life from now on.

 

That all could have been avoided by being gracious to Leah, having decided to keep her. Graciousness in that situation would have been a miracle. Oddly, I have seldom heard a sermon on this text. It seems to me that this episode was Jacobs’ worst.

To be continued…