What Some Will Do For Love

“And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.”  Genesis 29:18

Jacob, Isaac’s son and Abraham’s grandson, was an honorable man, but had not always been so.  He went to work for Laban, his uncle, and fell in love with Rachel, Laban’s daughter, which would make Rachel his first cousin.  That type of relationship is not too well accepted in our day, but was quite common in the early days of Israel.  Jacob agreed to work for Laban for seven years in order to be allowed to marry Rachel.

After Jacob fulfilled his seven year commitment, a feast was made and apparently the custom was to have the bride awaiting in the bed chamber after dark.  The groom would then go in to the room in complete darkness.  I would venture a guess that Rachel and her older sister were very similar in size, looks, and voice.  I would also assume that Jacob and his new bride would have consummated their marriage and then slept until the sun came up and the light filtered into the bed chamber.  Jacob was in for a real surprise.  He looked over at his new bride and discovered that it was not Rachel, but Leah, Rachel’s older sister.  I can’t imagine the thoughts going through Jacob’s mind.  Was he upset?  Was he angry?  Was he scared?

This seems to me to be such a cruel trick to play on someone.  Jacob had fulfilled his promise to work seven years for Rachel, yet Laban didn’t keep his end of the deal.  When Jacob approached Laban about his deceit, Laban explained that it wasn’t proper to allow a younger daughter to marry before an older daughter.  If Jacob didn’t say it, he probably thought it:  “Then why didn’t you tell me that?”  Laban probably didn’t because he saw this as an opportunity to marry off Leah.  Perhaps she was not as beautiful as Rachel and not as desirable, and Laban was only trying to help her get a husband.  Jacob still wanted Rachel as his wife so he agreed to work an additional seven years for her, and Laban allowed him to marry her the following week.

I can’t help but feel sorry for Leah, married to a man who loved her sister more than he did her, if he even loved her at all.  However, before we feel sorry for Jacob, he had been guilty of deceiving his own father into giving him the birthright which legally belonged to his older brother Esau (Genesis 27).  The birthright gave the oldest son the authority and responsibility of the family after the father’s death.  It also entitled him to twice the inheritance of the other siblings.  Therefore that old saying about “what goes around comes around” is certainly on display in Jacob’s life.  We could also apply another saying to him and to ourselves: “Cheaters never win and winners never cheat.”