Moms in the Bible–Leah and Rachel part 2

This post is from Moms Take Ten episode 96, Moms in the Bible–Leah and Rachel part 2, which you can listen to wherever you listen to podcasts or at https://sites.libsyn.com/403493/moms-in-the-bible-leah-and-rachel-part-2

Have I mentioned before how the story of Leah and Rachel is far from my favorite of the moms in the Bible? Each time I come to their narrative, I’m tempted to skip it. But then I am reminded that my life is also messy and yet God loves me. God loved both of them. Not one more than the other. Both of them. And he has things to teach us through their story.

In case you don’t remember, Leah and Rachel were the wives of Jacob. The lineage goes like this: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and his wives (not to mention his twin brother and his wives).

The beginning of this story actually seems to be a love story as beautiful as the one from which Jacob was birthed from. Remember last month how we talked about God answering Abraham and his servant’s prayers for a wife for Isaac? God brought the servant straight to Rebekah and she fulfilled all he had hoped for and more. And when Isaac met her, he loved her. Now her son Jacob has been on a journey to Haran, the land of Rebekah’s family, and the first member of the family that he meets is Rachel. Beautiful Rachel. He kisses her, he cries, he feels he is finally home. A month later he is in love. Laban and Jacob agree that a marriage can take place after Jacob has worked for seven years. We read this wonderfully romantic sentence in Genesis 29:20: “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.” Isn’t that just the sweetest? And they lived happily ever after…..

Oh wait. We are reading the Bible, not a fairy tale, and we are not even close to the happily ever after part. “Laban! You scoundrel!” The words echoed through the air as Jacob realized he had been tricked in a horrible way. He was bound to Leah now. It did not matter that he thought he was marrying Rachel. Leah was the one he said his vows to, Leah was the one that he slept with. No one else could marry her now; she was defiled for any other marriage. Leah was now Jacob’s responsibility. We feel for Jacob….but we also mourn for Leah. No woman wants to enter into a marriage like this. How awful to know that she is only a wife because the man was tricked, and that she was never loved by him or wanted by him. Adding salt to the wound, only a week later Rachel would also be given to Jacob as his wife, setting Leah up as the third wheel in her own marriage.

What is so sad is that she proceeds to spend the rest of her life trying to make him love her. His love became her idol. Desiring our husband’s love is good. Marriage was designed to be a place of love. “Husbands love your wives” the Lord commands but he also cautioned in Genesis 3 that our desire for that love could become convoluted. We see that happen with Leah who took that desire and let it reign over her life. The purpose of everything she did was to win him over–grasping, fighting, desperate. She did not succeed and it cost her joy, her relationship with God, and her relationship with her sister.

On the other hand, Hollywood would have us rejoice when Jacob marries Rachel. United at last! Love conquers all! However, while culturally and generationally normal to have multiple wives, this was not how God established marriage. So when Jacob marries Rachel, we see the bonds of marriage broken and a new arrangement formed, an arrangement not sanctioned by God. As with the others before them, this arrangement did not bring peace and happiness to the home. It brought immense discord and fighting as the women vied for position and love. What a mess.

Unlike Leah, Rachel had the security of Jacob’s love. He had proved his loved and devotion to her by the years he had worked, his fight to secure her as his bride, and the additional years of work he promised in return for her hand. Yet, it was not enough to satisfy her or to stop her from comparing herself to her sister. You see, while Rachel had Jacob’s love, Leah had multiple children. There is an interesting conversation between Jacob and Rachel recorded in Genesis 30. Rachel is envious of her sister’s fertility and brings her discontent to Jacob. “Give me children, or I shall die!” she demands. And “Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel and he said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?’” Though said in anger, Jacob gave such an insightful answer. Rachel was demanding something from him that only God could provide. 

When God gave the Israelites the ten commandments, he declared, “I am the Lord your God.” (Gen. 20:3) Then he instructed that they should have no other gods before him. This includes our husbands and our children. God gives us this commandment as a protection because he knows that when we look to someone else for what only he can give, we will be greatly disappointed. When we put these expectations on our spouse, discontentment sneaks in and our relationship begins to crumble. Jacob was reminding Rachel of his rightful place in her life. He was her husband. What she was demanding of him, she needed to be speaking to the Lord about. 

Our husbands are called to love us as Christ loved the church, but not to be Christ to us. Our identity, our fulfillment, our worth, our hope all need to be found in the person of Jesus Christ. Shifting our focus off him caused the discontentment and frustration that we see in Leah and Rachel. Turning our eyes to the Lord frees us and our spouses of inappropriate and unrealistic expectations. We can be who God created us to be with each other and find joy in that freedom. As we look to Christ for our identity, he anchors us and fills our hearts to overflowing with his goodness and love. It is this overflow that leads us to praise him as we see Leah doing when she gave birth to her son Judah. It is the same overflow that caused David to say in Psalm 23, “Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” It is praise that speaks to our fullness, our contentment and our assurance in our present and our future because of Christ. When our hearts are anchored in that, beautiful things can happen.