Clough Genesis Lesson 73
Jacob marries Leah and Rachel – Genesis 29
Before we work into the text this morning we have several feedback cards. One says… it’s not really a question, regarding the military special last week: Since I am a tax expert I have determined that Ross Perot can write off the expense of rescuing his boys in this manner; one half to employee health insurance, one half to implement company affirmative action programs. More seriously, another question: is it wise to use a non-Christian for an example for us Christians. Simon is a slave to sin being unregenerate and we see that he has picked up some good leadership principles but you held him up as a model for us who live under the Word of God. Now besides missing the entire point of the lesson the question also implies that whoever asked it has something the apostles themselves did not have, namely the infallible way of telling whether one is a Christian or not, for to dogmatically say that Simon is a slave to sin being unregenerate. Whoever you are, you must have an unusual piece of equipment to pick that particular fact up. But nevertheless, the point of the lesson last week was metaphor and if this question didn’t get it, I presume some other people didn’t either so I’d better go over that.
The way God has created the world, He has created it with a physical structure, so whether you’re studying lambs or goats, or military men, no comparison intended, the point remains that there is a structure to creation that is there by deliberate intent which, if you study, you will understand more of God’s plan. My point in making it last week isn’t Simon in particular, it’s military men and his mission in general and the point is that unless you are personally acquainted with them, as I fear most of you are not, then the point is you cannot appreciate the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I’m going to be very hardnosed about that point; you are not going to appreciate Jesus Christ unless you’re acquainted with the backgrounds of military metaphor. And in our day we live in a post-draft age when most young men do not consider it patriotic or do not consider they owe anything to their country to join the service for even a short time and therefore many young men do not have this and the girls sort of go along with the same attitude and therefore when you read the Scriptures you are going to lose out on a lot because the Word of God was written in a day when it was not considered unseemly for young men to think that he owed his country a little bit. If you want a book reference, the book of Numbers; the book of Numbers in the Bible doesn’t mean numbers; it’s not a book on arithmetic; the book of Numbers is a book on census, in particular a military census. So the entire book of Numbers is devoted to those young men 20 years and up who have, as their duty, an obligation to their country.
Now if the objection of the feedback card is to using a non-Christian or unbeliever just in general as an illustration for Christians, I think if you are serious you’re going to be shocked to discover that in the book of Isaiah a non-Christian leader is not only held up for an example, he’s held up as an example of Christ, and his name is Cyrus. There’s no evidence in the Scriptures that Cyrus the Great was a believer. Why, then, does the Holy Spirit pick this unbeliever out and hold him up as a Messianic type? The answer is simple, because whether Cyrus was a believer or an unbeliever is beside the point, the point is he was a good leader and Christians, unfortunately, don’t always make the best leaders, so therefore God has to look around till He can find a good leader who operates in the universe correctly and if happens to be a non-Christian, well then, let it be a non-Christian. There’s no less glory to God because God made the leader.
And there was one or two objections over the quoted language last week; it that bothered you I can only refer you to the book of Samuel where all the words I used occur in the book of Samuel. If you want the nitty-gritty facts, see me personally and I’ll out the verses to you.
Genesis 29 is our passage this morning. Genesis 29 is one of a series of chapters that deal with this matter of the call of Abraham. Because we’re going to get involved in details once again we want to go back and look at the overall picture. We said that this period of history, from 2000 BC on down to 1800 BC is a period prior to the rise of God’s kingdom. We refer to that entire period as the call of Abraham. It’s not just the call of the individual man, Abraham, but it’s the call of Abraham, it’s the call of Isaac, it’s the call of Jacob together because before the kingdom can take place it must be founded on a family. The family precedes the nation and therefore, since the family precedes the nation, we have affirmed here which is prior and the Bible puts of course the priority on the family.
The foundation of the
The doctrine of justification says that the goodness of the kingdom is God-generated and God-provided. Man does not provide moral merit to bring this kingdom about; it is not man on operation bootstrap getting better and better all by his little autonomous self and then he suddenly earns the kingdom. No, that’s not the structure. From the very beginning the patriarchs had gobs of sin; rather the point is that because they were sinners who looked to God they were blessed. The goodness is an imputed goodness, imputed from God’s grace.
Then the third thing, the third doctrine emphasized here was the doctrine of faith and that constitutes the vital quality of all this first family of this nucleus family, and that is, they were occupied with the things that God was going to do, not the things that they were going to do.
We saw in Genesis 28 that God affirmed this Abrahamic Covenant to the third generation. We’ve seen the generation of Abraham, we’ve seen the generation of Isaac, we’ve seen the generation of Jacob. So we’ve got three generations and that’s the three generations it took to get the program going. Once the program got going, then with Jacob, which is the last patriarch, we begin to have the breaking up of the family into tribes. So from this point on we move from one family to a clan, and this begins the historical existence of the clan from which we gradually get the kingdom.
Now as God reaffirmed the Abrahamic Covenant to Jacob, in Genesis 28:15 He made a basic promise. This is the kind of way that, in practice, you ought to think, and that is you ought to start with the big promises of God and apply those cosmic big promises to the little problem. We’ll see more about that in 1 Corinthians, but it says “Behold, I am with you.” How can God say “I am with you?” That’s not a solitary promise to be taken out of context; it’s not God patting Jacob on the head and saying he’s a good old boy. What verse 15 is saying is that because of the Abraham, because of my entire eternal plan for history, because of all these details and you and your place in these details, therefore I am with you.
So learn that the promises, like verse 15 that you find repeatedly in the Bible, are there because of the cosmic plan of God. “I am with you, and I will keep you in all places where you go, and I will bring you again into this land, for I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” That promise is the backdrop for the entire 29th chapter of Genesis. So while we work with the details and we’re going to get into wells and women and frustrated women and everything else in chapter 29, we get into all those details, remember, don’t lose the big picture. The big picture is Genesis 28:15 and that promise. That’s the promise God gave this man so when he got into all the problems and adversities, “I will be there with you,” just remember that basic grace orientation.
Genesis 29:1, “Then Jacob went on his journey, and he came into the land of the people of the east. [2] And he looked, and behold, a well in the field, and lo, there were three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks: and a great stone was upon the well’s mouth. [3] And there were all the flocks gathered: and they rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the sheep, and put the stone again upon the well’s mouth in its place. [4] And Jacob said unto them, My brethren, where are you from? And they said, Of Haran. [5] And he said unto them, Do you know Laban, the son of Nahor? And they said, We know him. [6] And he said unto htem, Is he well? And they said, He is well; and behold, Rachel, his daughter, is now coming with the sheep. [7] And he said look, it’s high time” or high day, neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together: water the sheep, and go and feed them. [8] And they said, We cannot [water the sheep] until all the flocks be gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well’s mouth; then we water the sheep. [9] And while he yet spoke with them, Rachel arrived,” literally, “with her father’s sheep, for she kept them. [10] And it came to pass, when Jacob was Rachel, the daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban, his mother’s brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban, his mother’s brother. [11] And Jacob kissed Rachel, and he lifted up his voice, and he wept. [12] And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s brother, and that he was Rebekah’s son; and she ran and told her father. [13] And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob, his sister’s sons, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these things. [14] And Laban said to him, Surely you are my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him about a month.”
This section doesn’t require a genius to see from the vocabulary that the emphasis on verses 1-14 is on the family relationship. Notice how often that takes place. Verse 5, he looks in terms of kinfolk. Verse 6, Laban’s daughter. Then when he comes down to verse 9, “she kept her father’s sheep.” Then in verse 10, “Rachel, the daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother,” and then “Laban, his mother’s brother,” and then “the flock of Laban, his mother’s brother.” And then we go to verse 12, Rachel tells “her father’s brother,” and then “Rebekah’s son,” she tells “her father.” [13] “Jacob, his sister’s son,” and so on, and finally verse 14, “you are my bone and my flesh,” it’s very obvious, using the style of this author, that how he emphasizes himself is in repetitive vocabulary. That’s one of his traits that he uses and he uses it very effectively.
So without going into any detail we know, if we interpret this passage any way we’ve got to explain this heavy, heavy emphasis on family relationship. Why the emphasis. It goes back to a generation before. Abraham has come into the land and he’s had this son; he’s had two but this is the elect son and this elect son must have a wife. And you remember how Abraham arranged to get a wife for his son; he sent an emissary, keeping the son in the land because he knew every time he went outside the land he got in trouble. So the best thing to do was to stay in the land. In this story, in Genesis 29 you see he’s out of the land. Jacob goes outside. Now that represents a deterioration; a deterioration we’ll comment on as we go through Sunday after Sunday in the Genesis series. You can measure this deterioration in the lives of these patriarchs several ways. You can measure it by how God speaks to them, like God speaks very directly to Abraham; less so to Isaac, He speaks quite clear to Jacob, but then by the time we get to the fourth generation in Joseph there is no speaking any more; there are no theophanies any more; it’s all stopped and just dreams are left. And so there’s a deterioration in the God-man relationship. There’s also a deterioration in the moral level of the patriarchs and there’s a deterioration in the amount of worship that is given Jehovah.
So what you have is the first family, the nucleus family of the kingdom, already seriously deteriorating by the third and fourth generation. Obviously what you have taught here is the depravity of man. The Bible is quite frank to say that when God brings his program, even His perfect program into history, it is always via fallen men. It is not because these men are the good little boys that haven’t done anything; it’s rather that God is a gracious God and He is working through bad big boys to bring in His kingdom.
As we watch the text and we see Jacob coming up into the area we have to understand something else. He hasn’t really gone up there to get a wife; now that may be so and that may be an antecedent auxiliary purpose, but his real purpose is to get rid of Esau. Esau is chasing him to kill him. You remember that was the result of the fact that he had a mother who responded to the man’s lack of spiritual leadership; Isaac was not leading so Rebekah was trying to do her thing as a (quote) “homemaker” and wound up as a home-breaker, not because she was an ungodly woman, she wasn’t. She had a good motive but she executed it foolishly; she tried to step in, tried to arrange things, tried to manipulate, tried to maneuver, and all she wound up doing was producing another tribe of Arabs. And the Jews were sorry for centuries afterwards and Jacob is very sorry now because he’s a fugitive.
He comes to these people of the east, very odd and peculiar names, someday if somebody does historical research maybe can explain why that particular clause is used there, we don’t know now. And they come to this particular well with the rock on it. Now this well with the rock has to be seen as a cistern; it’s more like you’d find on a ranch as far as a trough is concerned and it must have been dug underground. The ancients made a lot of use of cisterns underground to avoid evaporation loss. And apparently this is why the rock was placed over it, besides getting dirt and fill in the hole and so on. It probably was fed by an underground stream of some sort into the bottom. But the picture is not the typical well. And again the teller of this story cultivates all of these images because he wants you to see something. Little things are going to happen here, with rocks and people and he’s got to lay out all the materials at the beginning of the story so our mind’s eye sees this. You don’t want to think of a well and lowering a bucket into it. That’s what he’s trying to tell us in verses 2-3; don’t think way. Think in terms more of a trough of water and that trough has a cover on it and the cover is very heavy. The story-teller of Genesis likes detail. And he tells you big chunks of truth through little tiny happenings. One of these is going to be the rock cover.
So the encounter begins in verse 4; Jacob ascertains these people are from his city, apparently quite aways away, verse 5 he ascertains they are kinfolk. Why is he so interested in the family relationship? For the reason that all these patriarchs want women, wives for their sons who have spiritual character and the only place at that time they know is going back into the home area which was more Semitic. That whole area spoke a language which nobody really knows except today linguists call it proto Semitic or northwest Semitic. And this particular kind of language was the archetype language of what we call today Hebrew. This whole group of people had a common culture that was apparently more biblical at least than the Canaanites. And because of the woman’s tremendous influence… remember, this is an argument for women, not against them. Yes, Rachel makes her mistakes but even her mistakes that she makes is an argument for the tremendous role women play in creating civilization. What you’ve got here is nothing less than the creation of the whole new civilization, and that’s why they’re very, very careful about what girls get called to play what roles. Their role is so overwhelmingly important they must be carefully selected.
So the story of Rachel; so in verse 6 Rachel, his daughter, now comes with the sheep. It’s in the participle in the Hebrew which is a present tense and whenever this author uses the present tense that’s another signal. This author, as we’ve said time and time again, and you’ll see this even more later, loves providential timing. He loves in his story to work it out so things just happen; unusual things take place at just the right time. We’ll see an excellent demonstration of that later when Joseph is about to be killed and suddenly the Midianite caravan shows up. Well how come the caravan showed up exactly at the time they’re going to kill Joseph. The author never tells you but you know, as a reader of the Bible you know why these things take place, because God is in charge of circumstances.
And this goes back to a principle which we’ll get into in the course of Corinthians and that is here’s little old you, and you’re surrounded by these details of life and they look like the charge of the mosquito, they’re little things, but they’re very irritating things. And so often we look at these details of life and become very preoccupied with all those details. But the way God wants to train us to respond is to look for the cosmic theme in these details of life, make them interesting, you have to sit there and look at them anyway, might as well think about something. And so think of these large things that grow out of the small things. And so here you’ve got little things, like a rock on a well, like the unusual thing of a shepherdess rather than a shepherd, and the fact that she’s coming at the wrong time of day. You didn’t see the wrong time of day? It’s built into the text, you see what the shepherd said in verse 3 was that the stone was put against the well’s mouth; all right, Rachel now is coming toward this cistern with her sheep. Verse 7, Jacob wants to speak alone with Rachel so he tries to get rid of them. And don’t read romance into verse 7 yet. And the kissing in verse 11 is not necessarily that of romance either, because he also kisses Laban in verse 13. The point here is that the romance starts after verse 15, not before it. Right here the emphasis is on etiquette, Oriental etiquette as they make the contact in the family; that’s the only thing that’s pointed out here.
In verse 7 he wants to get Rachel, presumably for privacy, maybe Esau is right behind him so he doesn’t want to jeopardize the rest of the family by bringing Esau into the situation, so I suggest he has a reason other than romance to have security and privacy in this conversation. Verse 8 tells us very clearly that the timing is important. After he asks the shepherds, hey, can’t you guys do something and get lost for a couple of hours, their reply to him is this is not the time of day when we water our flocks. Jacob knew what time of day to water flocks because he had taken care of the flocks. For him, according to verse 7, this was the time of day. But verse 8 tells you that they had a custom in that land, particularly around that well, that either the well cover or the cistern cover was too heavy and they needed a bunch of the shepherds to do it and therefore they would wait until they all did everything else and then they’d do it toward the evening. So the theme of the text is that this is not the usual time of day to be watering sheep.
Now if we come back to verse 6 that’s the peculiar nature of the timing. Rachel shows up and (a) it is unusual for the girl to be the shepherdess instead of the boy, and (b) she shows up coming toward the well at the wrong time of day. Now isn’t that a convenient set of events? What else could God do to arrange a meeting between Jacob and Rachel? You see, there’s God’s sovereignty working cosmic themes through very small little (quote) “chance” (end quote) occurrences in ordinary details of life. So watch the timing.
Genesis 29:9, “And while he yet spoke with them, Rachel arrived [with her father’s sheep,” the coming of verse 6 is a potential, she’s on the horizon, she’s visible and she’s now coming and then the Hebrew indicates in verse 9, there she arrives “for she kept them. [10] And it came to pass when Jacob saw Rachel,” now he makes all the connections. And in verse 11-12 he confides and he links up the kinship. At this point Jacob is 75 years old; now don’t think of the fact that here you have this old man and he creeks up to the well and puts his cane down and strokes his beard; that’s not the picture that the Genesis narrative wants you to get out of this. You see, back in those times, since we’re just after the flood and you diagram the age level of man before the flood it averages 930 years; after the flood there’s a curve that you get like this and we’re about right there on the curve. So although Jacob is 75 years old, by our standards he’d probably about 40, 35, as far as his physique is concerned and his general physical health.
Now we know that the ancients lived longer this way, Genesis tells you. You can make this for yourself, in the family training program we’ll all do this, make a graph of the data from Genesis 5 and the data from Genesis 10 and 11, and you can graph this out yourself. It always amuses me to have skeptics tell me oh, that was a calendar change, you see back before the flood they had a different calendar and after the flood they had a new calendar system. Well, if that were a calendar change you wouldn’t get a transition curve like this. Those of you who have worked with [can’t understand word] in electricity or some of the other circuitry problems, or you’ve worked in chemistry with changes of state or you’ve worked in physics with mechanics and you indicate certain kinds of motion, you indicate thermal dynamics and heat flow you notice that that curve is an exponential decay curve. Now you’re not going to sit here with a straight face and tell me that the rabbis in 1000 BC took out their calculator and started making up this story so the data would fit an exponential decay curve. But that’s the logic of the liberal who comes and says all this was made up. No, it wasn’t made up. The reason we’ve got an exponential decay curve here is because the data is telling us it’s an exponential decay curve. And that in turn tells us that we’ve got a real change of state between the anatomical state of man prior to the flood and the anatomical state of man after the flood and we’ve got this transition. Well, the transition hasn’t fully occurred to our position and Jacob and these men, Isaac and Abraham, lived before that curve is what we call [sounds like: ass cen toe ted] down to our present level. If this is the situation don’t think of him as Santa Claus with this little sweet young thing, blonde or something, by the well. That’s the wrong picture.
So Jacob, then, verse 10, does something with that stone cover. Now what does that show? Why is that little detail in there? We can only surmise this, not be dogmatic about it, we can only surmise, judging from the style of this author, and that is he loves to show character ahead of main events, and the fact that he’s doing this in verse 10 shows you that Jacob is a doer; he obviously sees this shepherdess girl come, obviously she’s coming to the well so that she can water her flock, and obviously these other clods are sitting around waiting for the sun to set, they haven’t got anything else to do, all three of them will lift this heavy thing off the well; they don’t want to strain themselves. And so here’s a 75 year old man who walks over and says well, this girl needs some water, let’s get her some. And he can’t get these other guys to help, we don’t do that, sort of like a labor union, we don’t do that this time of day so we can’t do it now. Well Jacob says nonsense, she needs some water, let’s do it.
So he reaches over there, grabs it and
takes it off and that shows something of Jacob’s character, because Jacob, the
study of Jacob’s character is critical because Jacob is the first functioning
Jew in history. The other men are
technically Jews but Jacob is the father of the nation. Remember, you talk about
Turn to Genesis 30:43; the most scholarly
recent studies done on anti-Semitism in history have produced some very
startling finds. The most recent studies
that I’ve consulted on anti-Semitism point out two basic causes that have come
up again and again and again, particularly in
Then the second problem is that the Jews
down through history, particularly when orthodoxy reigned, I mean Orthodox
Judaism reigned, were dogmatic that the family will be preserved at all
costs. We don’t care what the king of
But today in the age of the humanist state
the humanist state wants to be the savior and since the humanist state doesn’t
save by blood atonement the humanist state must substitute some other system of
salvation. And so what does the humanist
state do today? It tries to prevent men
from sinning ahead of time, so therefore it creates anti-gun legislation,
taking guns away from people, as though possession of the gun was a crime with
the gun. It takes wealth out of the home
as though possession of wealth was equal to misuse of wealth. And both political parties are affected with
this. Both! You see it in graduated income tax, the idea
that a wealthy person has to pay a higher percent is anti-biblical; a standard
flat rate, 10%, that’s the biblical way of taxation. Now God thought of that, not man. God, it’s true, He didn’t get his doctrine from
the
And Jacob is the first man in history who just doesn’t fit this democratic mold because he’s a go-getter. Genesis 30:43, there’s a summation of Jacob’s character. He is a producer, and by producer we mean that as one of the four ways of gaining wealth in life. There are only basically four ways that you can become a wealthy person. One way is to create your wealth ex nihilo, and nobody’s done that since God in Genesis 1; some have tried it, the government’s now trying it with printing press money, but all that does is lead to inflation so… God’s creation, that’s one way of creating wealth. Another way of creating wealth for yourself is rip it off someone else; that’s called theft, increasingly popular in some quarters. A third way of gathering wealth for yourself is inheritance, a very reputable and not to be ashamed of way. Inheritance is given in Scripture, in fact it’s so honored in Scripture that salvation is pictured as an inheritance from the Lord Jesus Christ to us. Nobody need ever apologize for inherited wealth. If your dad gave you something, you be proud of it; that’s your family possession and you don’t have to hang your head in shame because you inherited something, because we inherited our salvation from Christ and we don’t have to be ashamed of that; same kind of metaphor. And then finally we have production, and that’s the way God ordained. The New Testament says you don’t work you don’t eat. And Genesis 30:43 shows you Jacob’s production. That’s how he became wealthy; God blessed him, he was a high achiever.
That’s his character and it’s shown back here in Genesis 29 with a simple act of running over and getting the top off that well when everybody else is standing around, trying to figure out, well, we can’t do that right now, there’s not enough people—that sort of attitude. Let’s see what happens. Genesis 29:14, they come to Laban’s house and Laban makes an address that is familiar from those who read the Garden of Eden; that phrase, “my bone and my flesh” is basically a partial quotation from the first love song sung by the first man and the first woman of history. “Thou art bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” And what’s that all about? Adam sings to Eve because Eve is his kind of creature, and when Labin says “you are my bone and my flesh,” that’s the picture of closeness of character and background.
So in verse 14 and the passage as a whole, young people who are single, you have here a very valid hunk of wisdom about selecting your future mate, and that is select them as close as possible to your background. The further apart you are by way of background, economically and socially and in other ways the more potential trouble. I’m not saying God can’t lead you across various boundaries; I am saying, however, that in 95% of the time that’s the rule to apply, the bone and flesh principle, getting as close by way of background as you can. Today that begins spiritually; you don’t go out and get involved with a non-Christian if you’re a Christian unless you want Satan for your father-in-law. Therefore, you will talk a little bit about spiritual things. You won’t be like one couple that came to me wanting to be married, and I asked the girl, well is so and so a Christian; oh I don’t know, we haven’t talked about that. What’s that on your finger? It’s an engagement ring. You mean in all this time you’ve never talked about spiritual things. Well not really. Do me a favor and come back three months after you’ve talked through the issue. I never saw them again.
The point is that people who run their life on such a fouled up operation are just headed for disaster and you’re a fool, frankly, if you’re a single person and you don’t deal with these problems and you don’t think them through because they’re not going to evaporate after marriage. We have fifty married people here who can say “amen.”
Now let’s look at the second section of Genesis 29; we’ve had all the introduction, we’ve had the family link up, try to produce some sort of compatibility. Genesis 29:15, “And Laban said unto Jacob, Because you are my brother, should you not therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what will your wages be?” Now we can’t point to motives without biblical controls and so what I’m going to say is just a guess but there have been two motives suggested for verse 15. As I say these are guesses because the text itself leaves it unstated. One might guess that Laban wants to hire Jacob because Jacob is a productive worker. Many of you men are in business for yourself and you know what happens; the rare day when somebody walks in your office and is trained in your area and is a good solid worker, and you’re a fool not to hire them, right there, because good workers are few and far between. So that may well have been one motive for Laban.
Another, however, has been suggested and that is that Laban is a very kind of ungracious individual and he doesn’t want to be socially obligated to Jacob, his relative. So since he’s already been around for a month he wants to say let’s see, I’ll put you on salary and if I pay you now I won’t owe you for anything. That could also be a motive in the situation. Well, after the economic framework gets settled now you have the rise of the romance.
Genesis 29:16, “And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. [17] Leah was” as it says in the King James “tender eyed,” we’ll get to what that is, “but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. [18] And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel, thy younger daughter. [19] And Laban said, It is better that I should give her to you than I should give her to another man, you stay [abide] with me. [20] So Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had for her. [21] And Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. [22] And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and they made a feast. [23] And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah, his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in unto her. [24] And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah, Zilpah, his maid, for an handmaid. [25] And it came to pass that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this that you’ve done to me? Did not I serve thee for Rachel? Why have you beguiled me? [26] And Laban said, It must not be done so in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. [27] Fulfill her week, and we will give thee you this also” this one, the younger one, “for service which you shall serve with me another seven years. [28] And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week; and he gave him Rachel, his daughter, as his wife also. [29] And Laban gave to Rachel, his daughter, Bilhah, his handmaid, to be her maid. [30] And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet another seven years.”
Now this has been thought to be, this whole motif of this tradeoff is thought to be very demeaning for Laban and Laban has been preached against and so on, and obviously Laban isn’t quite the epitome of Christ-like character, but nevertheless, I’m going to go a little easier and give Laban benefit of a doubt here. And it surrounds verse 26; in verse 26 Laban says there is a custom in our land that such and such is the case. And the custom in the land was that a father couldn’t marry off his younger daughter until he got rid of the older one, in this case Rachel and Leah. The older one had to go first. And if nobody would ever marry the older daughter, woe to the younger one; she got stuck. And apparently socially that’s the situation right here. Leah, for some reason, her dating life hasn’t been going too well, and daddy has put up with her for year after year after year and Rachel, she’s got a great date life, only one problem is it’s limited because older sister won’t go get married some place so it’ll free up her. So there is a real social situation from the standpoint of Laban’s family.
But now, we know enough by now from having gone through Genesis that this author is very clever in the way he structures his story, so let’s watch something. We’ve just been through one deception; let’s compare deceptions. Remember the first deception; that was a deception that involved Isaac; and Isaac had been presented with two sons, Jacob and Esau. In the parallel we now have Jacob and he’s presented with two women, Rachel and Leah. Now all of these stories can be read at one level, you know, here’s the specific story and this is an interesting romance and this is what happened. But we know as readers of the Bible and as Christians that we’ve got to read these stories at another level, namely God is working a program through all this.
Now look back at the first deception. What happened here? Isaac had his eyes on Esau; Esau was his favorite son because from his physical perception that was the way to go. So this man was Isaac’s son according to Isaac’s human viewpoint way of looking at things. But we know in the election of God, we’ll draw him as a square because believers are square, Jacob was God’s person. Now the story of the deception does involve a sin, that is, Rebekah got into the situation and gummed it up, but the point still remains that the outcome was what God wanted. The outcome was that Jacob walked away carrying in his hands the inheritance papers to his father’s estate and to his father’s blessing. That’s the end result He wanted. The problem was, in addition to the end result that God wanted there was a little peripheral baggage that had been unauthorized and added to the system and that is suffering; suffering that grew out of a ruptured home because somebody butted into the system and tried to wrench it around with a human gimmick. Now had they left it the way God was going to work it out, He’d work it out some way so you’d have Jacob walking off with the inheritance papers without the suffering and the heartache and the broken home. That’s the story of that deception.
Now let’s look at the deception we’re observing in Genesis 29. I’m going to show you later on that the mother, two of these girls, one becomes the mother of the Messianic seed and it’s not Rachel, it’s Leah. And so once again you have, so to speak, God’s woman who will be the mother of the Messianic seed, is the one who is not preferred at the beginning. From the human point of view Jacob has his eyes on Rachel like Isaac had his eyes on Esau. And the story emphasizes this, just like you remember when I went through this story I kept telling you at the beginning, who is at the forefront of the story, Esau or Jacob? It was always Esau, wasn’t it? For two chapters all you read about was Isaac/Esau, Isaac/Esau, Isaac/Esau and then later up comes Jacob, and then he supplants Esau. Well, this story presents the same thing. Who does he meet at the well first? It’s Rachel, it’s not Leah; it’s Jacob and Rachel, Jacob and Rachel, Jacob and Rachel, and on the morning after oh-oh, wrong one, and that’s how she gets introduced to the situation. So both stories have this parallel.
The theology of it, that’s the detail, now what’s the theology of this? God wants to produce a Messianic seed. Who is the key in rearing the child? Mother. All right, He wants the right mother; you’re going to see things happen in the story that shows this woman is picked out, terribly handled, true, but nevertheless she winds up in a mother’s position over the Messianic line.
Another thing we want to point out before we go too far with these two girls and that is the setting physically for the story began where? The setting began at a well. Now isn’t this interesting, this theme of a well. Over and over again in the Scripture the women, the key women, show up at a well. For example, where do we meet Hagar? She’s at the well. Where does Isaac’s messenger meet Rebekah? At the well. Where does Jacob meet Rachel? At the well. And where does the Lord Jesus Christ carry on one of the most extensive conversations with a woman in the Gospels? At the well. Now why is the woman always associated with the well? Now we believe literally and physically these wells were there and these women were at the side of these physical wells, but we also believe that that itself was sovereignly arranged so that the wisdom literature, Proverbs in particular, takes the woman and metaphorically associates her with the well of water of life. And therefore the woman’s character as the one who brings forth life is affirmed. That’s why these women always happened to be located at a well; when they happened, so to speak, to meet their man, all the way into John when the woman at the well meets her man, who was the Savior at that point.
Looking at this theme now and watching the inter action; verse 17, “Leah was tender-eyed,” the Hebrew here is very hard to come across; the word for “tender-eyed” is a word that is used in the Bible for a child who has undeveloped character and who also is delicate and not… well, not ready for the world, so to speak, naïve, these are the things, delicacy, naiveté, just not ready for the hard world’s knocks; that’s the attitude. Now what that means when it refers to eyes is a matter of conjecture. Apparently it could mean… it obviously means at least that she would tend to be shy and that may explain one reason why she was having problems in her date life, she was the kind of girl that just would kind of evaporate, a wall flower, you couldn’t tell her from the wall, not because she wasn’t an attractive girl, it’s just her personality wasn’t just out there, you didn’t see it. And she was always living in the shadow of her younger sister. Obviously the next part of verse 17 points out that her younger sister was much more physically attractive than she was. And so the guys would come by for a date and they thought they were going to go with Leah, and they’d say hey, the younger one looks a little better, I think we’ll just go out with her for tonight. And obviously when this happened time and time again you can imagine the affect it produced on Leah, making her more shy, making her more hurt and inward grown.
So when we come down to verse 26 I suspect that Laban pulled this stunt off in much the same spirit that Rebekah pulled the other stunt off, except Laban didn’t have a godly objective, I think in this case I’ll grant Laban the benefit of the doubt that he was (quote) “doing what was best for his older daughter.” I don’t think he necessarily was going to withhold Rachel, but he knew under the custom of verse 26 to get this together he had to get Leah out of the way Jacob was the first possible linkup he could try, the first guy that’d been in the home for the last five years and so therefore this guy comes through the door I’m going to nab him and I’m going to get that older girl married off so now we can work with Rachel. So I’m trying to recreate the scenario as far as Laban’s mental attitude. It wasn’t just he was trying to be a stinker, I don’t believe; I think it was he was trying to (quote) “help” his daughter. Well, he helped her all right, he put her into a living hell is what he did. Let’s look at what happened.
Genesis 29:27, “Fulfill her week,” that means seven days, they had a marriage feast that went on so here’s the wedding, wedding day number one and seven days went on for celebration and at the end of that wedding number two took place. So you can see the first marriage never got off the ground. I mean, polygamy is one thing but good night, a wife ever seven days is quite another story. At least in the Mosaic Law you had to be with your wife one year to get things settled. And this was so emotionally devastating to the woman that in Leviticus 18:18 the Mosaic Law prohibits this from ever taking place again. A man who is a polygamist can marry many different women but he cannot marry the sister of one of the women that he already married. It is to preserve some of the tremendous tension that went on in this situation.
Let’s look at the tension because the story concludes with God’s being gracious, not so much to Jacob but to Leah. Here’s the girl, probably felt very unwanted in her own home, imagine if she really was the cause of the singleness of her younger sister. Imagine day after day after day as the guys would kind of eye Rachel and Rachel would look over to Leah. What’s Leah supposed to do? Wanting to die, that’s what she wanted to do; probably 100 times a year that girl was down because of this tremendous pressure all the time. So that was her home life. Then she gets married off into a situation like this and what is her next experience in living? Living in a home with her sister, the same girl that she was competing with all the time she was growing up, with a husband who basically does not love her, basically passed off by her dad into another even less favorable living situation. You couldn’t ask more suffering from a woman emotionally and soulishly than what you’ve got here with Leah.
So ladies, in verse 31-35 you can watch how
God deals with a woman in sanctification in this kind of situation; it’s all
there in the names of her son. And so we
have a little dramatic piece of Scripture that shows God being compassionate to
a woman in a tremendously devastating situation. I’ll red it through and then we’ll explain
some of those verses. “And when the LORD
saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren. [32] And Leah conceived, and bore a son, and
she called his name Reuben; for she said, Surely the LORD has looked upon my
affliction; now therefore my husband will love me. [33] And she conceived again, and bore a son;
and said, Because the LORD has heard that I was hated, He has therefore given
me this son also: and she called his name Simeon. [34] And she conceived again, and bore a son;
and said, Now this time will my husband be joined [become attached] unto me,
because I have borne him three sons: therefore his name was called Levi. [35] And she conceived again, and bore a son:
and she said, Now will I praise the LORD: therefore she called his name
Notice this; here from verse 31-35 you have a packet of Scripture. Watch the logic of it; how does that start; look carefully at how verse 31 starts. The Lord looks down and He sees Leah and He does something for her. What does He do? He allows her to conceive. Conception, incidentally in the Scripture is never viewed as chance or automatic. Here’s one of the proof texts where conception in the Scripture is always considered to be a sovereign work of God. He causes her to conceive. How does the passage end in verse 35? She stopped conceiving. Well, the passage begins with the Lord looking at her; the passage ends with her praising God, and stopping conception. So what you’ve got between verse 31 and verse 35 is God’s little sanctifying program that’s working out just between God and Leah. All Jacob is doing is providing sperm and that’s the limit to his role here. He has no role in verse 31-35. Jacob’s completely out of it, out of the picture. Why? Because this is a personal story of one woman in a horrible marriage and how can she attain happiness in this marriage.
Well, what’s going to happen is this. We’ll get into the details of names in just a moment, it won’t take long but I want to show you the big picture. The woman’s happiness is going to depend on the definition and meaning and purpose of her life. Here’s the woman’s life who normally would be defined as the helper for her husband, ala Genesis 2, but it isn’t because of the awful situation in which she exists. The purpose of her life isn’t that; at least it isn’t appreciated to be that. So therefore how is God going to work on this woman to keep her going on, not committing suicide for example, a lot of women in this situation would commit suicide. How does she keep that woman’s hope going day after day after day in that awful situation? Because God gives her a reason before Him to live. That’s why.
The point of the story is she’s finally going to realize that she has a purpose to life that is bigger than her husband and if he doesn’t recognize it, that’s his problem. The key problem is that she recognize it, that she, now necessarily her husband, she may never be appreciated by Jacob; maybe she was, maybe she doesn’t but you don’t find any text in verse 31-35 that gives you a hint at the attitude of her husband; not a hint. The only one that you get the attitude is that it’s all negative. No appreciation. So how does a woman keep on keeping on? By knowing in the depths of her heart that her life has a purpose. And you can take all hell on earth if you know your life has a purpose. What you can’t take is when your life is purposeless. I have seen people go to the hospital with as minor a thing as appendicitis and die there, not because of doctor’s malpractice but die because they just wasted away in bed; one thing happened and they just totally cratered out, young people. How did that happen? They had no hope or reason for purpose, “let me die in this bed” was their attitude and they died in their bed. It’s the death wish of a non-purposeful life.
Let’s watch what happens; the Lord opens
her womb. Rachel was barren. So interestingly who does God work with first
in the marriage? He works with His
woman, Leah. Next, she conceives and she
bears a son, Reuben. I needn’t go into
the details, those of you who have new translations will notice there will be a
marginal reference that will key you to the fact that the word “Reuben” means
“see a son” or “behold.” And she says
“the LROD has looked upon my affliction,” and the reason for this is… this word
comes across in the English as “Reu” means to see, and “ben” is the son; “see,
a son.” But she makes a pun on the
name. The word for misery is also [can’t
understand] and it sounds something like ben but it isn’t, and so it’s Reuben
but “see in my affliction” is what it literally reads and that’s what she says. So here’s what happens. God gives her a purpose for life. That’s the objective blessing; she’s
beginning to produce the tribes of
But then what does she do at the end of verse 32. She takes the objective blessing of God in her life but because she’s so pained, she’s so hurt, she turns around and she says I’m going to use that as a gimmick to make my husband pay attention to me. And so she turns around and she says now my husband is going to have to love me; it’s more of the idea that there’s an obligation to it. He’s going to have to love me now. No he doesn’t, sorry lady, that just isn’t the way it works; it’s tragic but that’s not the way it works. And so she takes the objective blessing, and she tries to gimmick it. It doesn’t work. So she goes to the second son and she conceives again. Simeon comes from the word to hear, “Because the LORD has heard me, that I was hated, therefore He hath given me this son: and she called his name Simeon.” The idea again is that God is blessing her, He’s given her a second purpose for life—mother of tribe number two. But still, because she’s hurt, because she’s mad, because she’s upset, she doesn’t have the eyes to see. And she keeps looking in the wrong place. God’s over here, lady look over here, look what I’m doing, independently of your husband I’m giving you two purposes for life now. But no, my husband, my husband, my happiness is my husband, my happiness is my husband, my happiness is my husband’s attitude. No it isn’t; your happiness is your relationship to God, independently of your husband. But no, second child, my husband, my husband, my husband is everything.
The third one, she’s still going at it. The word “Levi” looks likes lavah [sp?] which is the Hebrew verb to attach, and so she says now my husband is going to be joined because I’ve given him three sons. She’s evidently cognizant of the fact that Jacob is going to be the father of a nation, she recognizes the tribal nature of this, I’ve given my husband three of his tribes for his new nation, now he’s go to love me, he’s got to feel attached to me. And God says sorry lady, your happiness isn’t your husband; your happiness is your relationship with God first.
Finally, in the fourth time the whole scene
shifts, “And she conceived again, and she bore a son: and she said, Now I will
praise Jehovah.” And the word “Yehuda” looks like this, this little
prefix here is an abbreviation for Yahweh and the word “I praise” is this word,
and you can see they dropped off this word, combined these three, and put these
two up there and that’s the word “Yehuda.” Now, after she bears this son her mental
attitude changes; finally, after God is blessing this woman and blessing this
woman and saying I know you’ve got a bad situation woman, so I’m working in the
situation to give you purpose—my purpose is with my husband; I give you a
second purpose—my purpose is with my husband; third purpose—my purpose is with
my husband. Finally the fourth one, ah,
that’s what you’re trying to say to me, so now my praise, I praise
Jehovah. And now she stops bearing
because the bearing process generated four tribes of
Now something else, it’s just a little fine point in the text but parents can appreciate this. You know, those of you who are parents, how your attitude oftentimes, maybe you are in distress when your child is very young, maybe you were uptight when your child was young and today as your child has gotten older you can see in that child’s behavior responses that were generated because you weren’t sharp or you just were ill or you were tired, when you’re trying to raise that small child and the child today bears that mark. Isn’t it interesting, of all four sons, which one is going to be the Messianic seed? The one that’s brought into the home after mamma changes her mental attitude. So God keeps on letting her bear and He refuses and holds up the Messianic seed until the mamma gets her mind straightened and when she finally gets her mind where it belongs, on the Lord instead of her husband, then and only then does God give her the motherhood over the Messianic seed. I think that says something about how God very delicately understands the nature of the home.
What has this story shown? As I’ve said before, Genesis 28:15, “I am with thee, and I will keep thee in all places where you go and I’ll bring you again into this land.”
We’ll conclude by singing….