Messy Scriptures #5 : Genesis 29

Twice in this narrative we are told that Jacob loved Rachel. This becomes the crux of this messy Scripture passage.

Jacob works for seven years for Laban to get Rachel as his wife. On completing this, Jacob is given Leah as his wife by Laban. After sleeping with Leah, Jacob realizes that he has been tricked by Laban. Laban appeals to tradition and says that after a week Jacob can also have Rachel in exchange for another seven years of work.

So after seven years and one week, Jacob is finally married to his true love, Rachel and her older sister Leah. Jacob is an unintentional polygamist. Obviously by the standards of his culture this is not that bad of a thing. But clearly this challenges much of what we understand love to be.

In our culture, those who espouse abstinence encourage young people to wait to have sex, at the very least, until they find someone they really love and at the very most, until they are married.

But what are we to do with passages like this and the following story in chapter 30? Jacob apparently does love Leah (v. 30) but he loves Rachel more. Yet to compound the problem, God opens Leah’s womb because he “saw that Leah was unloved” (v. 31). (So was she loved or not?! Guess I’ll take God’s word for it that she wasn’t loved. This just makes the issue all that more vexing!) Rachel is barren perhaps, reading between the lines, because she is loved. Strange.

So what’s poor Jake to do? He’s married to Leah who he apparently doesn’t love but she’s his wife so according to all proponents of abstainence he can have sex with her. Yet he loves Rachel so for her sake and for the sake of their love shouldn’t he abstain from sexual relations with Leah? Confused? I am!

To further complicate things, Rachel is envious of her sister and gives her maid Bilhah to Jacob so she can have children through her. Once Bilhah has two children by Jacob, Leah, who isn’t bearing children anymore at this point, gives her maid Zilpah to Jacob to keep up with Rachel and Bilhah. Zilpah bears two children.

The narrator never tells us how Jacob feels towards Bilhah and Zilpah. It is very clear though that he has sex with them. By today’s Christian moral standards, derived from the Bible, Jacob is a moral disaster! Yet God blesses this moral disaster. Laban says that “I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you” (Genesis 30:27).

Clearly this messy passage of Scripture presents some troubling issues for Christians. Today many assume that God does not bless moral disasters. In fact, many argue that God judges people who are immoral. Some have said that this is the explanation for AIDS, the tsunami, 9-11, and so on and so forth.

But here, one of the patriarchs of Israel, clearly acting in a way that would get his membership revoked from most churches (let alone disqualified for leadership in the church), experiences God’s blessing. What a mess! It makes you wonder if God sees these things quite differently from us.