Genesis 29:1, 15-28
July 27, 2014
“What,
sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.”
Of
all the memorable quotes from Mark Twain that I’ve read over the years, that
one remains my favorite. I admit that I
don’t know its context. I should
probably do some research and find out the circumstances in which Mr. Twain uttered
those simple but profound words. But
even not knowing those particular details, this quote makes me think that
Samuel Clemens was ahead of his time in more ways than one.
As
we make our way through Genesis, learning again about the patriarchs of our
faith – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – we read again and again about the promise and
the covenant between God and them; the covenant God was determined to
keep. The covenant of blessing and
abundant offspring that God made with Abraham continues with Jacob. Jacob, in spite of being a scoundrel and a
trickster, has received God’s promise that his descendants will not only be
numerous, they will number even more than the dust of the earth. They will inhabit every corner of the
world. Through Jacob’s offspring the
world, every family, every person, will be blessed.
But
in order for this vast population bearing God’s blessing to be realized, one
factor is of vital importance.
Woman. Jacob can’t start this
baby boom by himself. It takes a
woman. In Jacob’s case, it takes
four.
In
last week’s text, the story of Jacob’s dream and the staircase which crossed
the line between heaven and earth, we read about Jacob on the run. He has fled
his brother’s rage and death threats and traveled to the land of his mother to
meet his uncle Laban. What we don’t read
in this week’s text is his arrival in Haran.
Jacob comes to a large well where the sheep of the field were
watered. He sees some shepherds there
and asks them if they know Laban. As he
is speaking with them, Rachel, Laban’s youngest daughter, comes to the well
with her father’s sheep. When Jacob sees
Rachel, he walks up to her and moves the stone away from the mouth of the well
so that she can water the flock.
Apparently, it is love at first sight, because he is so moved by the
sight of her that he not only moves the stone away, he kisses her and weeps
aloud. He tells Rachel that he is her
relative, and she runs to tell her father.
Laban,
hearing that his nephew Jacob has come to their land, runs back to the well to meet
him. Laban greets Jacob, brings him
home, and makes him welcome. Jacob has
already stayed with Laban a month when we come to our place in the story.
Laban,
seemingly not wanting to take advantage of Jacob, tells Jacob that he can’t
work for Laban for nothing. What does he
want as wages? Jacob wants Rachel. He asks to marry Rachel. Laban has two daughters. We’ve already met Rachel, who is described as
graceful and lovely. But he has an older
daughter as well. Leah. The only physical description we are given
about Leah is that she has “lovely eyes.”
In other versions Leah is described as having “weak eyes.” The Hebrew phrase that is translated as both lovely and weak is uncertain at best. I
remember talking about this textual dilemma when I was in seminary. The literal translation reads more like Leah
has “eyes like a cow.” There’s obviously
idiom involved with this phrase, but no contemporary translator quite knows
what that idiom means. I’m sure there
are plenty of cows with lovely eyes.
There are probably cows with weak eyes as well. But whether Leah had eyes that were cow-ish,
weak, or lovely, there was something different about them. There was something about her eyes that stood
out. But her lovely, different eyes did
not seem to compare to her sister’s graceful beauty. Jacob had no interest in Leah. He wanted Rachel.
He
wanted her so badly that he was willing to work for Laban for seven years
without complaining in order to win her hand.
The text says that those seven years seemed like only a few days to
Jacob, his love for Rachel was so deep and strong. The seven years come to an end, and in other
stories we might have a happy ending.
But here comes the plot twist.
Jacob goes to the marriage bed thinking he’s going to be with his love,
Rachel. Instead he wakes up to Leah! Laban’s excuse? The younger daughter cannot be married before
the older one. The trickster has been
tricked. The younger sibling who usurped
the rights of his firstborn brother, is now caught by another rule of the
firstborn. A rule Jacob obviously didn’t
see coming. Laban promises Jacob that
Rachel will also be his wife after the initial bridal week. But Jacob must work another seven years for
Laban.
This part of the story
goes beyond our verses today. Jacob is
married to Leah. Poor Leah with the
different eyes, she knows she is unloved by her husband, but she is blessed
with four sons. Rachel is loved by him,
but she struggles with infertility, just as Sarah and Rebekah did. Thanks to their father, these two sisters are
in competition for their shared husband’s affections. The sisters both give him their handmaidens,
Zilpah and Bilhah, as their surrogates and these women also bear Jacob
sons. One man. Four women.
Twelve sons. One daughter. Twelve tribes. A new nation.
It’s like the show Sister Wives
on steroids.
Whatever our cultural
and moral disapproval of polygamy, it was an accepted and standard practice in
that context. While I’m not thrilled about
it, what bothers me even more is the invisibility of these women. True, we know their names, which is more than
can be said for other women we read about in scripture. Yet I cannot help but wonder what Leah and
Rachel, what Zilpah and Bilhah, thought and felt about their situation. Did Rachel feel the same way about Jacob as
he felt about her? Did she want to marry
him as much as he wanted to marry her?
What was it like for Leah to be snuck into Jacob’s tent so he could be
deceived into marrying her instead of her sister? How did she feel about being married through
such an underhanded way, as if she had no other prospects for finding a
husband? And the two handmaidens? The designation handmaiden sounds gentle, but essentially they were slaves to be
given. Not only were they “given” to
Leah and Rachel to serve them, they were also “given” to Jacob to bear his
children. How did these four women feel
about the way they were used and bartered and traded like property? Certainly, that’s just the way it was done in
that time and place, but that doesn’t mean that these women didn’t have
opinions or feelings or hopes or dreams of their own. They weren’t invisible; they were real flesh
and blood humans. But in many ways these
women were treated as if they were.
Much of the story of our
faith is written from the male perspective.
It was the dominant perspective, so it’s not surprising that it’s the lens
through which we read their story, our story.
But the blessing of God required both the patriarchs and the
matriarchs. So it seems to me that this
story of two sisters is as equally important as the story of two brothers. Jacob would not be the Jacob we know without
Leah and Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah. These
sisters, these women, were necessary for the blessing of God to be
fulfilled. They were necessary for the
descendants of Jacob to be as many as the dust of the earth. These women were as important to the story of
God’s purpose being enacted in the world as Jacob was, as Isaac was, as Abraham
was. God worked through them all, these
flawed and dysfunctional men and women, to bring forth God’s blessing in the
world. God worked through them all,
calling them, challenging them, loving them, so that the story of God would go
on.
Maybe that’s the
primary lesson we take from this scripture today. Not only are both men and women necessary and
needed for God’s blessing and promise to be fulfilled, but God’s story is told
through unlikely characters and strange voices.
There is no predicting how God will work through people, but we should know
by now that the folks we think least likely are probably the ones God will
choose first. The story of God continues
to be told. And perhaps the good news is
that we are part of that story, unlikely and unworthy as we may feel. But if we are part of God’s ongoing story,
promise, and blessing, than so are others; others who look, act, think, and
speak differently from us. The story of
God is still being written through the scoundrels, the voiceless, the
forgotten, the lovely, the loathsome, the quiet, the quirky, the ones who are
on the run, the ones who remain. The
story of God is still being written through every flawed man, woman and child
in this world. The story of God is still
being written through every one of us.
May we trust and believe that God’s blessing and promise of love, mercy,
and grace will be fulfilled through us and all people, in spite of
ourselves. Let us give thanks that God’s
story continues, that God’s blessing and love is unending, that God’s
surprising choices include us. Let all
God’s children say, “Alleluia.” Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment