Bible Women: Leah and Rachel, Two Sisters’ Bitter Rivalry and Hate

And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me? Gen 29:25 

Jacob on the Road to Godliness

By all appearances the injustice Jacob suffered at the hands of his uncle Laban was huge.

‘wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?’

No one can imagine these words coming from Jacob. But they are his, and he had just come from conning his brother out of his blessings.

But now he hardly has time to sit down than he meets his match in his uncle Laban.

He loved Rachel. When he saw her for the first time he ‘lifted up his voice, and wept.’ And probably that was a bad omen. For the rest of his life at his uncle’s place was nothing short of tears.

He had just put in seven years hard labour as dowry for his love, only for his father in law to con him. And then as if to add salt to injury, Laban asked Jacob to put in another seven years labour now for his rightful fiancée. It almost sounds like being charged twice for the same service.

But Jacob’s love for Rachel was so strong that those years seemed as nothing.

God had mellowed him. In another era Jacob should’ve fought for his rights like a man, but he didn’t. Besides he was in a fix. He had slept the whole night with Leah without realizing she wasn’t Rachel. And by all accounts he was now married to her.

There is a warning familiar to shoppers which says, ‘Goods once sold cannot be returned.’ Jacob had made his bed and now he must sleep in it.

People accuse God wrongly for lacking a sense of humour. But we err to think him angry and serious looking all the time. ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.’ So even God laughs.

Laban is the face of a consummate worldly man. He looks not on another man’s affairs but on his own. He simply called a feast of men. And in that feast the fate of his daughters was sealed (Gen 29:22).  

When Traditions Become Prisons

I suppose that was the tradition at the time. So Leah sleeps with a man the whole night without raising her voice. And the man doesn’t talk either until morning when the truth harshly dawns on him.

Few girls would wish to have Laban for their father, and even less, for a man to have him as his father in law.

So Laban gives Jacob another offer which he knew he couldn’t refuse. Perhaps he might, if Leah had been more beautiful, but she wasn’t.

And from that moment a hungry father in law sentences his own daughters to misery throughout their lives.

But Leah Sought her Refuge in God

Feeling the coldness of her husband, Leah finds consolation in her God and the names she gives her children.

Reuben: ‘the LORD hath looked upon my affliction.’

Simeon: ‘Because the LORD hath heard that I was hated.’

Levi: ‘Now this time will my husband be joined unto me.’

Judah: ‘Now will I praise the LORD.’

Issachar: ‘God hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to my husband.’

Zebulun: ‘God hath endued me with a good dowry; now will my husband dwell with me.’  

The names of her children reek of rejection. They are a permanent memory to the arduous years of hate and struggle which she endured.

Jacob’s special love was Rachel. And a man will keep the whole village awake at night while he sings about his newfound beauty’s charms. He will murmur her name as he works, eats and sleeps.

I think we do well to imagine (as poets usually do) that this was the scenario which Leah was condemned to see every day with her own eyes.

And her only consolation was that God had made her extra fertile while her sister Rachel’s womb went ominously silent. 

The Two Sisters: A Comparison in Temperaments

Leah, ugly, and dejected, turns out in the end as humble, content and at peace with herself and her God. ‘Now will I praise the LORD’!

What she lacked in physical beauty she made up for her inner beauty. It defiantly shines through and through amid all her trials.

She had patience, she had perseverance, and she evokes an almost divinely serene and halcyon poise, all the virtues which were sorely lacking in her younger choleric sister - ‘Give me children, or else I die.’

The psalmist has made, I think, a very fitting description of an angry person’s countenance: ‘When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth’. For Rachel, I fear she might’ve come very close to this resemblance in her perpetual thanklessness.

But what a contrast and final end: Rachel dies earlier, and ironically, she dies in childbirth.

For Rachel her every day was a dawn which never quite lengthened into the full day. Her determination to catch up with her sister never quite wavered until the end (Joseph, meaning ‘The LORD shall add to me another son.’). So she dies in the end almost a bitter woman.

In Jacob We Have a Type of all Believers

But God had been at work all along.

For it is a very different Jacob we meet in the end than the one we met at the beginning. The old has passed away, and behold, the new has come.

He suffers terrible injustices but he holds his peace, trusting his pains to God instead. By the time he leaves his employment, and sets back on his journey home, Jacob is at peace even with his chief enemy, that is his brother Esau.

‘When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him’ (Pro 16:7). 

Jacob in the end dies and is buried next to Leah, so in death, he at last dwells with her as was her prayer in life.

Thus too are the many trials for a believer in this life. But throughout it all God proves faithful. The world is not our home. We are but pilgrims and sojourners here. Be strong therefore in the Lord until the end.

Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. Act 14:22  

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. Mat 10:22 

Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. 2Ti 3:12   

Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? Luk 24:26  

Bible Women: Rebekah, Tough Love and Family Lies

And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them. Gen 27:13  

The Books Which Are Hard to Write

The Bible is an amazing book because it is written by God. In it, it lays everything bare, without any attempt to cover up, or to embellish.

And that is why the flavour of the Bible remains distinct. We cherish it, because in it, it says the things we ourselves would never say alive.

Have you ever read the last line of Psalm 137? It is a terrible reading. Yet the Bible does not flinch to say it.

I’m sorry about last Sunday. Something flashed. The lights went off in my mind. And suddenly it was dark. I grimaced because I recognized that man in the first paragraph.

Why Do We Lie?

Basically we lie to hide pain. Yet the Bible, at its most basic form, is a book of pain.

Genesis can make a depressant read. It opens in splendor, but suddenly the curses pour in. And Cain doesn’t hesitate to maul his brother to death.

The next chapter resembles a graveyard. ‘And Adam lived… and he died’, ‘And Seth lived…and he died’, ‘And Enos lived…and he died’…

But the Bible does not lie.

All of us know Abraham as a good man. But his wife is barren for ninety years. In fact barrenness runs the gamut of the first book of the Bible. Rebekah is barren for twenty years. Next Rachel is barren…

The rest of the Bible books are a study in pain. Study, rather, of the nature of sin. In its wake, it leaves a molten sea of grief. It’s a geyser spewing its muck on the face of humanity - anger, hate, and bitterness.

But the Bible is also a book of the greatest love and the greatest comfort. It is the incomprehensible story of a Husband who loves his Bride to death – even when she’s barren.

The Lie which Earned Grace!

It is the sort of story which only the Bible can tell.

Rebekah’s beginning is very bright. But it is towards the end of it that the colours of her life grow very faint. Is this the same Rebekah who went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up, and she said to a stranger, ‘Drink, my lord’?

And that caravan of camels which accompanied her, and gifts, and veils…? What happened?

First it was the long period of barrenness. Next, and after a long wait, the troubled pregnancy.

Pain happened.

She went to God in prayer, but she never forgot what God told her about the fight which was taking place in her womb.

She brought forth pain.

Both Rebekah and her husband are old. But their days are short, and memory.

Isaac’s love for Esau overclouds his thoughts, and his judgment. But Rebekah loves Jacob. And isn’t that the same in families up to this day?

Providence steps in and she gets wind of what her blind husband was planning to do. And immediately, rather than go down on her knees, she sets plans for the salvation of her own beloved Jacob, by her own strength. She did right, but she did it very wrongly.

‘Yea, and he shall be blessed.’ Esau’s bitterness echoes that of his father. He blessed, but he was cheated into blessing the wrong person!

And how did Rebekah fare afterwards?

“Upon me be thy curse, my son,” she had uttered those terrible words in her haste.

“I am weary of my life”. These are part of the last words we hear from her in the Bible. Rebekah dies and she gets buried without our knowledge.

Barrenness in the New Testament

Barrenness, like leprosy, is a very prevalent condition in the Old Testament. But in the new it is not so much a physical condition as it is spiritual.

‘And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’ (Mat 10:28).  

Probably the women in the New Testament who suffered the condition were too ashamed to face Jesus with their humiliation. At least the woman with the issue of blood for twelve years was. She chose rather to touch him. That way no one would know her state.

But that is exactly what Christ didn’t want to happen. Silence is a killer. And she had been silent for twelve years.

How long have you been silent yourself?

She had been silent. And now she wanted to disappear in the crowds without a single word! But Christ called her, and in Christ she found her voice (Luk 8:47).

Have you found yours yet? We suffer depression because we disappear in the crowd quietly.

‘When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.’ ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me?’

So we are free, but on the other hand, we are not quite free. And there is no worse barrenness than that of the soul.

He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. Pro 28:13 

For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Luk 12:2 

For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called. Isa 54:5  

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. Rom 9:10-16   

Bible Women: Sarah’s 90 Years of Patience

And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken. Gen 21:1 

God’s School of Faith

I knew a man once who had a wife. But for seven years they had no child. And their relationship broke at the seams after seven years because of that. Many more break for even the shortest time than that. But Sarah had been patient without a child for ninety years. As for Abraham, his solitude had lasted one hundred years.

'Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?' (Gen 17:17). 

Faith is Crazy

In life something happens which changes the course of one’s life forever. Abraham’s came when God appeared to him in Mesopotamia with orders to move.

But Abram (for that was his name then) was seventy five when he heard this. He had great substance and a great wife but no children. The people God chooses are strange. He loved Abel (in accepting his offering) but Cain’s he rejected. Yet Abel dies without uttering a single word in the Bible though his voice is still speaking from the grave. We feel Abel’s goodness up to this day, though in another sense, we don’t really know him.

One feels something like that about Abraham.

At seventy five and with a barren wife for that long, he should’ve married another, for insurance purposes, but he didn’t. We know he loved Sarah, so much so that he seemed quite ready to die childless with her though he had great substance. And I say a crazier love than that I have never met.

Silent fellows are queer and I suspect Abraham was a silent fellow. Silent fellows almost look dumb from outside. They do things, which to majority of people, are simply crazy. And they can stick with one thought (even when it bears no fruit!) for ages. They are never in a hurry. So Abraham at seventy five, married and childless, doesn’t even begin to sound alarmed. He moved around with his tent (and his grief, for silent people are also heavy grief carriers), and wife and substance, planting an altar everywhere to a God people didn’t see, and obeying him heroically. Can it get crazier than that?

And so through one man’s obedience (and patience) God shows us very calmly and almost imperceptibly how faith looks like. 

The Beauty of Sarah Never Diminished with Age

She was beautiful. Even at her age kings still lusted after her. First it had been Pharaoh and his whole household who wanted her for their wife. Next it was Abimelech king of Gerar. And in both instances Abraham pleaded with her to save his skin by saying she was his sister and not wife. But in both instances God stepped in to save her (and her queer man) from libidinous men.

The next we hear of Sarai (for that was her name before) is when she is pleading with Abram to ‘go in unto’ her handmaid Hagar. Out of desperation she gave her to him for a wife. And Hagar conceived immediately. And the result of that fission is our present day Middle East.

Sarah’s Hidden Pains

For much in Abraham’s life Sarah is quiet. We can picture Eve as gusto, but not Sarah. Mostly she is much inside the tent than out. Abraham is the one who is out a lot, at one time with visitors (but who in reality are angels), at one time with God himself, and at other times with Lot his nephew, and of course, he is first and foremost a herder. 

But Sarah is inside the tent a lot. That seems to be where her whole life was concentrated – and her grief. Outside the birds had ceased to sing for her. And why would she want to flaunt her unhappiness out there? It is never a glad thing to be pitied, and, to be at her age and without a child, is to invite a lot of pity.

There is a laughter which one can give through clenched teeth. I suspect Sarah’s laughter was like that inside that tent when the angels heard her.

God is very Considerate Especially towards Women

There is much that God kept from Sarah’s knowledge, for her own sake. Like the knowledge about sacrificing her only son. That knowledge might’ve been heartbreaking, even inconsiderate for God.

Ladies, it is not that God is anti-women. It is only because he is considerate.

Try for a moment, to place a woman, in the place where Christ stood on the hill to Calvary, her face and skin bloody, her hair a twisted mass of thorns, her back slumped under the weight of her cross, and with a rowdy gang of men jeering at her, spitting, and piercing at her angrily with the tip of their swords.

Perhaps you can, but God cannot.   

A woman (in most instances) is like a bruised reed, which in God’s mercy, he cannot further break.

There is a place for suffering for all of us, but God cannot test one beyond what they can endure.

So for Job, after his famous lamentations, God reprimands him with a call to behave like a man. God would never ask a woman to behave like that.

But in the matter of offering comfort and encouragement, a woman is more like God than a man (whereas men, like Job’s friends, are usually very blind on that score).

In Abraham and Sarah’s life the ladder of faith only went up but never down. Every activity of their lives seemed only directed at testing their faith. And is that not so with every Christian living today? But pray without ceasing so that you don’t fall into temptation.

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith… Rom 4:13…22

Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. Gal 4:28-31

Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.

Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. 

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Heb 11:11-13  

  

Bible Women: Eve, the Mother of Us all

And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. Gen 3:20 

The Bible’s Great Love Story Begins Here

From today I want (by God's grace) to attempt a series on the women of the Bible starting with Eve.

God called her Help. Adam called her Eve. She evokes something pleasant, which I think she should, because her parent was God.

Adam loved her, we know that, because she offered him the forbidden fruit and he ate it without question.

Eve had many firsts, being the first woman of the world, the first wife, the first mother, and sadly, the first transgressor of God’s commandment.

She was Adam’s rib, from an operation that God himself undertook, without anesthetics. That is how beautiful she was, because God’s cut produces only the best.

Adam was lucky. God did everything for him. It was him who came up with the idea, him who ‘courted’ her for him, and him who gave him the garden called Eden for a ‘wedding’ gift.

She was also the last woman God ever courted for man, perhaps, after Adam (on being tempted like she was) answered God rather curtly, ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’

And so Adam, typical of men everywhere, did not just thank God for everything, but he also blamed him for everything.

It is impossible not to love Eve, despite the pain she caused humankind, because life (especially here under the sun) should’ve been very intolerable and lonely without her.

In Eve, God gave humankind the best gift.

And so every morning and every evening ever since a man stares at his wife in awe, and quietly in his heart he thanks God for her.

Eve and the Lying Serpent

But Eve sinned, let us get that clear. She believed Satan, and not God. Apparently the serpent knew the weak point in her. Unfortunately it is still there, only today’s lying men are called hyenas.

And that is still a grievous sin up to this day. Sin severs relationships not only between God and man, but also between us humankind. Sin is ugly from every design, and the wages of it is still death.

But the story of Eve is not just about our fall but also about our redemption. We deserved instant death, but we didn’t die instantly. We ought to have left Eden naked but God made us clothes. We ought to have left Eden dejected but God gave us hope even as he gave us matching orders.

It was by an act of love that God created us, and it was still by that selfless act and mercy that we are still alive.

But because of God’s justice, we must suffer as he decreed. The serpent is still our chief enemy up to this day, while bitter cries continue to overrun our labour wards, and man has still to earn his bread by sweat.

We forfeited the best, and by our own choice, we chose the worst. We denied him, but he did not deny us.

Eve became a loving mother, and all mothers have continued to copy her up to this day. God gave her her first son, and she called him Cain. He gave her a second son, and she called him Abel. But it wasn’t long before the first sting of sin caught up with her, when her first son out of raw jealousy killed his younger brother. In a split of a second she had a murderous son in her house, and grief, and mourning, and the pain of a mother has engulfed the world until now.

And today mothers have not only to bear with murderous sons, but also with truants, misfits, alcoholics and rapists. In Cain the world inherited a perpetual aberrant up to this day.

And Rachel continues to weep for ‘her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.’

But For the Love and Mercy of God

But the gracious Lord was still with Eve as he still is with our mothers up to this day. Hasn’t he promised ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you?’ So don’t fear. You are of more value than many sparrows.

And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD’ (Gen 4:25-26).

And so God started that unique lineage which would gradually lead to Lamech, and Noah, and Shem, and Eber, and Peleg, and Nahor, and Terah, and Abram.

And Abram left his father’s land in Ur of Chaldees together with his wife Sarai… who was barren as she had no child.

And that is how Isaac became the child of promise.

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. Gal 3:16  

Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. Gal 3:7  

And so (humanly speaking) we are back to square one.

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham…And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Mat 1:1,16  

And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli… Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. Luk 3:23,38   

A New Dawn

And so, as the sun came down upon Eden, God was busy working a new beginning and a new dawn upon the earth.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. Luk 2:10  

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luk 2:14  

Are you a man? Please handle your Eve very carefully tonight. If anyone has seen hard times it is the woman.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 1Co 15:55  

But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1Co 15:57