Beloved Rachel

UPDATED Monday night ...

Be sure to read Genesis 30:1-24 of you have not yet, as it was not in yesterday’s online readings.
At the same watering well that Rebekah met the servant searching for a wife for her cousin Isaac, Rachel meets her cousin Jacob, and thus begins an enduring love story. The romance between Jacob and Rachel has no parallel in all the Bible.

The text says that Rachel was “beautiful in every way, with a lovely face and shapely figure” (NLT). The Message translation describes her as “stunningly beautiful.” Her beauty immediately captivated Jacob. One Jewish midrash writes, “From the moment he saw her at the well, his soul was bound to hers.” And there you have it – a biblical case for love at first sight!

As soon as Jacob catches his breath, he valiantly launches into action – displaying strength, he single-handedly moves the stone covering off the well. He waters all of the flock she is leading, which belongs to her father, his uncle. This would’ve taken some time and though the Bible doesn’t record it, there would’ve been opportunity for each of them to feel the attraction between them.

While they maneuvered the sheep to the water, I imagine they likely exchanged some longer than necessary glances – their breathing rate increasing and their heart rates accelerating with each meeting of the eyes. Standing there in the daylight, surrounded by noisy sheep, stressed over his brother Esau, tired from his travels, Jacob is smitten. He cannot stop staring at this beautiful shepherdess. Pulsing with emotion, Jacob moves in and kisses Rachel. Was that a bold move or a customary greeting? She responds.

I'm guessing it was a tad more passionate than a quick hello kiss, for it’s written, “Jacob kissed Rachel, and tears came to his eyes.”

Oh, let’s just all take a moment to collectively sigh!

Being her cousin, Jacob goes home with Rachel to meet his Uncle Laban and stay with the family. (All that has happened between them so far, including the kiss, would have been within the bounds of appropritate family interactions.) After a month with them, Laban offers to pay Jacob for his work around the ranch.

Jacob declines money and suggests instead that he work for seven years for the right to marry Rachel. Work for seven years … with no pay … wait seven years without a wife … just so he can marry this gal.

Can you imagine a seven-year engagement – while living in the same house with your fiancé and her family? Seven years of daily labor and its written, “But his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days.” Oh… let’s just go ahead and sigh again!

Finally, the wedding day arrives and neighbors are invited to a big feast. Perhaps a lot of wine was consumed? When its night and time for Jacob to officially “take” his wife, he waits in his tent for Rachel to be brought to him once she has been primped and prepared by her family and handmaids. Most likely, her face was also veiled with wedding wear as she is led to his bedside in the dark. After sleeping with her, he wakes to find in the daylight not Rachel but her older sister Leah by his side.

He’d been tricked. Two people had been switched while he was unable to see the difference. Can you imagine Jacob’s rage? And Rachel’s? I imagine it might have paralleled the rage Isaac and Esau felt when Jacob and Rebekah tricked them in the same manner. Hum…

Don’t you wonder what Leah thought of all this? Was she all for it? Did she secretly crush on Jacob? Or was this all Laban’s doing? Well, it was custom to marry the eldest daughter first. Where was Rachel at this time? Did she willingly go along with this? Or was she tied up in a backroom of the house that night? Or, maybe she’d been secretly carried off and kept away for a few days?

Jacob still desperately loved Rachel, enough to agree to work another seven years to marry her. That’s fourteen years of working and serving a less than upright man for the ability to call Rachel his own. But in the meantime, Laban let Jacob go ahead and treat Rachel as if she were already his wife. And it’s written, “So Jacob slept with Rachel, too, and He loved her more than Leah.”

I would’ve hated being in Leah’s shoes. She was tangled in a love triangle – and no one seemed to want her there except her father. She was smack dab in the middle of a situation she didn’t belong in. “Because Leah was so unloved, the LORD let her have a child, while Rachel was childless” (Gen.29:31). In fact, Leah birthed four sons in a row at this time, the last being named "Judah."

God was carrying out his promised plan to birth the nation of Israel through Jacob, and though Jacob loved Rachel, God did not ignore Leah’s feelings. He allowed her to birth half of the sons that would become the twelve tribes of Israel. And also to birth Jacob’s only daughter.

“When Rachel saw that she wasn’t having any children, she became jealous of her sister” (Gen. 30:1). Rachel was clearly the favorite in Jacob’s eyes. Hands down, bar none, she had his undying love. But she knew of God’s promise to Jacob: “Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth… all families will be blessed through you and your descendants” (Gen 28:14). And she realized Leah, not she, was fulfilling that promise.

Rachel demanded of Jacob: “Give me children, or I’ll die!” Was she just being overly dramatic – or was this an actual suicide threat? I’m guessing this was not the first time they’d had this conversation. Jacob knew he was unable to fulfill her request – only God could. But Rachel was growing so desperate that he went along with her plan and slept with her maid, despite how poorly that had turned out for his relatives in the past.

By sleeping with Rachel’s maid (a customary practice at the time), Jacob had two sons. Rachel proclaimed with the birth of the second: “I have had an intense struggle with my sister, and I’m winning!” (Gen. 30:8). Her jealousy had given way to full blown competition with Leah, as jealousy tends to do. And Leah responded by giving her maid to Jacob to sleep with as well, and they produced two sons. Sibling rivalry existed between Jacob and his brother Esau, and now he was experiencing it with his two wives, Rachel and Leah.

At one point, Leah’s son finds a mandrake plant and digs it up. The mandrake was thought to have fertility inducing powers. Rachel begged Leah for it, but she refused to give it. The two sisters looked at each other, each having what the other wanted. Each unwilling to do or say the thing that would rekindle their sisterly affection, and restore their relationship. Rachel used the only bargaining chip she had, and one Leah wouldn't want to refuse. She offered to let Leah sleep with Jacob that night in return for the mandrake (we see here just how much Rachel presided over Jacob’s heart).

The transaction was agreed upon and it is written, “God answered her prayers” and Leah became pregnant again. The mandrake does not seem to have worked for Rachel.

Rachel eventually stopped taking matters into her own hands and relied instead on prayer and God to open her womb. Then, God “remembered Rachel’s plight and answered her prayers by giving her a child” (Gen. 30:22). God did for Sarah, and God remembered and answered Rachel – in His timing. She gave birth to Jacob's son Joseph. My how we need to embrace the spiritual discipline of submission to God and waiting on His plans and timing.

Jacob completed his second 7-year contract with Laban (who had continued to trick and swindle him along they way). Then he took his family and fled Laban’s house.

Unbeknownst to anyone else, Rachel stole her father’s idols before they left. These household idols would've been like small fertility statues, thought to confer power and good luck. They were also the sign of the head of the household, meaning they would've granted Jacob the ability to legally inherit Laban's wealth  -  most of which Laban gained through Jabob's 14 years of work for him.

Laban came after them accusing Jacob of the theft. Jacob insists they are innocent and tells Laban to search their stuff and see for himself. Jacob even (tragically?) insists, “As for your household gods, let the person who has taken them die!” Hum … foreshadowing of Rachel's early death?? Rachel hid them beneath where she was sitting so no one saw them (but God). When Laban didn’t find the idols, he agreed to make a peace treaty with Jacob.

Fast forward – through Jacob traveling back home and making peace also with Esau, and then traveling on towards Bethlehem. His beloved wife Rachel is once again pregnant with the last son that would form the twelve tribes that would make up the nation of Israel. Along the way to the city, her labor begins. She has a very hard delivery and then dies after giving birth and naming her son Benjamin. Jacob set up a stone monument over his beloved's grave and its written “it can be seen here to this day” (Gen. 35:20).

Of all the matriarchs (and patriarchs) of the Old Testament, only Rachel has a street named after her in Jerusalem today: “Mother Rachel Street” (Rehov Rahel Imeynu). Also, she has a shrine devoted to her memory – the memory of a beautiful, emotional, and complex woman that so completely captured Jacob’s (Israel’s) heart. Her shrine still draws thousands of fervent, praying pilgrims every year.

It’s interesting that all of three of these matriarchs began as barren wives, and only conceived children when the Lord willed it. Think He was perhaps showing His power?

Why did God allow sons of Israel to be born to three women and not just Jacob's beloved Rachel? Perhaps He wanted or needed to diversify the gene pool? We’ve since seen the birth defects that can happen in a limited gene pool. Or perhaps He just chose to work through the actions Laban, Rachel, Jacob, Leah and the others gave him to work with.

I learned this read through that the son of Judah - who was the line of Jesus - actually came from Leah and not Rachel. Leah had seemed to be smack dab in he middle of the wrong place but God evidently did not think so! Leah - so ignored and unloved in this family drama - had a divine part to play indeed.

I don’t have all the answers to your questions or mine, but I am certain that no matter the twists and turns our lives take, the LORD never abandons His plans or stops working His will. And - like Jacob with Rachel - God's love for us, His beloved, never fades.

So, what are your thoughts after reading Rachel's story?