I don't know about you, but with me it only hurts when I get rejected by somebody I admire or look up to. I'm generally not in the habit of depositing my happiness in the heads of other people. But when "important" people don't give me the time of day, I suffer.
Well, few of us have ever received treatment as ugly as that of Leah, the wife of Jacob and great-grandmother of Jesus. Yet she prevailed and received abundant blessings from the Lord. In the end she was loved and honored by all. How did she overcome?
Leah was the oldest daugther of a sly fox of a man by the name of Laban. She had a younger sister: Rachel was a very beautiful young lady. Baby Rachel was doted over, loved and admired for her looks and her natural poise and grace.
Leah on the other hand was, well..., rather unpretty. Her face, that is. The bible says: "And Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful of form and face." (Genesis 29, 17.) That doesn't mean that Leah needed glasses. It meant that her countenance was left wanting. (It's sort of coded language. That's understandable, since half of Israel lays claim to her as ancestor. And you don't just tell half a nation: "Hey, your mama was ugly!" and go unpunished.)
Leah was the older of the two sisters, yet she was without husband. Nobody had yet asked for her hand in marriage.
Enter Jacob, the son of Isaac.
He comes to work for Laban and is immediately smitten with Rachel. Her beauty so enthralls him that he is willing to work for seven (!) years for no other wages than her hand in matrimony. Of course Laban, a very moneyminded man, agrees.
After seven years of backbreaking labor Jacob finally wants to "collect," and a wedding feast is arranged.
Poor Leah: in all those seven years no suitor had come to sweep her off her little feet. Now she has to watch her younger sister get married without any prospects of her own. Pity her.
While the feast is underway, the guests are dancing, food is flying and wine is flowing, father Laban walks over to the house of the women, where the bride is being readied for her grand appearance. With a few dry words he instructs Rachel to take her elaborate wedding dress off, complete with veils and hoods, and to give it to her sister Leah. Leah is to be the bride today. Then he leaves again.
The thoughts in Leah's head are racing while the maids busy themselves around her. Neither she nor Rachel completely understand...
Can it be that Jacob was actually working for her, not Rachel, all these years and just kept it secret?
Men and womenfolk lived very much apart from one another in those days.
That must be it, she thinks. After all, she is the more mature of the two. Not just that, she also shares in Jacob's belief in the Lord God. She is not into idols like the rest of her family, including that sweet thing, Rachel.
That's what must have impressed Jacob into preferring her over her beauty queen sister.
She cannot grasp that her father, full of economic reasoning, just wants to dump the "old maid" on that hapless - and drunk - fellow Jacob. She's not that cynical.
But he is.
Her heart is full of high hopes as she walks down the isle, fully veiled, to stand next to her husband-to-be. She is the queen of the day. And she is beautiful, all dolled up in her sister's fancy dress.
Night comes, and in it she learns what it means to be loved by a lover who loves. Her bridegroom reeks a little bit, of wine, but she doesn't mind. She is a little happy herself.
Ah, love...
In the darkness of that night Leah floats on a sea of acceptance and appreciation. Her feelings are on a roll.
In the morning, however, as Jacob reaches over and realizes who she is, all of her delusions are brought to a stark conclusion. "What do you want here?" her new husband barks in wide eyed terror. "Where is Rachel?"
Leah is speechless.
Then it dawns on her: her father had deceived Jacob. All he had wanted was to get rid of her.
Pushed off by her father on a man whose entire affection belonged to her sister.
Leah is confronted with total rejection by the most important people in her life: her parents, her sister and - worst of all - her husband.
What utter misery.
Jacob raises quite a stink with Laban who, in the end, agrees to give him Rachel too.
After yet another week Jacob is married to two sisters: a pretty one and one ugly duckling. (Does that spell trouble or what?)
Leah is now bereft of any opportunity to ever meet and marry a man who genuinely loves her as she is. She is stuck with Jacob, who is apathetic towards her. For the rest of her life she will have to witness the nuptial bliss of her sister and her own husband next door. As it looks she will never get rid of that cloud of rejection that hangs over her. She will be something of a widow while her husband is still entirely alive. How demoralizing.
What did unloved little Leah do?
For one, she did not sue for divorce or make life miserable for everybody around her.
That's what unbelievers do.
Instead she went before God, who does not reject anybody who turns to him. She pours her heart out before him. And next, she sets out to win the affection of her husband. What greatness of soul!
Leah tries to gain favor with Jacob by bearing him sons.
Leah prays and God, who sees that she is unloved, opens her womb. She gets pregnant right away. Thus she broke the tradition of barren wifes in Jacob's family. (Remember Sarah? And Rebecca? Rachel on the other hand is as beautiful as those were, and just as barren.)
Leah prays.
And God cooperates.
She has a living, breathing, faith packed relationship with the Most High.
Thus she gives birth to Reuben, and gives praise to God.
Then comes Simeon, and she gives praise to God.
Next comes Levi, and she forgets to give praise to God. When the next son arrives, she decides to name him praise (Judah), because she forgot to give praise last time.
She is still secretly hoping: "Surely now my husband will love me." (Genesis 29, 32.)
In respect to her husband she feeds on hope.
Towards God she is full of praise.
Her sister on the other hand may be beautiful on the outside. However, Rachel's inside is as ugly as Leah's face.
"Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she became jealous of her sister."
Imagine, the beauty queen is jealous of the ugly duckling! Who woulda thought ...
Instead of turning to God like Leah had done Rachel shouts at Jacob: "Give me children, or else I die." (Genesis 30, 1.)
Rachel is not a believer. She turns to her husband for children, not to God. Jacob is mega-miffed and replies: "Am I in the place of God to give you children?" (Genesis 30, 2.)
Try as she might, Rachel doesn't get pregnant.
She broods.
Then she has a bright idea: "Hey, I'll give my maid to my husband as a concubine. If she has a child, I'll adopt it!" (Doesn't that sound an awful lot like that miserable plan Sarah once hatched? Remember Hagar? And Ismael, her attention deficit disordered child?)
Now Jacob has three wives.
Still full of insecurity, and still bent on winning the affection of her husband, it is now Leah's turn to give her husband a little christmas present: she too presents her pretty servant girl to him as a concubine. He might like it ...
Now Jacob has four wives.
Rachel's maid indeed bears a child for Jacob, but Rachel's own soul remains unsatisfied. She still wants her own offspring.
One day Reuben, Leah's son, finds some mandrakes - love apples - in the field. They are so called dudaim and are supposed to have properties that help women get pregnant.
Dudaim are the ancient equivalent of the ginseng roots or viagra pills of our day.
Reuben, who loves and respects his mother, gives them to her as a present.
When barren Rachel finds out, she trades them with Leah for one night with Jacob.
Instead of turning to God Rachel now turns to quack medicine.
She remains barren while Leah, trusting God, bears even more children.
After many years Rachel makes her first serious advances towards the God of Jacob. She decides to talk to him. Now she, albeit reluctantly, seeks God's favor. Her heart's desire is a son. The Lord in his mercy responds to her feeble advances and blesses her with Joseph, undisputedly the greatest of the entire bunch. However, her heart is not entirely set on Jehovah God.
Over the years Jacob's relationship with his boss Laban had slowly deteriorated. In the end Jacob needed to leave Laban's place. When Jacob got his family together in order to secretly flee, Rachel goes over to her father's family shrine and steals his teraphim, his household idol. (Genesis 31, 19.)
Why on earth would she do that?
Because her heart was still attached to those old traditional gods of her ancestors.
Then she flees with the rest of her family.
Laban is incensed when he finds out somebody stole his god. With a hot heart and a little army he pursues Jacob's caravan. As soon as the two parties meet a quarrel erupts because Laban wants his god back. Jacob, who knows nothing of Rachel's theft, swears: "The one with whom you find your gods shall not live!" (Genesis 31, 32.)
Now these were days in which words were still words and carried power. It was not like today where you sign a contract and then hire a lawyer to find loopholes so you don't have to keep it.
Back then a man's word was his bond.
Unknowingly Jacob releases a powerful curse over Rachel, the idol's thief.
Laban does not find his teraphim, since Rachel concealed them well. In the end "mad dad" leaves and goes home.
Later Jacob decides to forbid all foreign gods and idols in his house. He collects the statues, even Rachel's teraphim, and buries them under the oak near Shechem. (Genesis 35, 4.) Now everybody in the house acknowledges the Lord God as his or her god. Including Rachel. Leah never had a problem with that anyway. As a result of that renewed dedication God appears to Jacob and blesses him.
In the meantime Rachel had become pregnant again. Shortly after disposing of the idol and turning to God in her heart she was to give birth near Bethlehem.
"Rachel began to give birth and she suffered severe labor ... It came about as her soul was departing (for she died), that she namend him Ben-oni; bur his father called him Benjamin. So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). (Genesis 35, 19.)
Rachel died!
She was still young.
Why?
In the background we still hear her voice ring: "Give me children or I die!"
We hear Jacob's solemn oath: ""The one with whom you find your gods shall not live!"
Powerful spiritual laws had been set in motion ...
After Rachel had died humble little Leah became the sole wife of the patriarch. Her rejection finally was finally ended. She had become the beloved mother of the household.
You know, it doesn't matter who rejects you, as long as God is on your side.
God explicitly said that he had "chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base (ugly) things of the world and the despised God has chosen, ... so that no man may boast before the Lord." (1 Corinthians 1, 27.)
If we walk Leah's way, if we pray and set our hope upon the Most High, if we walk in love towards those who reject us, we cannot but come out on top in the end. Proverbs 16, 7 states: "When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him."
You are accepted in Him.
His will for you is peace.
Your friend,
Gert Hoinle, Pastor