Summer
Sermon Series: Wrestling with Jacob
Genesis 29:1-30
Today we continue our summer sermon
series “Wrestling with Jacob”. We are
three weeks in now and we have come to know Jacob as something of a
trickster. From before his birth Jacob
has been in strife. God declared to his
mother Rebekah that her elder son Esau, shall serve her younger son, Jacob. Jacob isn’t the strongest man around, but he
is definitely the smartest. He has twice
defrauded his elder brother to secure both a blessing and an inheritance. He is currently on the run from Esau, fearing
for his life. Though he appears alone in
this world, Jacob is not, as the Lord has promised him protection, and
presence. Jacob will be the father of
the nation of Israel, and the story of that nation begins with today’s reading.
(Read Genesis 29:1-12)
Jacob is in Haran, the ancient land
from which Abraham once came. He is
seeking his uncle Laban, (his mother’s brother) and so he asks after the family
name. The gathered shepherds direct
Jacob to his cousin Rachel, and upon seeing his kin he is moved to tears of
thanksgiving and joy.
The Jacob story is meant to be humorous
and there is an interesting bit here about the well that modern readers might
miss. In fact, I never noticed it before
my studies this week. The author tells
us that the stone on the well’s mouth was large and the shepherds would wait
and move the stone as a group. The idea
here is to keep the water rights equal.
There is an agreement among the shepherds to wait until they are all
gathered, they all move the stone together, and then they all get an equal
amount of water for their herds. It is
an egalitarian system.
Well, Jacob doesn’t seem to understand
everyone just standing around waiting. He
points out that it is the height of the day and not a time for standing around,
he thinks everyone should get on with watering the sheep and get back to work. The gathered shepherds explain to him their
custom and that they prefer to wait.
Well when Jacob sees Rachel, he is
moved by her beauty and senses an opportunity.
Rachel is coming down to water her father’s sheep and Jacob sees his
chance to make a good first impression.
As she nears the well, he single handedly moves the stone for her, so
she can water her sheep.
The writer wants us to pick up on the
comedy of this moment as Jacob is showing off.
Like many men before him and since, Jacob can’t resist a chance to show
this pretty woman how big and strong he is.
I can just imagine him thinking, “Check me out, I can roll this huge
stone myself” as he pushes the stone aside and then takes a casual pose near
the rock, sure to be noticed by the beautiful Rachel.
Of course, Jacob is also delivering a
message to the other shepherds gathered around.
They won’t fail to notice how strong he is. They will also notice that he has no regard
for their customs and ways of doing things together. Jacob is showing off his strength and
authority. But he is also revealing his
attitude and impatience, which is no surprise to those of us who have been
following his story.
(Read Genesis 29:13-20)
This is the sweet part of the Jacob
narrative, the moment when love enters the story. Jacob is welcomed by his uncle Laban, but
after about a month the two realize that they need to come to some terms
regarding Jacob’s stay. Is he family, is
he an employee, or is he just some guy hanging around?
Laban proposes that Jacob offer up
some terms of employment. Jacob has had
his eye on Rachel since that first afternoon at the well, and so he offers a
bride price to Laban. Jacob may have won
the inheritance, but his father Isaac is still alive, so right now Jacob is
penniless. He offers to work for Laban
for seven years, without wages, and that seven years will be a bride price to
buy his marriage to Rachel.
The author mentions here that Laban
has two daughters, Leah and Rachel. Leah
is the oldest, and it seems as if there is something wrong with her eyes. The Hebrew is unclear and the NRSV is
charitable when it translates the word as “lovely”. In other places in the scriptures the Hebrew
word used here “rakôth” means tender, weak, or even incompetent. I imagine that Leah is either really near
sighted, or has a lazy eye. She is
certainly less than perfect when compared to her beautiful younger sister
Rachel.
Laban appears to agree to this deal,
though he doesn’t clearly spell it out.
And in a dramatically romantic note, the author tells us that “Jacob
served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of
the love he had for her.” Ahhhh – how
sweet!
(Read Genesis 29:21-30)
Oh snap! Trouble in paradise! The great trickster is finally tricked. At the last minute, Laban switches Leah for
Rachel and Jacob is duped into consummating a marriage with the wrong
sister. As modern readers we right away
wonder how Jacob could possibly be so stupid as to sleep with the wrong woman. But Laban is no fool. Through the work of wedding veils, the
darkness of a tent at night, and what was sure to be a drunken wedding revelry,
it wasn’t hard to send in the wrong girl.
Jacob is furious, as he should
be. He had an agreement and had worked
seven years for his bride. Laban points
out that the younger daughter can’t possibly be married before the older. The reader is meant to pick up on the irony
here, as Jacob himself has spent the majority of his life ensuring that he gets
everything he wants, even though he is the younger of two brothers. Birth order means nothing to Jacob, but that
certainly has come back to bite him in the end.
Laban offers another deal. If Jacob completes the wedding week with
Leah, Laban will offer Rachel as a bride as well. But, Jacob will need to work another seven
long years to pay her bride price. Jacob
agrees, and serves seven more years.
Laban comes out on top, with 14 years of unpaid labor and both of his
girls married off. Jacob is the loser;
he has one beautiful wife, but no wealth and a second wife he does not love.
This is another one of those great
examples of Biblical marriage! Even
ancient readers of this story would find it as strange as we do. Leviticus 18 warns that “you shall not take a
woman as a rival to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still
alive.” Marrying two sisters is not good
behavior, never mind the fact that they are all first cousins. What a mess!
Plus, any woman who has seen herself
as second best can really relate to Leah in this story. Poor girl is no more than a pawn in the
struggles between her father and Jacob.
What did she have to say about that wedding night? Can you imagine being forced to go in to your
sister’s husband? Can you imagine that
awful morning in the tent when Jacob realized what had happened? It’s not like Leah had any say in the matter. At least she is married, which may never have
happened for her, but no one wants to be married to someone that doesn’t love
them.
This is another text where we struggle
to find some meaning or connection to our own lives. The writer of the text itself has offered a
story with no real moral or theological point.
This story is simply meant to entertain us, and to function as an origin
story for the nation of Israel. The 12
tribes need a way to explain how their ancestries all trace back to one father
but different mothers.
As modern people we can certainly see
this as an example of Karma, or the ancient eastern religious idea that the
deeds you carry out in this life will come back to you either in this world or
the next. In plain talk we could say
“you reap what you sow” or “what goes around comes around”. Jacob is certainly getting a “taste of his
own medicine” in this story with Laban and anyone who is following his tale
would agree that he deserves it.
The problem though is that the women
in the story don’t deserve it. Just like
the trickery with Isaac and Esau, there is a lot of collateral damage
here. Jacob is angry, Rachel is disappointed,
and Leah is no more than somebody in the way.
God is not directly present in our
reading for today, but God is certainly behind the scenes. You will remember from last week that God
promised Jacob “offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth”. You are going to need more than one woman to
carry that out. From these broken people
will come the entire nation of Israel.
The message from last week echoes in this text: God’s grace and
providence are present in our lives, even when we can’t see it, and even when
we don’t deserve it.
Once again in the Jacob narrative we
find people behaving badly. Now the
stage is set for further conflict between Jacob and Laban, between Rachel and
Leah, and even between Jacob and his wives.
Come back next week as the drama of “Wrestling with Jacob” continues . .
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