Genesis 29:15-28 (NRSV)
15 Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?” 16 Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. 17 Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful. 18 Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” 19 Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” 20 So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.
21 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” 22 So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast. 23 But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. 24 (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.) 25 When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” 26 Laban said, “This is not done in our country—giving the younger before the firstborn. 27 Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” 28 Jacob did so, and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife.
In Genesis 29, Jacob makes his way to the land of the east, to the people of Laban. Genesis 24:29 introduced Laban into the patriarchal narratives as the brother of Rebekah, Isaac’s Mesopotamian relative and eventual wife. It is Laban, rather than Rebekah’s father, Bethuel, who plays the prominent role in the negotiations of Rebekah’s marriage to Isaac (Genesis 24), and the text there subtly paints Laban as a man of keen self-interest. This intimation will become obvious in Laban’s dealings with Isaac and Rebekah’s son, Jacob.
An editorial title for the passage might be “Jacob Marries Laban’s Daughters” (as the NRSV calls this section). A title more sensitive to the narrative arc of the Jacob story, however, might be “Jacob’s Comeuppance,” for that is what happens to one of the Bible’s most famous tricksters. The family of Jacob will have its problems. Dysfunctional families have an abundance of trust and anger issues. We will find both in the family of Jacob. In a sense, Jacob has greatness in his heredity. Psalm 105 refers to the descendants of Abraham as the chosen ones of the Lord. It also refers to the covenant made with Abraham and the promise of land to Isaac and Jacob. The story of Jacob makes it clear that divine election is a matter of the choice of God rather than the virtue of Jacob. Yet, that blessing of election may not express itself the way Jacob might have planned.
Let us consider the beginnings of the family of Jacob. Jacob sees shepherds at a well and enquires whether Laban is in the area and whether he is doing well. He discovers that he is doing well. They introduce him to Rachel. Her immediate appearance recalls that of Rebekah in 24:15. It suggests divine guidance in their meeting. Centuries later, Moses will assist the victimized daughters of Reuel in Exodus 2:16-22. The association of wells with fertility makes the suitability of the trope obvious for betrothal narratives. The suitor gives a display of strength at the first sight of Rachel. According to Nuzi records, the kiss Jacob gave Rachel was proper, although future Near East custom would not allow it. The shepherds appear lazy, while Jacob is eager. However, the custom was to remove the stone cover to the cistern only after all persons were present. This would avoid mischief. It would take all the men to remove the stone. With his superhuman strength, Jacob helps the girl. Rachel runs to her father, an indication that she will be the wife of Jacob. Yet, we also learn that events will not unfold so simply. When Jacob arrives at the home of Laban, Laban embraces Jacob. He stays with Laban a month.
In the ancient world, where travel was expensive, dangerous, and difficult, it would have been normal for a guest to remain for a month, as the text indicates Jacob has done. Jacob presents his uncle with no gift upon his arrival (or the text passes over that fact in silence), an omission that is even more striking given the circumstances of Jacob’s presence (he is asking his uncle to receive him into his household). Given the elaborate gift Jacob will present to Esau to assuage his anger (32:13-21), this lack of a gift seems strange. Elaborate protocol attended the exchange of gifts in the ancient world, even in modest circumstances. He receives great blessing in the care of his flocks.
In Genesis 29:15-28, we find the beginning of the dysfunctional and imperfect family of Jacob. In the month that Jacob has stayed with Laban, he has been working. Laban offers to pay him. 15 Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? He is working for Laban. A reasonable answer to this question is yes, Jacob should serve his uncle for nothing for at least three reasons. First, Jacob is a young man living in the household of an older male relative, and family obligations of the day required that the younger man show his respect for the family by supporting it without compensation. Second, Laban is providing Jacob with refuge, at an unknown cost and risk to his own household, for which Jacob is in Laban’s debt. Third, at some point after Jacob’s initial arrival, if he does not begin to contribute to the material welfare of Laban’s family, he will transition from the role of guest to the role of freeloader, which will bring unrest and discredit to Laban’s family (since Jacob is an extended member of it). However, Laban has posed the question rhetorically, clearly expecting the answer to be no. His subsequent actions will call his sincerity gravely into question. Tell me, what shall your wages be?” 16 Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah (“cow), and the name of the younger was Rachel (“ewe.”) The narrative seems like an introduction to the reader of the two daughters, while in fact we have already received an introduction. Rachel and Jacob have just had an extended meeting at the well where Laban’s flocks were watered (vv. 1-12), one of three betrothal stories in which a well encounter plays a key role, the other two being the betrothal of Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 24:11-49), and the betrothal of Moses and Zipporah (Exodus 2:15-22). 17 Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful. Leah had lovely eyes, Rachel was a real knockout.[1] 18 Jacob loved Rachel. Here is one of the few references to romantic love in the Old Testament. One of the other few is the reference to his father, Isaac, who loved Rebekah. So he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” It was custom to pay for the bride, but this is a long time. 19 Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man, an answer that appears to be affirmative but is in fact merely declarative, stay with me.” 20 So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her. An interesting comment on our experience of time. A moment can feel like it lasts forever. If the moment is a good one, we would like it to last forever. If we are bored, a moment can feel like a burden that lasts forever. For Jacob, the experience is the opposite direction. He is so full of passion for Rachel and the goal of his daily work that the seven years seemed like a moment. 21 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” 22 So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast. 23 But, here comes the deception of Laban and his daughters. Jacob experiences the principle of “eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” in that he had deceived his brother, Esau. In contrast to his desire and expectation, in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. 24 (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.) 25 When morning came, it was Leah! Laban can trick Jacob due to the feast prior to the wedding night. Jacob trusts Laban at a critical moment when he needed to be more alert to the possibility of deception. We can assume some alcoholic drink and a late night. He does not recognize until the next morning that he had sex with Leah. And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? The question is like the indignation Abimelech expressed toward Abraham and Isaac in 12:28, 20:9, and 26:10. Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” The accusation by Jacob of deceit has a touch irony for us as readers. 26 Laban said, informing Jacob of the tradition in his culture, but said placidly and facetiously, “This is not done in our country—giving the younger before the firstborn. The story presses home the irony. Jacob tricked his older brother out of his birthright and the paternal blessing, but Laban upholds the custom of the priority of the eldest. Jacob easily and cheaply bought the birthright, but he will not easily or cheaply attain the woman he loved. 27 Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” 28 Jacob did so, and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife. This story goes against later Hebrew law, which forbade marriage to a sister: Leviticus 18:18 “And you shall not take a woman as a rival to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.”
Here is quite a family. Warring sisters, one of whom is unloved by her husband, slave women with no choice, a husband with a shady past and a father-in-law out to get ahead at the expense of his son-in-law. Anybody want to nominate this group as family of the year? Yet, I invite you not to give up on this family. God has some grandiose things in the future for this family.
I invite you to reflect upon this story in a way that leads us toward learning about the role of family. Our biological or adopted family will stay with us through the course of life. We grow into our individuality, but we are always part of a system. Each member of the family is part of that system. The behavior of one person in the family may well be of legitimate concern but looking at the family as a unit is always helpful in moving toward a solution. The deception and rivalries are so broad and deep, where would one even begin to offer counsel? We are not only individuals whose behaviors have consequences. We are also a part of a family system in which our behavior has additional consequences to the rest of the family. When we see unhelpful patterns repeated in the family, we are wise to examine our contribution to the pattern. Changing the way we respond may change the family system toward health.
In reading this story, we need some sensitivity to the different composition of family then versus now. An ancient household could be a large, complex social institution comprising of dozens or even hundreds of individuals, with clearly understood lines of priority and power. In large households, not every member was on intimate terms with every other member. The allowance for multiple wives and concubines, in addition to household slaves, added to the complexity of the ancient household. If the top of the household, usually the father, had a favored wife, then the children through her received favored treatment as well. We can see that petty rivalry and jealousy would be a real issue. Of course, the priority of the male in the household feels strange to those of us enjoying the freedom and individuality of modern, secular culture. We can be thankful for the change, without turning toward our own form of self-righteousness and judgmentalism upon ancient ways. We as modern people have a penchant for developing our morally superior codes and judging every other culture on whether they meet our standard. The ancient household was an economic unit, as well as the accepted form in which people met their need for intimate friendship and sexuality. Modern economics arose out of our principles of individuality and freedom, both of which started the disintegration of the ancient household and patriarchy. Further, even within the ancient household system, we here other ancient voices that sought to relativize the absolute nature of the household. Jesus of Nazareth did so most dramatically in urging that whoever does not “hate” mother or father cannot be a follower of his. Paul urged husbands to treat wives and masters to treat slaves in ways that broke down the strict power structure of the household. The point is that every form of family and work system that we create will have strengths and weaknesses. They will have dimensions of moral goodness and evil, simply because our minds have created them and implemented them. We will always need to read with discerning minds and hearts. Our devotion to our code can also make us so arrogant and self-righteous that we do not hear what the ancients can teach us.
First, the dysfunctional family of Jacob is the beginning of something big, from the standpoint of salvation history. This family is the beginning of the people of Israel. The 12 sons born to Jacob and his four wives become the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel. Of course, Jesus will come from the tribe of Judah. Judah was the son of Jacob and the unloved wife Leah. What this tells me is that God wanted a people, formed to witness for God in this world. God worked with this messed up family. The story of this messed up family reminds us that good things come from ragged beginnings. Come to think of it, many people grow up in problematic circumstances. What will we do, given that we had beginnings beyond our control? One thing I hope we do not do is blame. We must go through it, but we need to get beyond it. We must let go. Roger Rosenblatt had a little book on aging, in which one of the sayings: It is unseemly to blame your parents when you are over 30. In small print underneath that saying, he wrote, “Make that 25.” Whatever beginnings you may have had, do not keep looking back. Look forward, to the new things God wants to do in your life. You will be surprised at the freedom you will experience.
Second, we need to hear a modern story of bad beginnings that do not lead to bad endings. For example …
Jennifer Velez knows that bad beginnings do not always have to have bad endings. She was from the wrong side of the tracks. Her mother had been abused in the home, married, and divorced when she was young. They lived on public assistance. She became commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Human Services. Kevin Ryan, the man who was New Jersey’s Human Services commissioner before Velez, and with whom she worked as deputy, says of her:
I think Jen, when she closes her eyes at night, remembers vividly the schoolgirl living in a trailer park immersed in the disenfranchisement of poverty. I think when she recalls that experience, it is both suffocating and liberating — suffocating in the sense that she has a very real sense of all the limitations that poverty forces on you, and liberating in the sense that it’s a compass, if you will, about how to better serve the next generation of kids whose families are living below the poverty line. That is her life’s work. – Kevin Ryan, former New Jersey Human Services commissioner
She found a way to use her bad beginnings to serve others. I am confident that some of you as teachers and social workers would have other stories.
A sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore assigned his class to a city slum to interview 200 boys. “On the basis of your findings, predict their future.” Shocked at what they saw in the slums, the students estimated that 90 percent of the boys interviewed would someday serve time in prison. Twenty years later the same professor asked another class to locate the survivors of the 200 boys and compare what happened. Of the 180 boys they could find, only four had ever been to jail. Why had the predictions by the earlier class proven false? A common denominator — over 100 of them remembered having the same high-school teacher, Miss O’Rourke, who had been a tremendous influence on them at the time. After a long search, Sheila O’Rourke was found in a nursing home in Memphis. When asked for her explanation she was puzzled and replied, “All I did was love every one of them.”[2]
Your life may be that story. In my case, going to some Christian schools, I discovered fellow students and some professors who saw past the shy, backward youth to some potential they saw in me. Beginnings are often ragged and difficult, with long-lasting impact. Yet, they do not have to define us or doom us. In fact, whatever start we had, good or bad, we can and should take responsibility for who we are now as we move forward into the new things God wants to do in our lives.
The Lord takes Jacob’s messed-up situation and through it drives ahead to a covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of the world through Jesus Christ. We have no reason to doubt that God has a purpose for each of us, no matter where we started.
It reminds me of a little parable Jesus told:
31 “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32)
God starts the history of salvation from such small beginnings, in this family of Abraham. God started with a messed-up family. Listen to these words.
28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. … 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:28-29, 37-39)
I do not know where you are with your family today. I expect that, with the love and joy, there is a good deal of pain. There are past hurts and deceptions, a long history of disappointment and disagreement. That is the way it is in families. It has been so, from the beginning, as Genesis reminds us. Yet, God meets us where we are.
In “Spirit Song,” we find these lyrics:
O come and sing this song with gladness
As your hearts are filled with joy
Lift your hands in sweet surrender
To His name
O give Him all your tears and sadness
Give Him all your years of pain
And you'll enter into life
In Jesus' name
So, let us take responsibility for who we are now. As far as we use our beginning as an excuse, we need to let it go. As far as it can make us instruments of empathy, compassion, and love, we need to embrace it. We can seek the help of our go-forward God as we move ahead.
Regardless of our beginnings, God is on the move forward, wanting us to fulfill the reason God has placed us here. Rather than wasting time blaming our beginnings, we need to move forward with God to grab hold of a new, unshaped future.
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