Jacob Part 11: God Sees Leah
Notes
Transcript
God Sees Leah
God Sees Leah
We just finished the story of Lavan, the uncle, swindling his nephew, Yaaqov, the trickster. The trickster gets tricked in a way that mirrors his own trickstering
Genesis 29:31-30:24 - Another example of how the numbering doesn’t always match up with the narrative, but that’s ok.
And these are the story of the rival sisters, wives whose rivalry is caused by and mirrors the rivalries of everybody around them in the story.
So we're gonna pick up with this section, and of course, just here's an anatomy, as it were, of the center of the center of the center. It begins with a description of Yahweh seeing the unloved sister.
And of this whole mess, the person that Yahweh zeroes in on is the one who's the most mistreated, which is Leah.
And so she's the one that Yahweh notices. We will come back to that
She has a fruitful womb, has four sons, and what follows are three failure narratives.
One is where Rachel replays the failure of her grandmother Sarah.
And then Leah observes what her sister does, and herself replays the failure of her sister, mirroring the failure of their grandmother Sarah. And then they both have a moment of failure in mutual deception in this weird story about trading mandrakes for sex.
What is this all about?
This is followed by a round of Yahweh hearing and remembering both sisters and giving them fruitful wombs. And that's the shape of the section. There's a lot of echoes and mirroring and hyperlinks going on here.
31 When the Lord saw that Leah was neglected, he opened her womb; but Rachel was unable to conceive. 32 Leah conceived, gave birth to a son, and named him Reuben, for she said, “The Lord has seen my affliction; surely my husband will love me now.” 33 She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said, “The Lord heard that I am neglected and has given me this son also.” So she named him Simeon. 34 She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said, “At last, my husband will become attached to me because I have borne three sons for him.” Therefore he was named Levi. 35 And she conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Therefore she named him Judah. Then Leah stopped having children.
"And Yahweh saw that Leah was hated." The word neglected or unloved is the word for hated.
It's not the first time the word "hate" has appeared, but in the other time it appeared, in chapter 24, it's describing people who hate the line of Abraham, that is the chosen, enemies of the chosen.
This is the first time that you have a person hating another person in a way that feels really emotionally fraught here. "Yahweh saw that Leah was hated," that is not loved.
"And he opened her womb.
But Rakhel," who was not only not hated, but the loved one, "she was 'aqarah," barren the root word for that is unrooted.
"And Leah became pregnant. She gave birth to a son and she called his name, 'Reuven,' for she said, 'Because Yahweh has seen my oppression, for now my husband will love me.'"
The first two letters of Reuben's name are also the first two letters of the Hebrew word "see."
every son's name is some kind of Hebrew wordplay with something that they say when they're born.
"And Leah became pregnant again, and gave birth to a son. And she said, 'Because Yahweh has heard, shama', that I was hated and he has given me this one.' So she named him Shimon." Shama', Shimon.
"And she became pregnant again and gave birth to a son. And she said, 'Now this time, my husband will be attached to me, yillaveh, because I have born him three sons.' Therefore his name was called Levi." Yillaveh, Levi.
"And she got pregnant again and gave birth to a son. And she said, 'This time I will praise Yahweh, 'odeh.' Therefore she called his name Yehudah, or Judah." Yehudah. "And she stopped giving birth."
So the sibling who's, as I said already, she's the most mistreated. And now at the, even though she should be of the higher status of honor in the ranking system 'cause she's the firstborn, she ends up being the most mistreated because she's not only traded off by her father, but then she's not loved.
love/hate language begins life here. It has an afterlife and gets repeated elsewhere in the Old and New Testaments. But this is where that language first comes from.
So Leah is the one who's not loved. And so love and hate become antonyms, opposites.
So what's, I think, difficult for us as English speakers is "hate" is loaded with all kinds of associations for us in English that may or may not be associated with what the word means in Hebrew. And then, you know, I've had a hard time with this one over the years 'cause there are some times when we'll use a word pair, and what the words mean as a pair is a little bit different than what the words might mean alone by themselves.
You know, "I search high and low." So high by itself, you know, it means really up high. But if I'm telling my wife like, "Hey, I can't find that thing. I searched high and low," I mean, I don't actually mean I went onto the roof of the house, you know? And so high takes on a relative meaning. that hated meaning the unloved one, or the unchosen one.
He choose Rachel not Leah
Because does Yaaqov actually hate Leah? Well, it doesn't seem that way. It seems more that he just doesn't care about her nearly as much. And so it's a way of stating the opposite extremes as a way of posing the sisters as opposites. And I think that's probably what's going on.
2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord. Yet you ask, “How have you loved us?” “Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” This is the Lord’s declaration. “Even so, I loved Jacob, 3 but I hated Esau. I turned his mountains into a wasteland, and gave his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
And so when this language gets repeated in Malachi chapter 1, and when Yahweh says to Israel, "Hey, I have loved you, but y'all are saying," and the social location and the place in the story we're at is Second Temple Israel, back from Babylon. We're about a hundred years in to the return and life is hard, and food is scarce, and the temple isn't that cool.
And as we're gonna find out, the priesthood is corrupt, and they don't even offer very good offerings. And, like, things are not Eden like what the prophet said we would hope for. And so Israel's saying, "How are you showing us love? Like, where's the messiah? Where's the new Eden?" And what Yahweh's response is, is, "Listen, wasn't Esau Jacob's brother? And yet I have loved Yaaqov, but I have hated Esau. And I've made his mountains of desolation, made his inheritance for jackals in the wilderness."
We're using the names of the ancestors here, but we're very clearly referring to the nations, the fate of the nations. So both Edom and Israel got decimated in the Babylonian purge of the land, but it was Israel's descendants that returned after 70 years. Edom was pretty much just off the map.
And so this is the contrast is between the contrasting fates of Israel and Edom symbolized by their ancestors.
And we have the same love and hate language here.
6 Now it is not as though the word of God has failed, because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Neither is it the case that all of Abraham’s children are his descendants. On the contrary, your offspring will be traced through Isaac. 8 That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring. 9 For this is the statement of the promise: At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son. 10 And not only that, but Rebekah conceived children through one man, our father Isaac. 11 For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand—12 not from works but from the one who calls—she was told, The older will serve the younger. 13 As it is written: I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.
So when Paul the apostle is gonna bring this up in Romans chapter 9, his whole argument in Romans chapter 9 is, "Listen, it's actually not that surprising that a whole bunch of Israelites didn't recognize Jesus as a Messiah. It's kind of always been this way. When God does his thing, there are some Israelites who see it and are in on the party, and there's some Israelites who don't." And he just starts working through the generations of Genesis.
And so when he brings up "Jacob I've loved, but Esau I've hated," he's thinking in terms of groups, not individuals as such.
Does that make sense? And so a lot of the interpretive debates between Calvinism and Arminianism and predestination are happening in a debate about the eternal destiny of individuals.
Which is a really important question to think through in terms of your theology, but it's not what Paul's talking about.
And it's not what Malachi is talking about. They're thinking in different categories.
Yahweh Blesses the Non-Chosen
Yahweh Blesses the Non-Chosen
I'll just point out a couple more things. Notice how the first two sons, the way that they're named, see how the wording of the names has put them into little groups? So the first two are linked together in terms of just the phrasing that's used.
And the third and the fourth, Levi and Yehudah are set apart.
So they're a pair, and Reuben and Shimon are a pair. You may not think very much of that, but something that is interesting is, let's just think through the destiny of these tribes here.
Reuben, what's the development of Reuben as a character and of his tribe? Well, the Reubenites. They've got some prominent moments in the story to come. They're gonna be highlighted in a rebellion narrative in Numbers. Things will not go well from a whole bunch of Reubenites who think that Moses should be overthrown and kicked out of leadership.
Shimon, well, he's gonna be a treacherous murderer in just a few chapters here.
So is Levi.
And Yehudah, he's not that great of a guy either. In terms of he is gonna lie to his daughter-in-law, Tamar. all of Genesis 38. He's gonna sleep with a prostitute and then try covering it up and then act like he's the righteous one and bring his daughter-in-law out to be burned at the stake, you know, to cover his treachery.
And so he's not the great, like, none of these are good people. Like, they're all gonna be shown to be pretty lousy people.
But just think through with me the afterlife of Levi's descendants and Judah's descendants.
Levi. So he himself is not that great of a person, but are his descendants fairly significant in the storyline?
Absolutely. So they're gonna get singled out among the brothers as the tribe set aside to live in the little portable Eden, live and work.
And then a subset of the Levites will be selected as the priests to go in and out of Eden on behalf of all the others.
The first messiah, the anointed messiah of Israel, will be a Levite, Aaron. That's interesting.
Judah, is this a significant tribe?
You know David? Solomon. Josiah, Hezekiah, Jesus.
So what's interesting is that it's the third and the plus one, fourth, that are the two lineages that will produce Israel's messiahs.
And it's the fourth that will actually produce the messianic lineage of the snake-crusher.
From Leah, from the non-chosen. And not just the non-chosen, from, like, the disliked non-chosen
11 The angel of the Lord said to her, “You have conceived and will have a son. You will name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard your cry of affliction. 12 This man will be like a wild donkey. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will be against him; he will settle near all his relatives.” 13 So she named the Lord who spoke to her: “You are El-roi,” for she said, “In this place, have I actually seen the one who sees me?”
Can I think of other wives who become disfavored or disliked, who are oppressed, but Yahweh sees them and hears their cries and gives them fruitfulness?
And she says, "This is the one who sees me."
Genesis 16 and 21 are the two moments when Yahweh meets Hagar out in the wilderness.
And she names "Yishmael" from the word shama'.
"El will hear me. Yahweh has heard about your oppression." So what Avraham and Sarah do to Hagar is described as oppressing the immigrant. And Yahweh's pretty ticked about it. He doesn't take kindly to oppression of the immigrant.
And then she names that place El Roi, "Yahweh Who Sees Me."
So Leah is painted with colors, and even her language is stamped with the language of her own predecessor in the family, and she becomes the favored one.
Remember what Yahweh says to Samuel when the seven sons of Jesse, who are all handsome and tall and strong, and Samuel's like, "Oh, surely this is the one." And Yahweh says to Samuel, he says, "The way that humans see, it's not the way that I see. God sees the heart." And what else is this story about except God sees the heart of the unloved who's cast aside?
There's something really powerful here for us to ponder.
Yahweh does not see as humans see and evaluate. And so she's given a three-plus-one fruitful womb and birthing the two messiahs of Israel.
Rakhel’s Scheme to Build a Family
Rakhel’s Scheme to Build a Family
Bibliography
Bibliography
https://bibleproject.com/classroom/jacob
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John D. Currid, A Study Commentary on Genesis: Genesis 25:19–50:26, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2003), 97–98.
Abraham Kuruvilla, Genesis: A Theological Commentary for Preachers (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2014), 374.
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