When human nature (envy, jealousy, complacency, deceitfulness, selfishness, fear, anger) intersects God’s Grace, the results are the birth of a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

I’ve done my share of questioning God and His sovereignty. Having a son who is an adult addict now estranged from the family will do that for you. That plus a divorce, a poor choice in career paths (several times), and my own life-long addiction to self-doubt. I’m the perfect example of wrong turns and regrets, wondering if God will be able to use me in the midst of my notable shortcomings.

I often put the seasonal whatever-is-wrong in my life at the time on my own shoulders, thinking if I don’t get this or that right, I could miss the purpose God has for me. That one thing He made me for. That one thing we spend way too many years searching for as if God would hide His will in maze.

Do you do this?

Do you wonder if you’ve missed God’s plan or if He would give His plan for you to another because you’ve failed?

The silly thing about this thinking: Me. You. As if our shortcomings could affect God’s will. My goodness, if He depended upon our perfections to enact His sovereign purposes, nothing would ever be accomplished for His glory.

He Uses the Totally Messed Up

I’ve been reading and rereading the story of Jacob, Leah, Rachel, their maids Bilhah and Zilpah, and their less-than-stellar-offspring save Joseph and maybe Judah. Through these people, I’ve come to believe nothing can thwart God’s plans.

What God has for me and what God has for you will be fulfilled—completed to the last dotted i and crossed t.

Let that soak in for a moment. I need this. I need to soak it in. I need to take the weight I pretend is on my shoulders and put that weight into the hands that already hold it. The maker and completer of my faith—Jesus Christ.

Because He chooses to exercise His will through you and me, regardless of our shortcomings, His will will not look perfect. It will look messy and there could be moments of dangerous ledge teetering. There could be curses, sickness, dysfunctions galore, and unexpected twists in our stories. But what He purposes WILL come to pass.

Look at Isaiah 46:10 when Isaiah quotes God: Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, “My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.”

This seems to be the case with Jacob. Through his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac, God continues to announce the coming of a nation.

An Unbreakable Promise

Let’s start with God’s promise to create a nation from Abraham. You know the story—Abraham receives the promise but there’s a problem–Sarah, his wife, cannot have children. Years of waiting for the first of millions of descendants initiated their own crisis of belief and Sarah gives her maid servant Hagar to Abraham in a desperate attempt to jump start God’s promises. But even after Hagar’s son, Ishmael is born, Sarah does indeed have a son of her own—Isaac. And Isaac grows up to marry Rebekah, who was also childless. Seeing a pattern here? But after prayer with Isaac, Rebekah gives birth to twin boys, Esau and Jacob. Esau arrived first and was therefore deemed the owner of the birthright–the inheritance of his family.

Jacob Begins the Journey

Growing up, Jacob was favored by his mother, and the two of them set up a plan to deceive Isaac into bestowing Esau’s blessing as the first born upon Jacob. Deception is never an advisable way to start a journey with the Lord. But as we’ll see, God’s grace covers a multitude of sins.

After his angered twin brother threatened to kill him, Jacob followed his parent’s orders to head for his mother’s home region and take a wife from her brother Laban’s daughters. In other words, you better get out of Dodge, Jacob and don’t plan to come back for a long, long time.

Once Jacob arrives in the region, he encounters Rachel, Laban’s younger daughter who served as a shepherdess. Not only does she qualify by his parent’s request as one of Laban’s daughters, Jacob, we’re told, loves her because she was beautiful in form and appearance.

The story moves on to Jacob striking a work deal with Laban for Rachel’s hand in marriage and Jacob works seven years to earn his bride. But Laban, on the wedding night, sneaks his eldest daughter Leah into the wedding chamber and Jacob awakes the next morning to discover he’s married the wrong girl! Early on in the story, Leah is described as having tender eyes. Her eye issue was told about in contrast to her younger sister’s beauty. We can assume that whatever was wrong with Leah’s eyes, this made her less attractive than Rachel.

The Problem Creates a Problem

There’s not much detail in how Laban pulled off the switch, but we can bet the major players, with the exception of Jacob, knew of the trick. Rachel had known she’d wed Jacob for a long time. Having Jacob on hand to work for seven years, the entire family and probably local community knew the cousins were engaged. And certainly, Leah knew of the long engagement of her sister. On the night of Rachel’s supposed marriage, Leah had to know she was being a body double for her prettier, younger sister. So how did it happen?

We don’t know.

But be it by her father’s bribery, threats, or perhaps in full agreement, the girl beneath the veil Jacob married was not the bride he wanted. It’s hard to believe Laban pulled this human switch off and I have often pondered the how of it for a long time. Where was Rachel during the festivities? Why didn’t she speak up or show up? And Leah, did she not speak during the … you know … consummation? If she did, did Jacob not recognize the voice? And what did Leah say to Jacob when he finally saw her face? Did she tell him the truth? Feel ashamed?

Again, we don’t know.

It’s natural, I think, for me to identify with Rachel in the scandalous bride switch. I blame my identification on Disney. In all the fairytale romance stories I was exposed to as a child, the heroine was always beautiful and always came close to losing her man. The female villain was usually portrayed as ugly or old, or both, and wanted evil done to the beautiful princess. On purpose, we were taught to believe that if we were beautiful our inside would mirror our outside and we’ll end up getting a rich and handsome prince—like Jacob. Only Jacob wasn’t rich and scholars estimate his age close to 70 by the time he married Laban’s daughters. But you get my point. Even at 70, Jacob must have looked good to the cousins who were waiting for a single man to show up and marry.

Did I forget to mention that Jacob got the bride he’s worked for?

Laban’s Folly

After discovering he’d married Leah instead of Rachel, Jacob immediately addresses Laban about the deception. This gives us a clue to Leah—she must have explained that the switch had been her father’s plan. With Jacob’s confrontation, Laban makes up some excuse about their customs of the oldest daughter must marry first. But for the seven years of Jacob and Rachel’s engagement, that custom never got mentioned.

Because of Leah’s physical imperfection, some scholars speculate that Laban feared she’d have no other suiters and saw an opportunity to marry her off before she became an old maid under his roof. Some believe because of Jacob’s great affection for Rachel, Laban knew he’d get another seven years of work out of him if he married Leah instead. And that’s just what happened. Though Jacob was allowed to marry Rachel after spending only the required seven days in the wedding chamber with Leah, he agreed to another seven years of service.

And so began the multiplication of God’s chosen people. While his father and grandfather (receivers of the promised nation), had but one wife each, Jacob, soon to be called Israel, acquired two wives in just one week.

And the madness was just getting started.

Jacob’s Reckless Love

The Bible states that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.

I am grateful that God’s Word doesn’t sugar coat people or their stories. It gives me hope. The history of mankind is fraught with human error and poor judgement, but God continued then, as He does today, to work in and through these objects of his affections and agents of His will.

Moving into the story of this three-way relationship between two sisters and their one husband, jealousy and envy slither in between the sisters like snakes in the grass. We’re told that when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, He opened her womb. But Rachel was barren.

The Lord must have opened Jacobs heart to Leah somewhat, too, as he found his way to her bed at some major points in the story.  One right after the other, Leah gives birth four times likely in the first four years of their marriage. With each birth, she ties the boy’s name to the Lord’s mercy upon her but also in a hopeful move that now, at last, her husband will love her. This tells us that while these two were procreating, Leah wasn’t receiving Jacob’s loving attention—it feels almost like a contractual agreement to pregnancy.

And Rachel is watching with disdain in her heart. Though she had her husband’s attentive love, Leah was giving Jacob something Rachel could not. Children—and they were all boys.

What is surprising to me is that both Jacob’s mother and grandmother were thought to be barren early in their own stories. To the two matriarchs before Rachel had been given the promise of a multitude of offspring. Rachel mirrored the matriarchs in Jacob’s family by experiencing a period of not being able to become pregnant. Surely Jacob had shared the stories of God’s intervening in his mother and grandmother’s temporary infertility. Knowing that through faith and prayer, both Sarah and Rebekah finally conceived, one would think Rachel would catch on to the pattern here. God promises, God tests, God delivers.

While we’re not told that she didn’t pray, we are told that she goes to Jacob and blames him for her issue. “Give me children or I will die,” she says in a desperate moment. And when he tells her it is God who has closed her womb, Rachel puts matters into her maid’s bed. She sends Jacob to sleep with servant Bilhah and now we have wife number three. It seems for Rachel, to have children under her own command, in her own household was more important than sharing Leah with Jacob, or helping care for the nephews she could have adored over at Leah’s place.

It’s important to note that Jacob’s grandmother, Sarah had done something similar with her own maid, Hagar. You remember—Hagar gave birth to Ishmael after sleeping with Abraham. But God was clear, the child of the promise would come from Abraham and Sarah, not Abraham and Hagar. Sarah did conceive and gave birth to Isaac, Jacob’s father. This is one reason I find Jacob’s willingness to sleep with a maid and create another Ishmael situation perplexing.

But because His ways are higher than ours, Bilhah’s boy is welcomed into the family. It also appears that Rachel wasn’t satisfied with this one child under her rule, because we’re told Bilhah conceived again with Rachel claiming at the birth of this second boy in her home, she’d wrestled with her sister and had prevailed.

Ouch!

Here is where long-suffering Leah takes on some attitude. Because she skipped a year of pregnancy, she assumes her procreating years are in her rearview mirror. Perhaps she feared Jacob would not return to her knowing she wouldn’t get pregnant. But instead of being happy with her four boys, she gives her maid, Zilpah to Jacob. And yes … now Jacob has four wives. Zilpah has not one, but two boys (just like the other maid) and this time, instead of praising the Lord, Leah names her boys after her own good fortune. The multitude had begun as Jacob now had eight sons with three different women. Serving Laban aside, Jacob was, indeed, a busy man. Scholars speculate that Jacob was spending separate family time between the wives and their children because of the sisterly jealousy.

But from the next scene, we can also speculate that Jacob had stopped sleeping with Leah and the competition was on again.

When Leah’s oldest boy Reuben (probably eight or nine years old at the time), brought his mom mandrakes he’d found in a field, Rachel took note. “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes,” she said. But Leah answered, “Is it not enough that you’ve taken my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes, too?”

Impulsive, explosive Rachel answers, “Fine, he [Jacob] may lie with you tonight in exchange for the mandrakes.”

Did she … um … just sell her husband?

Later that evening, Leah goes out to meet Jacob in the field. I bet she’d put on her best tunic and braided her hair up nice, cause she lets him know she’d hired him for the night.

And … Jacob goes home with Leah.

Ooops.

What a big fat mess. The man is getting passed around like a puppy. And yet, he never steps up and says, “Enough.” Or “Let’s stop this madness.”

And you guessed it (or knew it already), Leah gets pregnant. And it’s a boy. Surprise! I’m sure Rachel with mandrakes long gone, hated she’d sold her husband for that one night.

But it wasn’t just one night. Leah conceives again and gives birth to her sixth son saying “God has endowed me and now my husband will honor me, for I have given him six sons.” The night visits to Leah’s must have kept going because Leah gets pregnant for the seventh time and gives birth to a girl, naming her Dinah. The current count for Jacob’s offspring is ten boys and one girl.

Then, we’re told God remembered Rachel.

Isn’t that just like Our God? He never holds a grudge. Impulsive, jealous Rachel was remembered by God.

This gives me hope.

And when He remembered her pain, her deepest desire, He opened her womb.

This gives me joy.

I’m happy for Rachel and I’m loving how God’s mercy shows up even when our noble character doesn’t. A forgiving and long-suffering power, our God is always crafting a story of redemption.

Rachel gives birth to Joseph, the son that would eventually orchestrate Jacob and all his sons and grandchildren’s survival during a deadly famine in the land.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Finally, after much negotiating and positioning, Jacob tells his two principal wives that it’s time to leave their father’s land and return to the land of his family, where as for as he knew, Esau still held a death wish.

So Jacob and his women and children sneak off in the night without Laban knowing. And Rachel—she doesn’t slip out without first, stealing her father’s idols.

This causes a big stir in Laban’s camp and he heads out to contend with Jacob.

And that’s almost humorous because Jacob didn’t have anyway to defend himself. You see, Jacob hadn’t acquired an army of men like many leaders of the day. Jacob had acquired a passel of kids. And four women.

It sounds like I jest, and maybe I do. But I’m fascinated in these notable details as, we’ll soon see, Jacob is the one who fulfills God’s promises to build a nation. I am not fascinated because he had so many kids, but because within the hectic home life, the feuding wives, and the by-standing maids, God built the tribes of Israel.

I encourage you to read the story (found in Genesis) of Jacob, his wives, and his multiple encounters with angels of God of which one declares Jacob’s new name to be Israel. It’s fascinating to see how in their humanness, God fulfilled grand, miraculous promises. God’s will stands even when our wills falter.

The story has many twists and turns, including a loving reunion with Esau, a kidnapped daughter, two bloodthirsty and revengeful sons, and Rachel getting pregnant with son number two.

Do you remember when Rachel said that if Jacob did not give her children, she would die? Giving birth to her second son (Jacob’s twelfth son), Rachel does die. This is a sad ending to her story—a saga of strife and envy without knowing that she would give birth to two of the twelve tribes of Israel or that Joseph would become equal to the Pharaoh of Egypt after his other brothers sold him into slavery.

Interestingly, the rest of the Jacob’s accounts are void of women (except Reuben who sleeps with his aunt’s maid or his cousin’s mother which ever way you wanna look a that poor decision).

Notably absent is any mention of Leah.

In chapter 35, Rachel’ death is documented. But in chapter 37, her oldest, Joseph, takes center stage with dreams of ruling over his brothers. We’re told he was still young, around seventeen years old, when he had a series of what we now know were prophetic dreams of His future rule in Egypt. Interestingly, when Joseph tells his father of the dreams, Israel replies, “What is this dream that you have had? Am I and your mother and your brothers actually going to come to bow down to the ground before you?”

Considering that Rachel had died sometime earlier, what mother did Israel speak of? Had Rachel’s maid Bilhah taken on Joseph and Benjamin (the son Rachel died giving birth to) to raise, or had Leah stepped up to mother her stepsons who were actually her nephews? We don’t know for sure, and it’s pure speculation on my part, but even with a jealous heart, Leah must have known the sovereign Lord and its evidenced in her praises at the birth of her children. I hope Leah did the right thing and helped raise her sister’s sons.  

But the next mention of Leah is a comment from Israel, dying in old age. Israel asks to be buried with his ancestors, where, he says, he buried Leah. Leah was buried in the honorable tomb of Israel’s parents and grandparents—people of the promise.

Before Jacob died and in his dysfunctional way, he showed favoritism to Rachel’s oldest son, Joseph and the older eleven sons took note. They hated Joseph and their evil plot to get rid of him landed Joseph in the exact position God had revealed through the dreams–in charge in Egypt.

My heart is reminded that what we mean for evil, what we mean for selfish gain, God will use to His glory.

I’m so thankful.

Another fascinating takeaway from this story of sisters destined to share a husband is that Leah’s fourth son, Judah, becomes the patriarch of the tribe of Judah. This is the tribe of which King David and ultimately Christ were born into.

Long suffering, unloved Leah is an ancestor of Christ.

At his end, Jacob gives each of his twelve sons a special prophetic blessing, preparing for governance and building of a great nation—each tribe bearing a significant mark for the coming Christ.

The story will continue as we see evidence of these twelve men born to four women in our future. Look at Revelation 21:12:

It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The meaning of 12, which is considered a perfect number, is that it symbolizes God’s power and authority, as well as serving as a perfect governmental foundation. It can also symbolize completeness of the nation of Israel as a whole.

While the jealous rage of competitive wives is documented throughout the story of God building the nation he promised to Abraham, there are gaps in the story that I feel sure bear out redemption in the relationship between Rachel and Leah. Though we are not told, I’m choosing to believe that at Rachel’s death, Leah mourned, taking no joy in her sister’s end. I also assume that without Rachel, Leah took on an important support role for Jacob. He’s lost the love of his life, but in his old age, I feel sure Leah provided the companionship and support he needed as they journeyed into the new land promised to Israel.

There are many lesson in this lengthy account of Jacob and his family, but the lesson I take away is God’s ability to look so far beyond our shortcomings and into His perfect plans for imperfect people. He is not only able to use me in all of my afflictions and shortcomings, but He is willing—giving me every opportunity to help build His new kingdom—the one for which He will return.

If I perish, I perish,

Laurie

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