Heart & Soul

For the past five years, part of my job has been to develop a study Bible that addresses the honest questions people today have while reading the Bible. For instance:

Why does the Bible not condemn slavery?

Why was polygamy condoned (apparently) in the Old Testament, but not in the New?

Why circumcision? And why that part of the body?

But one of the questions I couldn’t forget came from a young woman, recently married, who read Genesis 29 and wondered, “How come Jacob didn’t realize he’d married Leah until the morning after his wedding night?”

The answer we eventually published next to verses 2325 in The Quest Study Bible says something about the darkness of the tent, the possibility of Jacob’s senses being dulled by the eating and drinking at the wedding feast, and the veils worn by a bride who probably wanted the deception to succeed.

But that question has since prompted me to wonder not just about their wedding night, but also about their marriage. What happened in Leah’s soul, knowing she was a tolerated but unloved spouse?

Did she feel unappreciated, taken for granted? Did she ever resent performing her marital duties for an ungrateful husband whose real affections were elsewhere? We know she named her first son Reuben–“He has seen my misery.”

For anyone in church leadership, it’s sometimes easy to identify with Leah. We offer our best to people whose affections often lie elsewhere. People expect, even demand, thoughtful sermons, warm hospitality, and attention to administrative detail week after week. And the thanks we get? Sometimes precious little.

Church leaders certainly aren’t the only ones facing this temptation to feel unappreciated. The antidote? I find great encouragement in the rest of Leah’s life.

She continues to cry out to God, her prayers capsulized in the names of her next three sons:

Simeon–“The Lord hears (that I am not loved)”

Levi–“My husband will be attached to me” (now that we’ve had children)

Judah–“I will praise the Lord” (period).

Do those names suggest a progression in her relationship to God?

Eventually Rachel dies in childbirth, and Jacob, devastated by the loss, sets up a perpetual memorial for her. But then, over the next several years, something happens in Leah’s relationship to her husband. Genesis 49:29-31 suggests that her least-favored-wife status changes.

Upon Leah’s death, Jacob buries her in a place of honor next to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah. And later, when Jacob himself is about to die in Egypt, he asks his sons to bury him not with Rachel, whom he favored most of his life, but with Leah!

In his final years, perhaps Jacob recognized the worth of his first wife, a treasure found within an initially unsatisfying relationship.

The greatest irony is that God chose this unwanted wife as the one to bear not only Jacob’s son Judah, but through him, King David and eventually a child named Jesus.

Who’s to say that even our most unsatisfying relationships might not be part of God’s plan to redeem us and future generations?

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Marshall Shelley is executive editor of LEADERSHIP.