Bible Wonders - The 4 Mothers - Leah

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises but the stars never fall? Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough?

Enough. Is Leah, and as the Bible teaches, she had tender eyes. And there's much to understand there, but let's just go back to what we talked about yesterday, that there was a whole lot of shenanigans in Jacob's family.

Based on what had happened with Rebecca and the deception of Isaac, you know, all this would have many consequences. And for so many different reasons, his family is all very much tied together since here we have Rebecca's essentially nieces in Leah and Rachel that we're going to hear all about, you know, in the upcoming episode of Rachel. Today we're talking about Leah, and as it described Leah when in Genesis, you know, 27, 28, 29, it's all quite the story that Leah was the older of the two daughters, that's important to understand, and that is also that she had weak eyes.

And so what the Jews teach along these lines to me is helpful. I don't know if it's helpful to you, but it's extremely helpful to me to understand that they teach that Rachel and Leah were not only twins like Jacob and Esau, but they were identical twins, which gives you a little understanding of how Jacob might have had that wedding night experience where he didn't know who he was with. But they were identical twins, and Leah being the older when they were born, Laban understood that being first cousins of another set of twins, being, you know, obviously Esau and Jacob, that this would be sort of a match made in heaven. And so as the twins, Leah and Rachel began to get older and the stories were coming from Canaan about how Esau was, you know, Rachel began to weep and weep and weep because she did not want to marry this man who'd already married all these foreign women and had this horrible reputation. And so she cried. And because of all this crying, her eyes got very, very tender. And with that tenderness meant that, you know, because the other thing we know is that Rachel was the one that was tending the sheep. Well, why? Well, the Jews teach that, you know, because Rachel's eyes were so tender from all this crying, it really hurt her to go out in the sun.

And in that area of the country, the sun is very bright. So she stayed in her tent in order to protect her eyes while her sister went out in the sun to tend the sheep, which may have something to do with why Rachel was considered more beautiful because she was tanned and clearly a little more athletic because she was out there getting exercise while Leah was in her tent crying, yet they were identical twins and would have similar voices, you know, all these things that might, you know, have something to do with that night. But like we talked about in yesterday's episode, you know, it's really good for my heart to see all the dysfunction in this family. This is Jesus' family here, okay?

This is our family. You know, I love in the 119th Psalm, you know, in the nun section, we say, or if we're praying that, which I love to do every day, that we've taken your heritage, we've taken your testimonies forever as our inheritance for they are the rejoicing of our hearts. Well, if we're taking, you know, this testimony as our inheritance and clearly Leah is our mother too, and she really is because she was one of Jesus' mothers and since we're married to Christ, you know, we're kind of in-lawed in the end of the deal.

So, you know, this is our story and it's really nice to know that, you know, we come from these people that made a lot of mistakes, yet God still continued to be faithful to them and lead them through into some incredible things. But in Leah's case, you know, she was living suffering because she thought she was going to be married to Esau, if that story is accurate. What we do know is our eyes were weak and what we do know is that Jacob worked seven years for Rachel. And that, you know, that's part of the story because Laban had told him, you know, that if he worked seven years, he would give him his daughter Rachel. Well, the night of their wedding, what was supposed to be Rachel's wedding from Jacob's point of view, you know, Laban pulled the ultimate switcheroo.

And oh, the Jews have much, much, much to teach about this. And again, I find it helpful that they say that Rachel was in on it and Rachel actually gave Leah some secret signs that she and Jacob knew that Laban might try to pull something like this. But Leah was so, you know, set up by this deal that Rachel couldn't break her sister's heart and embarrass her horribly in front of everyone by, you know, having this wedding night experience and she being discovered by Jacob. So she gave her sister the secret signs, according to the way the Jews teach it. Nonetheless, we know for sure that that night Jacob did go into Leah and they became man and wife.

And the result of that led to a whole lot of things. But the thing I find absolutely neat that the Jews teach about this and the reason I find it neat is it shows kind of the result of the sin because what they teach is that when Jacob discovered that Leah was there, he immediately yelled at her. And what he yelled was, you know, you are a deceiver like the son of a deceiver. And she looked at him and said, oh, does it sound similar like you didn't do the same thing to your father and your brother? Does it sound familiar? And then Jacob, of course, runs over to Laban and that's in the Bible, right? Like what have you done to you, deceived me?

And he says, oh, in our country we don't do it like you do. In other words, he's making reference again to Jacob's sin, which, you know, has come home to roost, but not near as much as it would come home to roost later in the case of Joseph. But here we see that Leah was clearly involved in this deception and she chose to go along with her father. And what happened obviously is one of the more remarkable stories in the Bible. But, you know, if you've got dysfunction in your family, you know, this gives me great hope because, I mean, this is a whole lot of shenanigans.

However, the result was the first four of the 12 tribes of Israel, which the fourth was Judah. And so this is – Leah is clearly, you know, directly in the line of Christ. And, you know, what an amazing thing that he or she clearly was involved in something that was – and she paid dearly for it as well. I mean, there's no doubt that everybody in this family paid for their deception and everybody in this family, you know, had a chance to repent.

And everybody had a chance to seek God through what all was going on because there was clearly all these different things. But if you think about it, it's just really redemptive to me to know that here was this sweet girl. She didn't want to be married to somebody that wasn't righteous. She ended up married to Jacob and then she had a very difficult time for those years where she was having children, which interestingly when you think about the different mothers, she's the only mother who wasn't barren. I mean, she didn't fight the fight of not being able to have children. She fought the fight of first of all, you know, getting a husband and then second of all, having that husband love her. Well, in the end, right, she had all these amazing children. And then she was the one who gets, you know, buried with Jacob in the cave of Maklava for all, you know, generations to know that she was in fact Jacob's wife. And in the end, you know, you can sense the love that was there as the way that God blessed all that and continues to bless it to this day. So thank you for listening. I can hardly wait to share Rachel's story tomorrow at something.