An Atheistic Bible Study Of Genesis Chapter Twenty Nine Jacob Gets Married Twice

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On the instructions of his parents, Rebekah and Isaac, Jacob continues his journey to Haran, expecting to lie low for just a few months until Esau calms down enough not to want to murder him any more and then go home again to Beersheba. He arrives at a village where he sees the local shepherds bringing their sheep flocks to a local well. The well is covered by a stone and once all the flocks have arrived, the stone is rolled away to allow the sheep to drink, after which the stone is pushed back into place. Learning that some of the shepherds are from the very place he is heading, he asks them about Laban, the man he expects to be staying with, Rebekah’ s brother, and Abraham’s grand-nephew. The shepherds tell him that Laban’s daughter, Rachel is one of the shepherds watering the sheep and point her out to Jacob. She is the last shepherd to arrive, which means the stone can now be moved and the sheep can drink at last. Jacob personally moves the stone from the well to help speed things up. He immediately falls in love with Rachel and runs up to kiss her. Crying in joy he explains to her that he is looking for her father, Laban, so Rachel goes to notify her father. Laban arrives and invites Jacob back to the family home, and Jacob tells him his plans. After a month of free board, Jacob is finally told that he should work for his keep and Laban asks him what he should pay him for services rendered. Jacob agrees to work for Laban for seven years and that his reward should be marriage to Rachel, Laban’s daughter. After the seven years of hard labour reaches its end, Jacob requests Rachel be given to him as his bride as agreed, but after the wedding feast, Laban substitutes his older daughter, Leah for Rachel, and Jacob, either very drunk or very short sighted, marries and consummates his love to Leah instead of Rachel. Laban throws in Leah’s handmaid slave girl, Zilpah, too for good measure. Jacob discovers the deception the next morning when he wakes up married to the wrong girl, and Laban explains that it is his custom never to marry off a younger daughter before the older sister. He invites Jacob to work a further seven years on the house and farm to gain Rachel as a second bride, and instead of punching the man’s face in for such a bizarre deception, Jacob freely works a further seven years. He has ended up working for Laban for fourteen years to marry two sisters. Rachel has a slave girl handmaid too, called Bilhah. God only directly intervenes in this wretched farce in the end, only to make things worse. Finding that Jacob loves Rachel but not Leah, (even though Jacob cheerfully gratifies himself by having sex with Leah too), God senses Leah’s misery and cheers her up by giving her four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. God leave Rachel cruelly barren. This will lead to problems in the next chapter. After her fourth son is born however, Leah is struck down barren by God even though she desires more children. This dreadful 14 year servitude for marriage is often seen as romantic by many theologians, but it captures sexuality as a power struggle and domestic control factor. God’ cruel treatment of the women in the final verses shows his support and co-operation in such a deception, with outright slavery continuing in the background too. Arthur Chappell