NOTES for Gen 30:1-24

The competition in childbearing between Jacob's wives can seem strange to a modern reader. And, to be sure, to a modern reader, at least a Western reader, the very situation of polygamy can seem strange and unfamiliar. A harem is still exotic for most of us who live in countries traditionally called Christian.

Meanwhile, for a harem the situation described is quite ordinary, especially for a harem in ancient times, when a woman's main work was bearing children, above all boys. God's blessing was often measured precisely this way, by the number of children. Jacob's wives are no exception: both Leah and Rachel tried with all their might. This is where the conflict arose: the beloved wife was naturally Rachel, for whose sake Jacob had worked as a shepherd for fourteen years, but Leah bore more children. A kind of balance emerged: Rachel was loved as a woman, as a wife. There was more personal feeling and personal relation here, not determined by any tribal customs. Leah, however, was the mother of many of Jacob's children, a mother first of all, and she was considered blessed by God in the eyes of any person of that age, if that person looked at the situation through the familiar tribal cliches.

Jacob had to learn to see above such cliches or through them, and his love for Rachel taught him this. For a full spiritual life, such vision is absolutely important; otherwise real communion with God is impossible. For communion with God to become full, there must be no cliches and no automatic patterns at all in a person's life. Today it may well seem to us that in the life of those whom we habitually call "savages" or "primitive people," or, in scholarly language, representatives of traditional societies, there are few or almost no cliches. In fact there are no fewer there than in our own life. They are simply different, and we do not always notice them. Meanwhile, any cliche is dangerous for spiritual life, even one that can sometimes seem like traditional wisdom. So God frees Jacob from the cliches and stereotypes characteristic of his consciousness as a person of his own age, for Jacob was to become not simply the leader of his tribe, but the leader of the people of God.