The story of Leah

https://odb.org/2025/02/19/finding-love

Genesis 29:28–35 (NIV): 28 And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. 29 Laban gave his servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her attendant. 30 Jacob made love to Rachel also, and his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years. 31 When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. 32 Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the LORD has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.”
33 She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son, she said, “Because the LORD heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.” So she named him Simeon. 34 Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” So he was named Levi. 35 She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son, she said, “This time, I will praise the LORD.” So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

We don’t really focus much on Leah, Jacob’s first wife. Partly because we may feel she was part of Laban’s deceit of Jacob, although in a way, we may also feel Jacob deserved the retribution after he himself having deceived Esau his birthright and their father’s blessings.

The story as we know in Genesis 29 is that after working 7 years for Laban, his uncle, to marry Rachel, Laban instead gave Jacob Leah as his wife on the wedding night, saying that the elder sister must be married first. Thus, he needed to work for Laban for another 7 years for Rachel. So he ended up with two wives that week and another 7 years to work for Laban. If you read on in Genesis, however, you will know that God blessed Jacob tremendously and made him a very rich man in the process.

The LORD also transformed Jacob from a cunning and conniving person to become Israel after he had that encounter where he wrestled with God (that’s the meaning of Israel). Thus, it is from Jacob that the twelve tribes of Israel came from – the 12 sons of both his wives, Leah and Rachel, and their maidservants. See chart below:

But Jacob loved Rachel and not Leah. God saw Leah’s plight in seeking after Jacob’s love and blessed her with children first. You can see this clearly in Genesis 29:31 – When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. In verse 33 – She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son, she said, “Because the LORD heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.” It was only in the later years that Rachel gave birth to Joseph and Benjamin, who then became Jacob’s favourite sons.

It was this internal family rivalry that probably led to the sons of Leah later devising the plan to sell Joseph off to slave traders to Egypt. We know how God turned Joseph’s bad situation into one that saved and preserved Jacob’s clan (from the severe famine then) for 430 years in Egypt before God raised Moses to confront Pharoah and deliver the whole clan (now a nation) out of Egypt back into Canaan. Incidentally, it was from Judah’s line, Leah’s 4th son, that King David came from and thus our Lord Jesus Christ.

Like in the case of Haggar and Sarah of Abraham, the LORD did not overlook the one who was not loved. Instead, the LORD made sure the unloved is blessed. You can see this in Genesis 21:18, where the LORD promised to make Hagar’s son, Ishmael, into a great nation, and it is believed that the Arabs of today descended from Ishmael. He saw Leah’s situation and took care of her by blessing her with 4 sons in the early years when Rachel’s womb was closed.

The LORD would have remembered and cared for us even if we were not part of His Kingdom. What more when we are in His Kingdom and part of His heavenly family. Surely He will bless and protect us. He looked out and cared for Leah, the unloved wife of Jacob. He cared for Hagar, the maidservant of Sarah who bore Abraham, his first son before Isaac. Surely He will look out and care for us, the children redeemed and saved by the precious blood of His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour! Be strong and of good courage, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go!