I love the movie White Christmas- you know, the one with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Vera Ellen, and Rosemary Clooney. And of course, I love the iconic scene where the two sisters are doing their nightclub act and singing the song “Sisters, Sisters, there were never such devoted sisters.” Of course, the line that comes to mind today is, “Lord, help the mister Who comes between me and my sister, and Lord, help the sister who comes between me and my man.”
The story of Rachel and Leah is yet another story of “sibling rivalry” in the bible. But this is the first time we get a story about two women as siblings. To be fair, much of the rivalry between the two sisters is created by their father and by Jacob. It all begins when Jacob first meets Rachel at a well and what ensues is best described as patriarchy gone wild. Jacob decides that the wages for working for Laban will be his daughter, Rachel, he works for seven years, Laban gives him Leah instead, and then he works for seven MORE years to get the sister he really wanted. The way this story is told, the women are only good for two things- currency and childbearing.
A few things are at play here. First, we have the use of a daughter as payment for work. While it can be argued that there had to be a “bride price” paid, and that work is one way that cost could be paid, that still means that money had to exchange hands for the purchase of a woman as a bride. “The bodies of the women who birthed the twelve tribes of Israel were the bait and the bargaining chips that Laban used to secure free labor from Jacob; fourteen years of labor was the price for Rachel.”(Jeffress 575). The use of women as currency doesn’t stop with the sisters, however. Eventually, Bilhah and Zilpah, two enslaved women, are brought into the relationship as additional guarantors of male offspring. And to be abundantly clear, we have no idea who in this complicated relationship consented to bear children and who did not. So the first issue in this “rivalry” is one of money.
Another issue in this rivalry is the sister swap. Now, we’re not talking about some sort of wholesome “Parent Trap” kind of swap here. Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah. When Jacob had completed his first seven years of work, he went to Laban and said, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” In other words, he wanted the property he had earned. “After the wedding feast, in the dark of evening, Jacob goes in to consummate the marriage, but Leah has been substituted for her sister; in the morning, Jacob claims that “It was Leah!” (Gen 29:25). This is a multiple reversal: the trickster has been tricked, and the man who supplanted his elder brother marries the elder sister. Laban makes the message clear as he declares that the younger must not be married first. Jacob then arranges to receive Rachel at the end of the wedding week and thereafter to work another seven years to pay off her bride price.”(Frymer-Kensky).
But Jacob did not want Leah. He wanted Rachel. I can only imagine how hurtful this must have been. Leah was “substituted, willingly or not, into Jacob’s bed by her father.” and she was “desperate for the love of Jacob who loved her sister, but still
frequented her bed, driving home the painful fact that sex was not love.”(Jeffress 575). And even though Rachel WAS the object of Jacob’s desire, “we are never told that she also loved him, and that whether or not she loved him, she was bound by her culture to provide male children.”(Jeffress 576).
What results is essentially a race to make babies- male babies- and no one is safe. “Leah gives birth to four sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. Bilhah, Rachel’s servant and Jacob’s concubine bears two more sons, Dan and Naphtali. Zilpah, Leah’s maid, gives birth to Gad and Asher. Then Leah bears another two sons and a daughter: Issachar, Zebulun, and Dinah. Finally, Rachel gives birth to Joseph—after seven long years of waiting—and later Benjamin” and then she dies” (Sauter). Leah has done her duty- seven children in seven years. And yet, Jacob never loves her the way he loves Rachel. Leah is fertile, and Rachel is loved. A man has indeed come between the sisters.
The added twist here is that the rivalry neither starts nor ends with the sisters. Jacob had, of course, been in rivalry with his brother Esau even in their mother’s womb. Jacob had deceived Isaac and Esau both in order to get the birthright; He was the “supplanter”, who gained his birthright by bargaining with his brother and deceiving his father.“ (Squires). Now, in a bit of karma, Jacob is the one deceived, and that deception results in a sisterly rivalry. But that isn’t the end of it. “It is only after the seven children had been born to Leah, and the seven years that Jacob was working towards marriage with Rachel had been completed, that we then read, ‘then God remembered Rachel, and God heeded her and opened her womb; she conceived and bore a son … and she named him Joseph’.”(Squires). And what happens to Joseph? His brothers hate him, sell him into slavery, and tell their father that he died. This is a sibling rivalry story that spans three generations.
There are those who would say that the driving force behind all of these rivalries is jealousy. But I’d like to argue against that idea. See, I don’t think jealousy is a real emotion. Jealousy is a response to an emotion. Let me say that again. Jealousy itself isn’t an emotion, it is a RESPONSE to an emotion. Perhaps the emotion is fear- fear of being left alone, fear of being hurt, fear of missing out. Perhaps the emotion is love- a need to feel loved or a feeling that one ISN’T being loved. Or perhaps the feeling is hurt, or loneliness, or even anger. But jealousy is only the response.
Leah was not Jealous of Rachel. Leah wanted to be loved for who she was. Leah was used as a pawn in her father’s games without her consent. Leah was a dutiful wife who gave her husband many sons. But Jacob did not love Leah. Her emotion was love- that need to feel love that wasn’t being met. And to be clear, it wasn’t being met by anyone: not her husband, not her father, not her sister. Rachel was not jealous of Leah. Rachel wanted a child. Rachel had been the victim of her father’s cruel trick on Jacob. Rachel wanted her marriage to Jacob to be complete and to have a family with him. Her emotion was want.
So no, this story is not and has never been about jealousy. This story is about men doing what they want and leaving the women to clean up the mess. And yet, the stories of all four of the women in this story are overshadowed by Jacob’s narrative. “These four women birthed a nation, a people, a legacy with which their names are scarcely associated; they are the mothers, the matriarchs of God’s people Israel.”(Jeffress 575). Later in Genesis, there are moments when Rachel and Leah work together. They agree to return to Canaan with Jacob and depart their childhood home together with the children.
And that brings me back to the beginning of my sermon today. The song really does kind of sum up their relationship!
Those who've seen us
Know that not a thing could come between us
Many men have tried to split us up but no one can
Lord, help the Mister
Who comes between me and my sister
And Lord, help the sister who comes between me and my man