but nothing is simple in jacob’s life…

so jacob moves to haran.  and as he arrives there, one of the greatest love moments in all of the bible occurs.  he arrives and he sees some shepherds and across the field walking toward him a woman.  he’s later to find out that her name is rachel. 

look with me in genesis 29:10-12 (msg), the moment jacob spotted rachel, daughter of laban his mother’s brother, saw her arriving with his uncle laban’s sheep, he went and single-handedly rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the sheep of his uncle laban. then he kissed rachel and broke into tears. he told rachel that he was related to her father, that he was rebekah’s son. she ran and told her father. 

three things happened while jacob is in haran.  one, her marries.  two, he has children.  three, he builds a business.  doesn’t that sound simple?  but nothing is simple in jacob’s life. 

he marries.  he decides that he wants to marry this woman that he’s met, this woman that he loves – rachel.  but the unfortunate thing is that rachel is the younger sister not the older.  and the tradition then was that the older sister had to marry before the younger.  but jacob bugs his uncle laban saying, “i really want to marry her.”  and laban says, “ok, this is what we’ll do.  you can work seven years for her...  [and maybe laban figured leah would be married in that amount of time or maybe he had some scheme up his own sleeve.]  ... and then you can marry her.”

29.16 (niv) is very revealing, now laban had two daughters; leah was the older and rachel the younger. leah had nice eyes, but rachel was stunningly beautiful. “nice eyes” – interesting phrase.  that’s like saying she’s a good friend – an insult without an insult. 

the names are also interesting.  “rachel” means “little ewe lamb” – a little lamb, that kind of an idea behind it.  it’s leah’s name that is somewhat interesting.  it can mean “nice eyes” but there is also a translation by which it means, “cow eyes.”  and that’s an interesting translation.  you’ve got the little ewe lamb and you’ve got the cow!  and jacob, who was a schemer, went for the beauty every time – the external beauty.  he said, “i want to marry that beautiful woman,” and he rejected leah. 

so he worked seven years for rachel.  verse 25 (msg) morning came: there was leah. there’s a lot said in that one little phrase. 

this is his honeymoon night.  and the morning comes and he thinks he’s going to wake up next to rachel and he wakes up next to leah.  he thinks he’s going to wake up next to a “little ewe lamb” and he wakes up next to a “cow”.       

and he is mad!  so he goes to his uncle and says, “what have you done to me?” and laban says, “it’s not our tradition.  we can’t do it that way.  but if you want to marry rachel right now, we can work that out.  here’s the deal.  you marry her now and you can work seven more years after you marry her.  i won’t make you wait seven years.”  and jacob does it. 

then he has children.  that seems like it would be simple except for the fact that leah and rachel are fighting over who can have the most children.  jacob becomes sort of a stud horse in his own family.  rachel is not bearing children and leah is.  they’re fighting over him to see who can have the most children.  they are bringing their handmaids to him so that he can have children through them so he can be more prideful about how many children he has.  instead of a blessing, babies were a battle in his life. 

then there is his business where he builds his flocks.  he and his uncle made a deal where jacob gets the spotted flocks and laban would keep the non-spotted ones.  so jacob tries a little genetic engineering of his own.  he does something with canes and cuts then in a certain way, strips them in a certain way.  if the animals see the stripes on the canes (this is what most people think he was thinking – it’s hard to know what he was thinking) but it would cause them to mate and as they saw stripped canes the sheep would have stripped babies so that his flocks would increase.  his flocks do increase due not at all with anything he did.  it had everything to do with GOD’s blessing in his life. 

just a thought from the front porch…