Leah: A woman of faith
There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah (Genesis 49:31).
Despite the comfort of her sons, Leah deeply felt her isolation from her husband Jacob. You see the love of her oldest son Reuben when he brings his mother some mandrakes he finds. These plants were highly valued for their medicinal properties. When Rachel asks Leah if she could have some of her mandrakes, Leah’s distress boils over as she replies to her sister, “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?” (Genesis 30:15). Rachel agrees to share Jacob’s affections in return for mandrakes. How humiliating such an arrangement must have been for Leah! But we read, “God listened to Leah” (30:17). She conceived and gave birth to Issachar, her fifth son, and later to Zebulun. In these two children, Leah sees the hand of God. In Issachar, she recognises that God was rewarding her; and in Zebulun, that God would cause Jacob to honour her. As a woman of faith, she defines her life in terms of what God is doing. Leah also gives birth to Jacob’s only daughter, Dinah (30:17-21).
In Genesis 31:3, God tells Jacob to return home. To do this, he has to flee Laban’s house. Rachel and Leah willingly go with him. Laban chases after Jacob, but God warns him not to harm his nephew. Laban says to Jacob, “Now you have surely gone because you greatly long for your father’s house, but why did you steal my gods?” (v. 30). It was Rachel who had stolen these gods. They were obviously important to her, and she, and other household members, were continuing to revere them. Jacob tolerated this until, in Genesis 35, God called Jacob to “go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make an altar there to God” (v. 1). Jacob has to deal with idolatry in his own house, led by the wife he loved (vv. 2-4). Because we love someone, it does not mean they will always be a spiritual help to us. Jacob failed to deal faithfully with Leah, who loved him. And Jacob allowed his love for Rachel to tolerate idolatry in his own home. It was only when Bethel came into view, and he recalled the grace of God towards him, that he put things right.
Through the same grace, Rachel became the mother of Joseph, the saviour of his family, and one of the most outstanding illustrations of Christ in the Old Testament. She later died giving birth to Benjamin and was buried at Bethlehem. Leah is not mentioned again until Jacob is dying, in Genesis 49. At the end of the chapter, Jacob instructs his sons to bury him in the cave in the field which Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite as a burial place. In verse 31 Jacob says, “There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah.” Leah was honoured in her death by being included with foundational men and women of faith.
Though little regarded, she stands out as a woman whose faith grew in the most barren circumstances. She is the mother of half of the tribes of Israel, including the priestly tribe of Levi and the royal tribe of Judah. In the unhappy years in Laban’s house, it is her voice that was so often lifted to God to give Him glory and praise out of a heart bereft of love. She was a pawn in the hand of her father and suffered unjustly at the hands of her husband. But at the very end of Jacob’s life, he remembers his first wife and we sense in his words the tenderness of love towards Leah when he says, “There I buried Leah.” Her life is a lesson in God’s care for the isolated and lonely, and a vital lesson to husbands to “love your wives just Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
