Oddly enough, the Lord never gives us an example of the perfect marriage in his word. Instead, he gives us an image of himself, as he reacts to what we do. In effect, he is the Husband, and we, men and women collectively, are his wife. But, no matter which hero of the Bible we choose to study, we shall not find a single one, who had a perfect marriage. Perhaps, this is because, there isn’t any such thing as a perfect marriage, sermons I’ve heard and books I’ve read notwithstanding. Rather, a marriage is a picture of men and women struggling in their relationship with one another in the same manner that we struggle in our relationship with the Lord. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. However, we do have a perfect God to model our behavior after, and this, remember, has always been the prime directive (Genesis 1:27)!
Additionally, it seems odd, as well, but true, that the Lord never forbids polygamy, vis-à-vis the practice of having more than one wife. In fact, some passages of scripture seem to indicate that the Lord not only blesses additional wives (viz. Genesis 16:7-13; 21:12-13) but also gave additional wives to some of the heroes of the Bible (2Samuel 12:8), at one point commanding the prophet to take a second wife (Hosea 1:2; 3:1). As this pertains to our present study, Laban had given Jacob both his daughters in marriage, but how would this play out in life? What happens in a marriage, when more than one mate is taken in a marital union. Indeed, even if a man and a woman are united in the sense of Genesis 2:24, how are the two (or more) wives united in a polygamous union?
In our present study, both sisters, Leah and Rachel, have married Jacob, but life isn’t a bed of fulfilled dreams. Predictably, Jacob and Rachel got along very well (Genesis 29:30), but Leah had been left out of Jacob’s good graces. In other words, not only did Jacob love Rachel more than Leah, which, no doubt, even Leah expected, but he treated very unfairly, perhaps because he didn’t wish to offend Rachel. In any case, the fact that “Leah was hated,”[1] had not gone unnoticed by the Lord, so he opened her womb and blessed her with children, and withheld doing so for Rachel (Genesis 29:31). What seems to have occurred is that Leah was a virtual widow in her own marriage to Jacob, so the Lord acted as her husband (in the spirit of Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 31:32) and gave her children by Jacob in an effort to heal the breach between Jacob and his offended wife.
When Leah gave birth to her firstborn, Reuben, she correctly believed that the Lord had looked upon her situation, and she hoped that Jacob would love her because of her son (Genesis 29:32). Thus, although she was married, she felt lonely, never united in her union (Genesis 2:24) with Jacob. Leah’s next two sons, Simeon (hears) and Levi (joined) were named so, because Leah believed the Lord heard she was hated, and believed Jacob would now join himself to her (Genesis 29:33-34) in the sense of Genesis 2:24, because Leah didn’t feel like she was in a relationship with her husband!
Finally, it seems that Leah had all but accepted her unwelcome situation, as she bore Jacob a fourth son, Judah (praise). Without any hope of better conditions in the foreseeable future, Leah decided to name her fourth son, Judah, to praise the Lord for being her ‘husband,’ and she left off bearing (Genesis 29:35). It is not as though she accepted her loneliness in marriage, as it was accepting the fact that the Lord blessed her in spite of her loneliness, even to the point where her preferred sister, Rachel, was jealous of her (Genesis 30:1).
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[1] The word hate doesn’t have the same meaning here that we give the word today. What the text is saying is that Jacob preferred Rachel over Leah. In all things he chose her over Leah, even when it was unnecessary. This not only hurt his wife, Leah, but it also made rivals of the two sisters, so that Jacob’s preference for Rachel was breaking down any good relationship the sisters may have had prior to their marrying Jacob.
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