Rachel was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. She was not laid in the sepulchre of Abraham. The children were left to the fostering care of her hated sister. Her sons passed through trials from which she could not guard them, and they came to honours while she knew it not. At this distance, her life seems to us a dream—a few years of pleasant childhood, a short vision of youthful love,—then comes the strife of life, its stern discipline, its bitter trials, its disappointed hopes, and its termination in the grave.
As we dwell upon the characters so truthfully delineated in the word of God, and follow the record of human pride, passion and infirmity, we are taught at once to magnify and adore the patience, the forbearance and the mercy of Jehovah. And let us remember that it is because these characters are reflected in the pure mirror of truth that the dark shades so plainly appear. In every age the heart of man is the same; but the temptations which especially evince this depravity may be peculiar to some particular age or condition.
We know not how long Leah survived her sister. Her advancing years were not exempt from affliction, and age brings its own trials; yet prosperity rested upon Jacob—and in the decline of life she may have known happiness desired, but not realized, in youth.
After the death of his beloved Rachel, the heart of Jacob may have turned to Leah, and a peaceful friendship have succeeded the storm and the conflicts of youthful passion. Sorrow may have knit hearts softened by the mutual consciousness of error and by the tears of repentance, and strengthened by the hopes of pardon, and drawn to each other by the strong ties of parental love for their mutual offspring. When the patriarch was called into Egypt, Leah went not with him. He had laid her in the gathering-place of his sons, in the tent of his fathers. From the touching expression of the dying patriarch—himself far from the land of his fathers' sepulchres—"And there I buried Leah," we feel that, in age and bereavement, the heart of Jacob turned to Leah. The repudiated wife of his youth became the solace of his age, and her memory awoke the last tender recollections in the dying patriarch. As we have read the book of God, we have been taught that good, inordinately coveted, or obtained by injustice and deceit, ever brings a curse. The principal actors in the events recorded in these chapters of Genesis, may have secured the object which they sought, yet the attainment did not avert or mitigate the punishment of the treachery by which it was secured.
Rebekah obtained the birth-right and the coveted blessing for her favourite child, and by that act separated him from herself and doomed him to a banishment from his father's house, and from that hour she saw his face no more. Laban secured by his deceit the marriage of his unattractive daughter and the establishment of the beautiful Rachel, but he thus alienated the children he still seems to have loved, and that wealth which he so coveted.
Leah, by her connivance at her father's deceit, married the man she loved, but it was to lead a life of bitter, of heart-consuming sorrow. Jacob, departing from the institution of marriage that he might yet possess Rachel, entailed upon himself a career of strife, bitterness and disappointment; and introduced into his family an example that became a fruitful source of individual depravity and national corruption; while he first witnessed the evil effects of his complicated domestic relations in the conduct of his eldest son, and felt at once his shame as a husband and his reproach as a father. And are not these things written for our edification? Are we not, in every page of God's word, taught explicitly that for man there is neither safety nor happiness save in the path of duty and of literal obedience? That each departure from the rule of right, whatever be the motive, and crowned as it may seem to be with success, draws a long succession of sin and sorrow in its train? Many have studied the word of God to justify sin, or palliate guilt, by the examples of the former dispensation. Let it be carefully studied, and it will show that the transgression which secured a positive object, still brought its punishment,—if delayed, never remitted—although successful, never justified. The word of God never justifies crimes, though in infinite wisdom He over-rules them to promote the designs of his eternal providence.
Modern days and Christian institutions allow no examples of the exact type of the strife and rivalry exhibited in the household of the patriarch of Israel. Yet, while human nature remains as it is, there will ever be the jealousies, the strifes, the bitterness arising from misplaced affection, or alienated hearts, or jarring interests. There is still to be found the coquetry which would win love from a sister or a friend, and the treachery that would supplant the rival—as there are still fathers who, for motives of interest, would sacrifice their daughters, regardless of their hearts or their happiness. Youthful beauty still attracts the eye and wins the heart, and the best and wisest of men are too often enthralled by mere personal attraction.
Human nature is ever the same, and the motives and feelings which swayed the generations who have mouldered back to dust are still felt and acknowledged.
While we thus attempt to trace the outlines of the domestic history of these individuals, we cannot but feel that there is a surpassing beauty and excellence in the character of Abraham. He bore the fresh impress of a renovated world, and was truly worthy of the pre-eminence which is always allotted to him. Isaac seems to have dwelt in quiet, peaceful prosperity. Inheriting great wealth, dwelling until mature age with his parents, there seem to have been few occasions in which the prominent traits of the character are displayed. His life offers less of interest, less to excite, less to praise and less to blame than either Abraham's or Jacob's. The father's energy, patience, faith and obedience had prepared the way for the prosperity of the son; and Isaac, nursed in affluence and cherished by maternal affection, seems to have exhibited less energy, enterprise and decision than either his father or his descendants. His premature blindness doubtless conduced to this inactive life. Yet he trusted and obeyed the God of his father, though he enjoyed neither the exalted faith of Abraham, nor was he favoured with the enlarged prophetic views of Jacob.
In all the trials and infirmities of Jacob—from the day in which he left his father's house until the hour in which "he gathered his feet in his bed and died" in Egypt—we see the evidence and the growth of true piety, of enlarged faith. He was encompassed with infirmities, and these infirmities betrayed him into sins, which brought in their train the sorrows which, through Divine grace, purified and sanctified him. Thus his character excites our increasing love and sympathy, and his advancing piety our veneration.