Fair to Look Upon

by Mary Belle Freeley

"AND JACOB SERVED SEVEN YEARS FOR RACHEL."

For a little further on we find that Jacob wasn't as shrewd about getting married as he was about breeding cattle that were ring-streaked and grizzled, and so Laban, with the cunning of a modern politician, palmed off his daughter Leah on Jacob as a bride. But the next morning, when he discovered the trick, there were probably matinees, side-shows and circuses in the tent of Laban, and finally the upshot of the whole affair was that he agreed to serve seven years more for Rachel, and then married her also. Far be it from me to disparage Jacob's love, but we cannot help but notice that we have no inspired statement saying that the seven years he served for Rachel, after he had married her, "seemed but a few days for the love he had to her."

But we can't censure him for that, for as we read we discover that in his earnest and constant endeavor to save his precious person he had no time to nurture his love. For the two wives, the two sisters, were madly jealous of each other of course (and we can't blame them either, for there never was a man so great that he could be divided between two wives, several handmaids and more concubines, and be enough of him to go around satisfactorily) and they made his life a howling wilderness.

Leah, poor thing, longed for her fraudulent husband's love, and he hated her. Rachel "envied her sister," and "Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel," and altogether the picture of their home is not very enticing, and having gotten thus far we are more than ever convinced that we do not want to follow the example of the "holy women" of old, as Peter complimentarily, but ignorantly, calls them.

And Rachel and Leah, in order to spite and humble each other, each gave her maid "to Jacob to wife" and strange as it may seem, he accepted them both. It was like him.

Now about this time Leah's son "found mandrakes in the field" and brought them to his mother. We suppose Rachel had a sweet tooth from the fact that a little further on we find her offering to sell her husband for one night to Leah, for some mandrakes, whatever they were; and we notice that women held their husbands rather cheap in those good old days.

You see Rachel and Leah made Jacob a thing of barter and sale and (without consulting his desires) Leah consummated the bargain, and she went out toward the field when the harvest was progressing, and met Jacob as he came from his work tired and dusty, and informed him he must come with her, "For surely I have hired thee with my son's mandrakes," and he did not resent the insulting idea that he had been "hired," but like all the other distractingly obedient men of the Bible—he went.

Rachel next distinguishes herself as a disobedient daughter and headstrong wife by "stealing her father's gods" without consulting or confiding in her husband, for we read that "Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them."

And Laban, Rachel's father, and Jacob had a lively altercation, and they said exceedingly naughty things to each other in loud voices, but at last they came to an agreement, and Laban said he would give up his children, grandchildren and cattle, but he was bound to have his "gods" or know the reason why. The entire story is a curious mixture of heathenism and belief in one God.

Then Jacob rose in all the confidence of perfect innocence and told him he might search the whole camp for all he cared, and he added in his outraged dignity, "with whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live."