In God, True Love

The Study of Leah in Her Quest for Love

By Asha Tamang and Khen Lim

Image source: loveiseverywhere.tiffany.com 

Love is everywhere

There is this website that goes by the web address http://loveiseverywhere.tiffany.com. Click on it and it’ll take you straight to a very simple but catchy front home page. You needn’t have to go any farther or deeper. Right there, you’ll see a Google Map that has numerous love icons scattered right across the topology.

As the web address suggests, love is really everywhere you look. On the map alone, it’s almost countless. And if you start to believe it, you’ll be convinced that at every block and every corner of every street, you’ll find love. Cross the Harlem River to the east, and there’s more love there. Get across Central Park on the west and love is for the taking. Right at the heart of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), love might just be that someone standing right behind you.

Wherever we go today, everyone is convinced love is everywhere. We’re also told that everyone is out wide-eye looking for love in every nook and corner. True love, that is. And the operative word is ‘true.’ Hollywood likes us to believe that the world can ‘give’ them love but there’re a lot of conditions attached to it. Notwithstanding being in the right place at the right time, Hollywood tells us dreamers that social status means everything, wearing the right bling is everything and living a glamourous life is more than everything. It doesn’t matter if you cannot afford it – just live the moment and make pretend in a Cinderella world, except you hope it doesn’t strike midnight before you find your beau.

So what’s wrong with that picture? More importantly, what is so right about it? Here’s what’s so wrong (using American statistics by McKinley Irvin, family law attorneys):

-        Around 50 percent of marriages in the United States end in the divorce courts

-        41 percent of first marriages end in tears, and so it is also for 60 percent of second marriages and 73 percent of third marriages

-        Approximate one married couple is divorced every 36 seconds, which adds up to almost 2,400 per day, 16,800 every week and 876,000 in a single year

-        Marriages that break apart take an average of eight years to tear

-        Those who experience first divorces are around 30 years of age

-        Mel Gibson’s divorce in 2009 is much talked about only because it cost him $425 million to settle with his ex-wife, Robyn

-        To underscore how “love is everywhere,” Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married one time short of ten

-        Britney Spears was married to her friend Jason Alexander for a wholesome fifty-five hours before it was annulled

In the United Kingdom, things do not look any less bleak:

-        34 percent of marriages hit the rocks by the twentieth year

-        The average marriage lasts for around 32 years

-        The likelihood of marriages ending in tears is far higher within the first ten years

According to American law firm, Stearns-Montgomery & Proctor, the top ten contributing factors to a divorce including the following:

-        Lack of communication where feelings are not shared, both are kept in the dark and there’s a sense of detachment or distance between the couple

-        Persistent preoccupation with finance that might not be conducive or encourage in which case, they become divisive and explosive with irreversible effects

-        Sense of being confined in the sense that there is a feeling that the marriage is holding one back from grabbing life’s opportunities, which then leads to a damaging blame game

-        Lack of trust, which is a critical key factor that will ultimately destroy any marriage

-        Unrealistic expectations that can lead to personality conflicts in which one spouse may not bend backwards for the other

-        Lack of understanding that leads to a failure in fulfilling needs and desires but more critically, a case of a spouse not taking any interests in supporting the other in going the distance to meet his/her goals

-        Unacceptable changes in lifestyle in which couples do not share and therefore cannot meet in the middle and work things out together to adapt and accept harmoniously

-        Insecurity where couples are commonly divided by jealousy which then fuels subterfuges, catfights, and heated arguments leading all the way to the divorce court

-        Religious and cultural differences that can add emotional damage to the couple’s ability to live their lives, raise their children and deal with mutual acceptances

-        Abuse in which one partner is persistently violent and having no ability to keep it under control

When you have such a realistic perspective as a counterpoint to the argument that ‘love is everywhere,’ things may look a little different in contemporary times. We can surmise that while we can understand the factors that can lead a marriage to divorce, we should also consider what might possibly be the kinds of wrong ingredients that bring the wrong people together in the first place. When we say ‘love is everywhere,’ we are more than likely to begin wrongly simply because love just isn’t everywhere.

So we look for love in all the wrong places – nightclubs being one of the most nefarious examples. But of course, humans are made to love…and be loved. No doubt everyone wants to be loved by someone but more often than not, we end up in the wrong places, looking for the wrong people and relying on the wrong wish lists. When that happens, we find nothing worth the effort. We end up with broken hearts, feeling completely shattered. We think we’re unloved and then we convince ourselves that we’re unattractive to others. For some, the devastation is too much to take and they end up taking their own lives.

The Biblical tale

The character Leah played by Minnie Driver in the miniseries The Red Tent (image source: o.canada.com)

In Genesis 29 is a love story about two women and a man. The two women are in fact sisters to each other and both – Leah and Rachel – contend with the same one man, Jacob. Here is an amazing ancient story that teaches us about where true love can be found, how one understands what it is and why it is so. Jacob had just beaten a hasty retreat from home, in a bid to escape his brother Esau whom he had tricked into surrendering his birth right. And so Jacob was told by his mother Rebecca to run to Laban, his uncle, who lived in Haran at least until his brother’s anger is subdued.

It’s possible that Jacob had not met his cousins before. Having arrived in Haran, Jacob was attracted to a well where shepherds gathering their flock would converge in order to water them. There he came across his uncle’s younger of the two daughters, Rachel who had worked as a shepherdess. It was love at first sight for Jacob and after a month staying with them, he asked his uncle for Rachel’s hand in marriage. In exchange, he would offer himself seven years of labour under Laban. His uncle agreed but even though seven years appeared a very long time, to Jacob, they were “but a few days, for the love he had for her.”

When the time came for Jacob to claim the “fruit” of his labour, his uncle deceived him. On the day of their wedding, Laban made the switch. Instead of Rachel, he offered her older sister, Leah, as the veiled bride. Unaware of the trickery, Jacob consummated the marriage and only came to know of his uncle’s treachery in the morning (29:25). In defence of his actions, Laban said that in his part of the land, it was unacceptable to give away a younger daughter when one who was older remained unmarried. And so a second deal was then made where the uncle offered Rachel for another seven years of servitude from Jacob.

Here is a relatively convoluted tale of treachery but there are also lessons of love – unrequited because Jacob was made to wait for longer than was deemed fair, unwanted because Jacob was compelled to marry someone he didn’t love and then finally, true love where after fourteen years, he could finally be with the one he had first set eyes on.

The love between Jacob and Rachel is well known but the hidden story of Leah begs to be told for herein lies the kind of love that we tend to overlook today. At the same time, here is the kind of love that is everlasting, reliable and unchanging since the beginning of time. This is the love that we are going to talk about here.

Something about Leah

The characters Rachel and Jacob played by Morena Baccarin and Iain Glen respectively in the miniseries The Red Tent (image source: o.canada.com)

Laban’s elder daughter was Leah who happened by trickery to be Jacob’s first wife. Just as Jacob was first physically drawn to Rachel, we can then say that he wasn’t attracted to Leah. The Bible records that, “Leah’s eyes were weak but Rachel was beautiful of form and face” (v.17).

Being weak, we understand that Leah’s eyes lacked sparkle, something very prized not only in their culture but remains so in the contemporary sense. Men and women alike tend to be most attracted to eyes that reveal zest or brio. Verse 17 adds that Rachel not only had a beautiful face but also a fetching figure to match. With competition like that, Leah is but a lost cause and consequently, she did not appeal to her husband.

Love for Leah was a difficult topic to talk about. She had a husband only in name and appearance. In spirit, he might as well be invisible. They might share a bed together but there was no love lost between the two. This is not difficult to understand – after all, Leah was not Jacob’s choice of a life partner. He wanted Rachel but he never got her. In return, his uncle tricked him into submission forcing him to accept both his daughters.

Iain Glen plays the character Jacob in the miniseries The Red Tent (image source: iainglen.com)

In the loveless life of Leah, who does she blame? There are two possibilities. If it isn’t Jacob, then it has to be her own father. Jacob obviously doesn’t love Leah but marrying her wasn’t exactly his choice. Having been tricked, there was no turning back. Ancient cultures do not accept divorces the way we do these days and dishonouring one’s family would have meant death. Therefore Jacob would have shared Leah in a perfunctory marriage where love is substituted with cultural obligation and the need to “do the right thing.” Should Leah blame her father then? Cultural constraints would have made it impossible for a daughter to accuse her father for a loveless marriage. No matter how look at it, Leah was trapped. Having married someone who doesn’t love her, she has nowhere to go and all other men were beyond her reach.

Without love, Leah’s life was painful. Imagine waking up to a man who doesn’t love you. Imaging sharing the same dinner with that same man or making love to a man who has no feelings for you. What would Valentine’s Day be like? Would he remember your wedding anniversary? What memories would you have with someone who doesn’t think of your marriage in the same way?

But that’s only looking at things from one aspect and when we do that, we inadvertently make Jacob out to be an unnecessarily bad guy. What’s there to blame when a guy is tricked into a corner where he cannot paint his way out. He was forced to marry someone he thought was the person he loved. It turned out he was not wily enough to uncover his uncle’s plot and unfortunately, his horror was complete the morning after his wedding night.

By then it was too late. How can we blame someone who didn’t set out to want to marry Leah and wasn’t responsible for landing her into a marriage that he couldn’t possibly care much for when his heart had already been surrendered to her younger sister? So before we go further, let us put to bed the fact that Jacob must be viewed fairly and justly not for any reason other than to avoid being prejudicial (or chauvinistic).

God’s view

The characters Rachel and Leah's daughter Dinah played by Morena Baccarin and Rebecca Ferguson in the miniseries The Red Tent (image source: iainglen.com)

Now that we have gotten those points out of the way, why not ask ourselves what God has to do with all of this. The likely question on everyone’s mind is why God would allow something like this to happen. What did Leah do that she would end up enduring a marriage this miserable? It is easy for all of us to say that Leah didn’t deserve this. So was God being unfair or was he simply insensitive to Leah’s emotional needs?

Leah’s predicaments are applicable today. Many of us have been emotionally hurt before, unloved perhaps from time to time, treated unfairly and sometimes even cheated. We all want to be loved but not all of us have had this privilege. We all want to love but again it’s not something everyone has experienced. Some could go through life not knowing what that feels like.

Women might feel this emotional need more than men but trust me, it’s not gender dependent. Women can feel ignored by men as much as the other way round. We can feel unloved not only by those who so dearly want to love but even by those in our families. Fathers who couldn’t care less, boyfriends who take their women for granted, husbands who spend more time being career indulgent, sons who don’t value their mothers – all of them can be reversed where men can be at the receiving end. We can also encounter similar pains not just at homes but also in our workplaces and even in church.

Such suffering isn’t always visible to others as well. As we struggle desperately to appear normal, we effectively hide our pain, burying it layers deep so much so that others might not perceive it. And by doing so, many of us suffer in silence, hurting like no others and unnoticed by everyone else. It may appear as it we choose to suffer this way but often, society forces it upon ourselves to be alone with our problems. It might not be this way but all too often, that is how people end up suffering in depression.

But be informed – God has a plan. He is sovereign and in His world of creation, we are all His priority. His game plan is unprecedented by any other strategy known to man. His is exclusively designed for us, impeccably proven to work but only if we have the faith necessarily invested in Him through Christ. For those who know Him, know that He is always in control and therefore He will never let us down.

Leah’s life appears desolate but God had a plan reserved for her. As we can see from Genesis 29:31, He was not yet done with her life:

“Now the Lord saw that Leah was unloved…”

That in itself is a remarkable statement. Just as Leah thought that her life was over and her future was completely dashed, the Lord says He’s been noticing her from above. From that part of the verse, it is quite clear that He has seen – and felt – Leah’s heart. To say that also means that God does know something about love. He understands what love means. Therefore if God says that Leah is unloved, He means it literally. He must also be aware that Jacob, whom He would later confer the name Israel to, had not done much for her emotional integrity and could possibly be responsible for her sadness. In other words her state of broken-heartedness has not gone noticed from heaven.

Jill Briscoe, who wrote ‘Running on Empty,’ amplifies the way so many of us feel when the burden of hurt keeps us shut out: “The hardest thing to believe when you are suffering rejection is that anyone is noticing you at all.” Like we said earlier, that is easily the hardest challenge to have to overcome – the loneliness, depression, frustration and misery are always larger than life size. But in this case, we realise that Leah’s suffering had not gone unnoticed by God. While society turns its back, God doesn’t. When we think that the end is nigh, God pulls us back from the brink and brings us into his comfort and healing.

Minnie Driver plays the character Leah in the miniseries The Red Tent (image source: christianfilmdatabase.com)

God loved and cared for Leah. He removed her pain in ways that only He could. He opened her womb but left Rachel’s sealed and barren (at least initially), again, in ways only the Creator of Life could. In a society that stigmatised barren women, Leah’s turnaround was culturally significant and as motherhood beckoned, she was transformed. God had worked remarkable miracles and Leah was benefiting from His attention when she received none from her very own husband.

Leah could now see the Hand of God upon her, elevating her to motherhood so cherished in her culture. And even if she might not be as well loved and cherished by her own family, she now realised that her Heavenly Father has a love for her so bountiful, so real and so truly remarkable. God had left nothing in doubt – His plan and purpose for her – as it is with all of us – is a love so great that words cannot describe the fullness of it all.

Putting love to a test

Dinah and her father Jacob played by Rebecca Ferguson and Iain Glen in the miniseries The Red Tent (image source: iainglen.com)

But things are not so simple and straightforward for Leah. As we can equate in our modern lifestyle, children are no guarantee that a marriage can blossom in love. And so it is with Leah. Genesis 29:32-35 records every stage along the way how Leah’s happiness gradually turned into palpable disappointment.

First, verse 32 reveals Leah’s first birth:

“Leah conceived and bore a son and named him Reuben, for she said, ‘Because the Lord has seen my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.”

However it appears that Jacob had not noticed much of this. With his first-born – and a son as well – hopes were very high and Leah remembered God’s hand in this. Still Jacob was not moved. Then verse 33 talks about the second birth:

“Then she conceived again and bore a son and said, ‘Because the Lord has heard that I am unloved, He has therefore given me this son also.’ So she named him Simeon.”

The second birth was supposedly momentous but again it wasn’t. Leah remembers the Lord well. She knew the birth of the second son was made possible because God knew she was unloved. Yet as God responded, Jacob did not. Unmoved by it all, Leah would have been saddened and broken-hearted. In verse 34, the third son arrived:

“She conceived again and bore a son and said, ‘Now this time my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.’ Therefore he was named Levi.”

It seemed nothing had changed. Jacob remained monolithic and increasingly unchangeable. Leah would have felt completely hapless and if she had resigned to her fate, it would have been understandable but she did not. Rather than resort to self-pity, Leah picked herself up and did what she should have done in the first place and as seen in verse 35, she decided to look to God:

“And she conceived again and bore a son and said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’ Therefore she named him Judah. Then she stopped bearing.”

As we know from Genesis 30:16-20, Leah gave birth to two more sons, making a total of six. With the fourth son, Judah, the significance is inescapable. Here was when fortunes changed for Laban’s elder daughter because she decided to turn to God in faith for her happiness. By attentively focusing on praising the Lord, Leah’s life with Jacob turned. This significance is not lost on the fact that the fourth son was named Judah.

In fact with every birth, what Leah said is important. With the first born, Reuben, Leah focused on the Lord addressing her affliction. With the second born, Simeon, Leah acknowledged that the Lord heard how she was unloved. With the third born, Levi, she was concerned about her husband’s lack of attachment towards her. By the time the fourth, Judah, was born, the focus was different.

With the first three births, Leah was self-focused. She drew attention to herself and that extent of self-importance prevented her desire from happening. It was the reason why none of the births had moved Jacob. When she realised this and deflected the attention away from her and towards God, the fourth birth became a different experience. Rather than talking about herself, this time, she said, “I will praise the Lord” and that was enough to change her marital fortunes.

We’ve seen similar examples in our modern lives. Some of us may know women who try so hard to win their husbands’ love through the children they bear. The children become the hopeful fulcrum in the love that binds the family together. Sometimes it works but at other times, it doesn’t. Even when it does work, we’ve also seen families that simply fall apart at the seams the moment the children grow up and leave the nest. Or we’ve also encountered marriages that disintegrate because they could not cope with the untimely death of their children. Perhaps it was a murder. Or a car accident. Or a big plane crash. Whatever the reason, children, when they’re gone, leave gaping holes that are far too large for the love in the marriage to fill. Marriages that depend solely on the children to hold together are not sufficiently healthy to prove the theory correct.

When women believe that bearing children will help save their marriage, they also do so by selling themselves short. They do not feel the value in being themselves. They want the outside world to pity them but they do not do the right thing to truly save their marriages. They are also marriages that are firmly hinged on material wealth in which couples are certain they can draw love and marital union from. A scion of one family marries another scion from another dynastic family where wealth and power precede the need for love. A doctor marries a lawyer for material territorialism and the combined millions to enjoy. A wide-eyed young lass marries a celebrity and ignores his philandering ways, hoping that their marriage would be blissful and loving. How about families that tell their children never to marry someone poor but instead focus on the size of his (her) bank account?

The love that the world purportedly offers is a substitute love that pales in significance when measured to the love that God offers. No one but God can define a love that is forever. When worldly love wilts under pressure, God’s love is proofed against whatever the world bears on it. When worldly love falls apart under scrutiny, God’s love deflects all mortal criticisms. When worldly love reveals its hypocrisies and superficialities, God’s love remains forever true and fidelius (meaning ‘always faithful’). Leah’s lesson was not just well learned; when she came to grips with what the world could not offer her, she knew to turn to a strong God:

“When she gave birth to a fourth son she said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’” (v.35b)

It is also important to note that Leah did not blame God for her loveless marriage. While she suffered ignominiously through the three births, she didn’t even once lashed out at or questioned or challenged Him. Her failures were apparent but she continued to praise God and in the end, she had four healthy sons to not only prove the point but also to undeniably illustrate the value of the Lord’s unfailing favour. Just as Augustine of Hippo once wrote, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us (to love),” we must constantly remember that in Him, there is no shortage of want.

A surprisingly widely-quoted blogger by the name of Shannon L. Alder have some wise and timely words to say about this:

“Often people that settle in life are those that only do what they can with what they have and where they are. Never settle for someone that didn’t know your worth from the beginning, or build a life without God in it. Live beyond your low expectations.” 

Ms Alder isn’t just talking about Leah. She is talking about all of us. When Leah began by building her need for love on Jacob, her life crumbled before it even began. She kept desperately trying to cling on to her hopes invested in her husband but it just continually failed. It was obvious that Jacob “didn’t know Leah’s worth from the beginning” because she mistakenly “only did what she could with what she had and where she was at” but once she looked up to God and praised Him, she discovered that she couldn’t “build a life without God in it.”

In being spurned by Jacob, Leah learned the greatest lesson in her life. When she remembered the Lord’s unfailing favour in her life and elected to praise Him, everything changed for her.

There’s a little Leah in us  

The characters Leah and Rachel in the miniseries The Red Tent (image source: christianfilmdatabase.com)

The Bible includes Leah because she has something invaluable to teach us. God honoured Leah because Leah recognised His majesty, sovereignty and great unrelenting love. God delivered for Leah because Leah knew to finally place her reliance on Him. When the world chose not to care, Leah committed to God but in her life, the lesson tells us to begin our commitment to Christ from our very first love. We needn’t wait. We shouldn’t get going only after our worldly dependencies fail. Rather, place God first and deliverance will surely come:

“…Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you” (Mt 6:33, NASB)

Look around us. Look in the mirror as well. We can surely see a little Leah in each and every one of us. There is always that bit about us that reveals disappointments with people or we harbour memories of events that are painful to recollect but too difficult to move away from. Sometimes we find it difficult to find closure and move on because we wallow in the hurt and the hurt has a grip on our lives.

All too often, our disappointments reflect the experiences we have with the people we want to care and love but we are spurned one way or another. Women may feel that the men in their lives might not have affirmed them. Mothers suffer the emptiness when their children leave them or when having the children do not seem to bring their spouses any closer emotionally to them. Those who pine for motherhood, on the other hand, experience similar emptiness because of the children they want but cannot have. Men who seek the women they want to love but cannot have harbour just as much pain in their hearts. Men who mistakenly measure their manhood by the women they desire by their sides inevitably learn sorrowful lessons and often in silence and despair. Men who cannot cope when there is separation in their marriages as their lives appear to be caving in.

Some of us know what that feels like. Some of us know of people who are undergoing something similar. And some of us are going through similar issues in their lives. But know this – never not cling on to the hope that the Lord can and will see our brokenness. He will hear your cries of anguish and He will fill us with hope, and occupy the emptiness in our hearts with never-ending love.

Whenever we find ourselves in moments of vulnerability, thinking that love has eluded us, be affirmed that God is not far away. Looking down from heaven (Ps 33:13), the eyes of the Lord scan the world (2 Chr 16:9), casting glances at the sons of men amongst all the inhabitants of the earth (Ps 33:14) because He knows the ways of men and sees every of their steps (Job 34:21). He who knows our hearts and understands our works (Ps 33:15) is also the One who loved us and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 4:10) so that we may love one another as He has loved us. And when we duly come to know and believe in the love, which God has for us (v.16), we will finally understand that even in our darkest hour, His love is perfected in all of us (v.12).

In God, true love

Leah with her daughter, Dinah played by Minnie Driver and Rebecca Ferguson respectively in the miniseries The Red Tent (image source: blog.oup.com) 

It was never Jacob’s love. He never did love Leah even if she ended up giving him six sons (and one daughter)* who would gave part shape to the twelve tribes of Israel. Of these, God chose the priestly (Levite) and royal (Judah) lineages that helped to define the importance of Leah’s role as the mother of the Saviour who is represented in both roles (Heb 7:11-22) as High Priest and King. As events subsequently unfolded, Leah would be guaranteed of her place in biblical history.

* Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah and later, Issachar, Zebulun and Dinah

Just as God had honoured Leah so handsomely, He had also bestowed the same on countless others who had felt similarly unloved or unwanted over the thousands of years leading to today. The only question then is whether or not we are aware of God’s hand upon us in our lives and how He had brought us comfort and healing in times of dire need.

Very often God would uphold us, love us and raise us up for His glory but sadly, we don’t always recognise Him. Today let us change all that. Let us acknowledge in the fullness of time that only in God, true is His love.

Note: The use of the photographic images from the miniseries The Red Tent is not to be taken as a commercial endorsement. Take note that the Christian Film Database has been critical of the movie citing unnecessary sensual scenes and the fact that there is no mention of God in it. Neither author of this article has or intend to see the multi-episode movie.

About the writers

Asha Tamang, who hails from India, is a seminary student at the Malaysia Bible Seminary studying for her B. Theology degree. This article was originally written by Ms Tamang meant for women audiences within the seminary but has now been substantially rewritten by Khen Lim for a wider global audience via this publication.

Khen Lim is an elder, a lay preacher and a music ministry leader at the Hosanna Evangelical Free Church. He is presently undertaking a M. Divinity programme at the same seminary.