Context No. 2850 of 4322 · Genesis
Context · Reflection
Genesis 29:26-30: in context
26Laban said, “It is not done so in our place, to give the younger before the firstborn. 27Fulfill the week of this one, and we will give you the other also for the service which you will serve with me for seven more years.” 28Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week. He gave him Rachel his daughter as wife. 29Laban gave Bilhah, his servant, to his daughter Rachel to be her servant. 30He went in also to Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him seven more years.
Jacob has worked seven years for Rachel, only to be tricked by his uncle Laban into marrying her older sister Leah first. Laban shrugs off the deceit with a maxim: it is not done here to give the younger before the firstborn. Jacob must now serve seven more years for the woman he loved.
Scripture lets a bitter irony stand quietly. Jacob, who once deceived his own blind father by pretending the younger son was the elder, is now deceived by having the elder daughter passed off in place of the younger. The deceiver is deceived, and what he sowed comes back to him. And Laban's excuse, we do not give the younger before the firstborn, lands like an unwitting rebuke on the very man who had grabbed the firstborn's blessing that was not his. God does not lecture Jacob here. His own circumstances do the teaching.
Where might I be reaping, in someone else's treatment of me, the very thing I once did to another?
Sources
- Genesis 29:25: "In the morning... behold, it was Leah! He said to Laban, What is this you have done to me?"
- Galatians 6:7: "Don't be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."
- Genesis 27:19: "Jacob said to his father, I am Esau your firstborn."