Scripture Daily

Context No. 4122 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 29:19-25: in context

19Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you, than that I should give her to another man. Stay with me.” 20Jacob served seven years for Rachel. They seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had for her. 21Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to her.” 22Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. 23In the evening, he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to Jacob. He went in to her. 24Laban gave Zilpah his servant to his daughter Leah for a servant. 25In the morning, behold, it was Leah! He said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Didn’t I serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?”

Jacob loves Rachel and works seven years for her, and when the wedding day comes, he is given her older sister Leah instead, discovering the deception only in the morning. What is this you have done to me? he cries to Laban; why have you deceived me?

It is a bitter irony. Jacob, who had once deceived his blind father Isaac, pretending to be his older brother Esau to steal the firstborn's blessing, is now himself deceived, given the older sister in place of the younger he expected. The deceiver has been deceived, and by the same kind of trick, a substitution in the dark, one sibling passed off for another. There is a sober justice in this that Scripture clearly intends us to see. Jacob had sown deception, and now he reaped it; the very sin he had committed against his family came back upon him. We tend to reap what we sow, and the wrongs we do to others have a way of returning to us. For Jacob, it was a hard but perhaps necessary lesson, to feel from the receiving end the sting of the deception he had once dealt out.

Do I consider that the wrongs I do to others, especially deception and unfair dealing, have a way of returning to me, as Jacob the deceiver was himself deceived, so that I am careful to sow honesty and fairness rather than what I would not want to reap?

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