No Bullshit Bible Lesson #16: Jacob Gets Hitched

Genesis, Chapter 29:

After a dream made Jacob decide to give 10% of all his stuff to God, he continued his journey and ended up at the same well where a servant had found his mother on his hunt for a wife for Isaac. Gathered around the well were sheep herders, there to water the sheep.
        “Hey guys,” he called out, “Where you all from?”
        “We’re from Haran,” one of them answered.
        “Oh, cool! You know Laban?”
        “Oh, sure. Good guy.”
        “He doin’ all right, then?”
        “Yeah, he’s doing well. In fact, here comes his daughter Rachel with the sheep now.”

When Rachel came near, Jacob rolled the stone off the well because no one else was willing to, and watered the sheep for her. Apparently, he felt that this earned him some “play” because he kissed here right there and in the manliest way possible, cried. After kissing her, Jacob told Rachel that he was her cousin and she ran and told her father. It should be noted that this was due to excitement, not disgust at having made out with her cousin. They were, indeed, different times.

When Laban got the news, he rushed out and met Jacob and embraced him, even kissed him.

Jacob stayed there for a month before Laban said to him,
        “Jacob, you’re family. I can’t have you helping out around here for free. How do you want to be paid?”
        “Oh. Well, uh, I was thinking I could, like, marry Rachel. She’s seriously hot. In fact, I will work for you for seven years in return for her hand in marriage.”

Jacob clearly had not heard how easily the family was willing to marry off its women and that he could have been on his way back home with a new wife come morning if he hadn’t made this ridiculous proposal. Laban, for his part, was not a stupid man. Though he admitted that it would be better for Jacob to have her than anyone else, he wasn’t about to pass up seven years of free labor; he accepted.

So after seven years of indentured servitude, Jacob went to Laban,
        “Okay, Laban. It’s seven years now. Give me Rachel so I can finally have sex with her.”

So Laban put together a great feast for all the men of the village (the women, presumably, were too busy cooking to attend) and, that night, gave his older daughter Leah to Jacob. Jacob, perhaps blinded by seven years of built-up horniness, did not notice that he had been given the wrong wife until he woke the next morning beside her. By this time, of course, he had released the pent-up horniness and was seeing clearly. And seeing red.

        “Dude, what the Hell?!” he demanded of Laban, “I just worked seven years for Rachel, and you give me Leah?! I’m gonna sue your ass for breach of contract!”
        “Jacob...it is just not our way here to give away the younger daughter before the first-born has been married. Tell you what; after Leah has been your wife for a week, I’ll give you Rachel in addition and you can work another seven years for me, since you get two of my daughters.”
        “Fine.”

So, the deal was made and, after a week, Jacob got the wife he wanted in addition to the one he didn’t want and he loved Rachel very much, never having cared all that much for Leah in the first place. And, yes, after taking Rachel for his wife, Jacob was fleeced out of another seven years of his life, working for Laban to pay off Leah, whom he never wanted in the first place. In hindsight, it was clearly very wise for Abraham to refuse to allow Isaac from traveling to pick his own wife, because he clearly knew that a guy could get fleeced out of fourteen years of his life for the sake of a woman.

God, meanwhile, saw that Leah was hated and, in a move that makes one wonder if He knew the whole story, He made Leah extra-fertile, while making Rachel the third consecutive generation of barren-wombed women in her family.

So Leah had a son named Ruben and was convinced that the feat of bearing him a male heir would make Jacob love her. When that didn’t happen, she had another son and named him Simeon. Again, she thought that bearing two sons would make Jacob love her. Not so much. So she went for a third: Levi. Still no love. Lastly, she gave birth to Jacob’s fourth son, Judah, and gave up trying to earn Jacob’s love through baby-making.

It is worth noting that, as much as Jacob loved Rachel, he didn’t seem to have any issue with seemingly consistent sex with her sister. Stay tuned for more tales from the book where all our morals come from, right here on Resurrecting Reason!