The Legends of the Jews, vol 1 by Louis Ginzberg (most inspirational books txt) 📖

When the bride was led into the nuptial chamber, the guests extinguished all the candles, much to Jacob’s amazement. But their explanation satisfied him. “Thinkest thou,” they said, “we have as little sense of decency as thy countrymen?” Jacob therefore did not discover the deception practiced upon him until morning. During the night Leah responded whenever he called Rachel, for which he reproached her bitterly when daylight came.

“O thou deceiver, daughter of a deceiver, why didst thou answer me when I called Rachel’s name?” “Is there a teacher without a pupil?” asked Leah, in return. “I but profited by thy instruction. When thy father called thee Esau, didst thou not say, Here am I?”[164]

Jacob was greatly enraged against Laban, and he said to him: “Why didst thou deal treacherously with me? Take back thy daughter, and let me depart, seeing thou didst act wickedly toward me.”[165] Laban pacified him, however, saying, “It is not so done in our place, to give the younger before the firstborn,” and Jacob agreed to serve yet seven other years for Rachel, and after the seven days of the feast of Leah’s wedding were fulfilled, he married Rachel.[166]

With Leah and Rachel, Jacob received the handmaids Zilpah and Bilhah, two other daughters of Laban, whom his concubines had borne unto him.[167]

THE BIRTH OF JACOB’S CHILDREN

The ways of God are not like unto the ways of men. A man clings close to his friend while he has riches, and forsakes him when he falls into poverty. But when God sees a mortal unsteady and faltering, He reaches a hand out to him, and raises him up. Thus it happened with Leah. She was hated by Jacob, and God visited her in mercy. Jacob’s aversion to Leah began the very morning after their wedding, when his wife taunted him with not being wholly free from cunning and craft himself. Then God said, “Help can come to Leah only if she gives birth to a child; then the love of her husband will return to her.”[168] God remembered the tears she had shed when she prayed that her doom, chaining her to that recreant Esau, be averted from her, and so wondrous are the uses of prayer that Leah, besides turning aside the impending decree, was permitted to marry Jacob before her sister and be the first to bear him a child. There was another reason why the Lord was compassionately inclined toward Leah. She had gotten herself talked about. The sailors on the sea, the travellers along the highways, the women at their looms, they all gossiped about Leah, saying, “She is not within what her seeming is without. She appears to be pious, but if she were, she would not have deceived her sister.”[169] To put an end to all this tattle, God granted her the distinction of bearing a son at the end of seven months after her marriage. He was one of a pair of twins, the other child being a daughter. So it was with eleven of the sons of Jacob, all of them except Joseph were born twins with a girl, and the twin sister and brother married later on.[170] Altogether it was an extraordinary childbirth, for Leah was barren, not formed by nature to bear children.

She called her firstborn son Reuben, which means “See the normal man,” for he was neither big nor little, neither dark nor fair, but exactly normal.[171] In calling her oldest child Reuben, “See the son,” Leah indicated his future character. “Behold the difference,” the name implied, “between my firstborn son and the firstborn son of my father in-law. Esau sold his birthright to Jacob of his own free will, and yet he hated him. As for my firstborn son, although his birthright was taken from him without his consent, and given to Joseph, it was nevertheless he who rescued Joseph from the hands of his brethren.”[172]

Leah called her second son Shime’on, “Yonder is sin,” for one of his descendants was that Zimri who was guilty of vile trespasses with the daughters of Moab.[173]

The name of her third son, Levi, was given him by God Himself, not by his mother. The Lord summoned him through the angel Gabriel, and bestowed the name upon him as one who is “crowned”

with the twenty-four gifts that are the tribute due to the priests.[174]

At the birth of her fourth son, Leah returned thanks to God for a special reason. She knew that Jacob would beget twelve sons, and if they were distributed equally among his four wives, each would bear three. But now it appeared that she had one more than her due share, and she called him Jehudah, “thanks unto God.” She was thus the first since the creation of the world to give thanks to God,[175] and her example was followed by David and Daniel, the descendants of her son Judah.

When Rachel saw that her sister had borne Jacob four sons, she envied Leah. Not that she begrudged her the good fortune she enjoyed, she only envied her for her piety, saying to herself that it was to her righteous conduct that she owed the blessing of many children.[176] Then she besought Jacob: “Pray unto God for me, that He grant me children, else my life is no life.

Verily, there are four that may be regarded as though they were dead, the blind, the leper, the childless, and he who was once rich and has lost his fortune.” Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said: “It were better thou shouldst address thy petition to God, and not to me, for am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?”[177] God was displeased with this answer that Jacob made to his sad wife. He rebuked him with the words: “Is it thus thou wouldst comfort a grief-stricken heart? As thou livest, the day will come when thy children will stand before the son of Rachel, and he will use the same words thou hast but now used, saying, ‘Am I in the place of the Lord?’ “

Rachel also made reply to Jacob, saying: “Did not thy father, too, entreat God for thy mother with earnest words, beseeching Him to remove her barrenness?” Jacob: “It is true, but Isaac had no children, and I have several.” Rachel: “Remember thy grandfather Abraham, thou canst not deny that he had children when he supplicated God in behalf of Sarah!” Jacob: “Wouldst thou do for me what Sarah did for my grandfather?” Rachel: “Pray, what did she?” Jacob: “She herself brought a rival into her house.”

Rachel: “If that is all that is necessary, I am ready to follow the example of Sarah, and I pray that as she was granted a child for having invited a rival, so may I be blessed, too.”[178]

Thereupon Rachel gave Jacob Bilhah, her freed handmaid, to wife, and she bore him a son, whom Rachel called Dan, saying, “As the Lord was gracious unto me and gave me a son according to my petition, so He will permit Samson, the descendant of Dan, to judge his people, that it fall not into the hands of the Philistines.”[179] Bilhah’s second son Rachel named Naphtali, saying, “Mine is the bond that binds Jacob to this place, for it was for my sake that he came to Laban.” At the same time she wanted to convey by this name that the Torah, which is as sweet as Nofet, “honeycomb,” would be taught in the territory of Naphtali.[180] And the name had still a third meaning: “As God hath heard my fervent prayer for a son, so He will hearken unto the fervent prayer of the Naphtalites when they are beset by their enemies.”[181]

Leah, seeing that she had left bearing, while Bilhah, her sister’s handmaid, bore Jacob two sons, concluded that it was Jacob’s destiny to have four wives, her sister and herself, and their half-sisters Bilhah and Zilpah. Therefore she also gave him her handmaid to wife.[182] Zilpah was the youngest of the four women. It was the custom of that time to give the older daughter the older handmaid, and the younger daughter the younger handmaid, as their dowry, when they got married. Now, in order to make Jacob believe that his wife was the younger daughter he had served for, Laban had given Leah the younger handmaid as her marriage portion. This Zilpah was so young that her body betrayed no outward signs of pregnancy, and nothing was known of her condition until her son was born. Leah called the boy Gad, which means “fortune,” or it may mean “the cutter,” for from Gad was descended the prophet Elijah, who brings good fortune to Israel, and he also cuts down the heathen world.[183] Leah had other reasons, too, for choosing this name of double meaning. The tribe of Gad had the good fortune of entering into possession of its allotment in the Holy Land before any of the others,[184] and, also, Gad the son of Jacob was born circumcised.[185]

To Zilpah’s second son Leah gave the name of Asher, “praise,”

for, she said, “Unto me all manner of praise is due, for I brought my handmaid into the house of my husband as wife. Sarah did likewise, but only because she had no children, and so it was also with Rachel. But as for me, I had children, and nevertheless I subdued my passion, and without jealousy I gave my handmaid to my husband for wife. Verily, all will praise and extol me.”[186]

Furthermore she spoke: “As the women will praise me, so the sons of Asher will in time to come praise God for their fruitful possession in the Holy Land.”[187]

The next son born unto Jacob was Issachar, “a reward,” and once more it was Leah who was permitted to bring forth the child, as a reward from God for her pious desire to have the twelve tribes come into the world. To secure this result, she left no means untried.[188]

It happened once that her oldest son Reuben was tending his father’s ass during the harvest, and he bound him to a root of dudaim, and went his way. On returning, he found the dudaim torn out of the ground, and the ass lying dead beside it. The beast had uprooted it in trying to get loose, and the plant has a peculiar quality, whoever tears it up must die.[189] As it was the time of the harvest, when it is permitted for any one to take a plant from a field, and as dudaim is, besides, a plant which the owner of a field esteems lightly, Reuben carried it home.

Being a good son, he did not keep it for himself, but gave it to his mother. Rachel desired the dudaim, and she asked the plant of Leah, who parted with it to her sister, but on the condition that Jacob, when he returned from work in the evening, should tarry with her for a while. It was altogether unbecoming conduct in Rachel to dispose thus of her husband. She gained the dudaim, but she lost two tribes. If she had acted otherwise, she would have borne four sons instead of two. And she suffered another punishment, her body was not permitted to rest in the grave beside her husband’s.

Jacob came home from the field after night had fallen, for he observed the law obliging a day laborer to work until darkness sets in, and Jacob’s zeal in the affairs of Laban was as great in the last seven years, after his marriage, as in the first seven, while he was serving for the hand of Rachel.[190] When Leah heard the braying of Jacob’s ass, she ran to meet her husband,[191] and without giving him time to wash his feet, she insisted upon his turning aside into her tent.[192] At first