Leah, the unloved wife, the most remarkable mother.

Let us come to reflecting on Leah by recalling what God said to Samuel, when He told him to anoint one of Jesse’s sons as the next King of Israel. Samuel first saw Eliab and thought ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed stands here before the Lord.’ But not so. The Lord tells him “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. Human beings look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”’ [1 Sam 16 v 6-7]A perspective further stressed in the Lord’s suffering servant, of whom Isaiah tells us, ‘he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. … he was despised, and we held him in low esteem’. [c53 v2b-3] Rachel is beautiful but she is not the wife through whom God’s eternal blessing will come; Leah, though Jacob holds herin low esteem, is that wife.

God knew that Israel’s arrival in Egypt, while beginning in freedom would end in slavery over 400 years later. There is a hint of these future troubles when Joseph advises his family to tell Pharaoh they are shepherds, so will be allowed to settle in Goshen, ‘for all shepherds are despicable to the Egyptians’ [Gen c46 v34]. God knows that a future Pharaoh who does not know about Joseph will sees the Israelites as a danger to his country, will enslave them and even try to exterminate them [Ex c1]

God through the despised Leah acts through her child-bearing for the future of Israel and the future of the world. ‘When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, He opened her womb.’ When she gave birth to her first sonLeah’s hopes were fixed on Jacob. ‘Surely’ she says, ‘my husband will love me now.’ But he does not. When the Lord gives her a second son she says ‘Because the Lord who heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.’ But though no doubt precious to Leah are not the sons of destiny.

With her third son, Levi, Leah hopes that ‘now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.’ But there is no sign that he does. Yet from Levi will come Miriam the prophetess, her brother Aaron, the first high priest of Israel and their brother Moses, through whom God will deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt and by whom God will deliver His Torah to Israel, the way of life she is to follow as His chosen nation.

But God’s perspective looks beyond the 12 tribes of Israel to the whole world, beyond His people’s Exodus from Egyptian slavery and subjugation to Pharaoh and his false gods to the Exodus of His people’s exile from Eden, the ending of their slavery to death and their subjugation to the Prince of this world, the false god of this age. God looks beyond Moses to Christ Jesus. When Leah bears her fourth son she gives up hoping for more from Jacob, saying ‘This time I will praise the Lord’, and names him ‘praise’, which is Judah. [Gen c 29v1 35a].

Now Judah was not someone God could have used in Egypt. He would surely have fallen for the charms of Potiphar’s wife. [Gen c39 v7b-12] For just before that event we see Judah soliciting a shrine prostitute, who unknown to himself is Tamar, his daughter in law, who hasdeliberately sought to waylay him. Judah solicits Tamar. He asks her to sleep with him, she agrees, a price is decided and a pledge for the payment is given. But he makes herpregnant. In classic double standards when he is told that Tamar is guilty of prostitution and pregnant he judges that she should be burnt to death. But Tamar embarrasses him with the truth that he is the father. At least then Judah humbly recognises that ‘She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.’ [see c38] But the upshot of this inglorious episode is that Perez, one of the two sons of this pregnancy is the next after Judah in the ancestral line of King David and all three are named in the lineage of Jesus Christ. [Matthew c1 v3].

Many years later, when Jacob is dying, his sons come to him to be blessed, in the order of their birth. By custom they presumably expect that Reuben’s blessing as the eldest will be the richest with each successive blessing being less by degrees. As Joseph expected with regard to Jacob’s earlier blessing of his children, but as Jacob blessed Joseph’s younger son over the elder[Gen c 48] so Jacob now blesses a younger son over all his brothers.

In this blessing we again see Jacob living up to his name, Israel. Jacob pours out a personal, deeply felt and hoped for blessing upon Rachel’s first born as if he is his own first son. But Joseph is not the one God most mightily blesses through Jacob’s words. Rather God speaks through him to give Leah’s son, Judah, the richest blessing of them all. Through Jacob’s words God proclaims a future greatness upon Judah that only He could know, an eternal kingship, not upon him personally but on one coming through his line:‘the sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs, and the obedience of the nations is his.’ [ Gen c49 v 8-12] This is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Each of these three Rebekah, Rachel, Leah show us how God works through people as they are, transforming their lives, even by their troubles to safeguard His covenant and take forward His purposes.

While Rebekah may earn our admiration as a mother defending and promoting her beloved son, Jacob and Rachel may attract us for her beauty, the drama of her marriage event, the sadness of her long infertility, and the actions of her son, Joseph, it is Leah, the unloved, who appears more hidden than they in the unfolding of this historywho is the one the Lord most esteems.

Leah the unloved wife of Jacob is the personal mother of six of his twelve sons, the maternal fountain-head of half the tribes of Israel. She is especially the mother of Levi and the mother of Judah. Without Levi there would have been no Miriam to see Moses saved from the cull of the male boys, and enable his own mother to nurse his infancy. Without Levi there would have been no Aaron to speak for Moses in his stand against the Pharaoh, and no high priest for Israel. Without Levi there would have been no Moses to lead God’s people out of Egypt, and to be the bearer of God’s Torah.

Leah, un-esteemed by man, is not mentioned in Matthew in his genealogy of Jesus, even though five other women are named by him: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah’s wife [Bathsheba] and Mary. But without Leah’s son, Judah, there would have been no Perez, no David, and no Joseph to be the husband of Mary, of whom was born the Christ.

In Christ Jesus God’s plan to dwell with His people in His new creation is brought into its fulfilment. As Jesus says: “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” [John c14 v23] This is our present, even in times of trouble and our delightful future.