The Girl Whose Eyes Looked Tired

Jacob had been at his uncle Laban's house for a month, and he had been working the whole time for nothing.

"You're family," said Laban, "but that's no reason to work for free. What should I pay you?"

Laban had two daughters. Leah, the older one, had weak eyes, the Bible says, tired and tender. Rachel, the younger, was lovely, and Jacob had loved her since the day he met her at the well.

"I'll work seven years for Rachel," said Jacob.

"Better you than a stranger," said Laban. "Stay."

So Jacob worked seven years, and they felt like a few days, because he loved her so much.

Then came the wedding. Laban invited everyone to a feast, and that night, in the dark, he brought his daughter to Jacob. (Jacob did not think to ask which daughter. Laban was counting on that.)

And in the morning, there was Leah!

"What have you done to me?" Jacob shouted at Laban. "I worked for Rachel! Why did you trick me?"

"Oh," said Laban. "Here we never give the younger daughter before the older one."

(Jacob had once tricked his own blind father by pretending to be his older brother. Now someone had done it to him.)

After the wedding week, Laban gave Jacob Rachel too, for seven more years of work. So Jacob had two wives, and they were sisters. God made marriage for one husband and one wife, and this house was about to show why.

Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.

But the LORD saw what was happening in that house. He saw that Leah was unloved, and he gave her a baby boy, while Rachel had none.

Leah named him Reuben. "The LORD has seen my trouble," she said. "Now my husband will love me."

He didn't. She had another son. "The LORD heard that I am not loved," she said, and named him Simeon. Then came Levi. "Now at last my husband will hold on to me."

With her fourth son, Leah did not mention Jacob at all. "This time," she said, "I will praise the LORD." She named him Judah, which sounds like the word for praise.

Over in Rachel's tent, things got loud. "Give me children," Rachel told Jacob, "or I'll die!"

"Am I God?" Jacob snapped. "He is the one who has kept you from having them."

So the sisters began a contest. Each gave Jacob her servant girl as an extra wife and counted the servant's babies as her own. When Bilhah had a second son, Rachel cheered, "I have wrestled with my sister, and I have won!" (Nobody had won. Everybody was miserable.) Leah had two more sons, and a daughter named Dinah.

At last God remembered Rachel, and she had a son of her own. She named him Joseph. "May the LORD give me another," she said.

Not one of Leah's babies made Jacob love her the way she longed for, and even after Judah she kept hoping.

But God did not forget Judah, the boy Leah named for praise. Judah's sons had sons, and the family became a tribe, and hundreds of years later a shepherd king named David came from it.

At the far end of that long family line came another son of Judah. He never looked at anyone and wished they were someone else. He looked straight at the people everyone else walked past, the way the LORD had looked at Leah, and he gave his life to make them his own.

The Bible calls him the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and Jesus' family tree goes all the way back to Leah, the sister with the tired eyes.