LIFE LESSONS
RACHEL AND LEAH
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 30:1-2, GENESIS 30:22-24, GENESIS 35:16-20
NOVEMBER 17, 2002
Polygamy was condemned and declared illegal in the United States of America by the United States Congress in the year 1862. The Mormon people, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, continued to practice polygamy until the year 1890 when the president of the Mormon Church and his Council of Twelve Apostles condemned polygamy as well after the United States Government threatened to export polygamist Mormons to South America.
Polygamy is still practiced in rare cases in regions of Utah. Polygamy is still legal in many parts of the world. Polygamy is legal in the Islamic world where Islamic men, by Islamic law, are allowed to marry up to four wives, four women, at the same time. Polygamy is still legal in the Hindu world, where Hindu men are allowed to marry unlimited numbers of wives.
The word polygamy literally means “many marriages,” and it refers to a person who has more than one spouse at the same time. Technically there are two forms of polygamy. There is polygyny and polyandry. Polygyny refers to a man who has more than one wife at the same time, and polyandry refers to a woman who has more than one husband at the same time. But polyandry has always been rare. Most instances of polygamy are really instances of polygyny.
That is how it was in the Old Testament era during the time of the patriarchs. The Jews oftentimes practiced polygamy in the form of polygyny. This practice was tolerated by God although it was not His perfect will. In the Bible, there is not a single instance of a polygamist marriage that was successful. There’s not a single instance.
We come to a polygamist marriage this morning, the marriage of Jacob to his two wives, Rachel and Leah. From the lives of Rachel and Leah, the wives of Jacob and the last of the matriarchs, we have two teachings this Communion Sunday, and the first teaching is this: Comparison is dangerous. You have all heard of Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports is a publication that seeks to help consumers compare products. In Consumer Reports, we can compare automobiles. We can compare washing machines. We can compare lawnmowers. Consumer Reports evaluates these products in varying categories so our comparisons can be more meaningful. On the basis of those comparisons, we can make choices.
We can all be thankful that Consumer Reports does not focus on churches. They don’t compare churches, so we can have a consumer mentality about church. If they did compare churches, we would know which churches have the most comfortable seats, the most leg room, the best sound systems, which churches have the best music, the best preaching and teaching, which churches require tithing, which churches do not. It would all be in there.
The truth is we are becoming a consumer-oriented culture even towards church. We live in a world of comparison. Realtors use comparables to determine the value of real estate. Supermarkets invite us to compare their prices with other supermarkets. It’s a world of comparison. Employers must inevitably compare applicants and candidates when making hires. It’s a world of comparison.
Comparison is not evil in and of itself. Comparison is sometimes necessary, but comparison is very dangerous, particularly when we compare ourselves to others. This is why in John, chapter 21, we see Jesus warning the Apostle Peter not to compare himself. In that passage, you will recall Jesus appeared to the disciples by the Sea of Galilee when Jesus was resurrected. He was alive. He had breakfast with them that morning by the shore of the Sea of Galilee. He challenged Peter saying, “Feed My sheep.” He took a walk with Peter, and he told Peter that Peter would die a martyr’s death. He told Peter how he would die.
Peter turned around, you remember, and he saw John following them. Peter asked about John. “What about John? What is going to happen to him? How is he going to die? How long is he going to live?” What did Jesus say to Peter? He said, “If it be My will that John lives until I come again, what is that to you? You follow Me.” Do not compare. Just follow. That is clearly the will of Christ for His people.
In the year 1503, in the Italian city of Florence, the City Council invited Leonardo Da Vinci to paint a battle scene on a wall of the new Council Hall in the city of Florence. At that time, Leonardo Da Vinci, who was in many respects a genius and perhaps at that time the most famous painter in the world… At that time he was more renowned than anyone. But the City Council of the city of Florence in 1503 invited another person to join Leonardo Da Vinci in painting battle scenes on the walls of the Council Hall. That other person was a young man named Michelangelo.
Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo both painted on the great Council Hall walls in the city of Florence, and people were able to compare their paintings, their work, their skill, their artistry. Leonardo Da Vinci began to compare. Many people said, “Michelangelo, this young man, I kind of liked his better than I liked Leonardo’s.” Leonardo, on the basis of that comparison, many believe, was never the same. He began to suspect that maybe somebody in the world was more talented than him, and he began to lose his joy. He lived fourteen more years and still did great work, but not with the same joy.
Comparison can be like that. It can take away our joy. No matter how skilled you are, there is always someone with more skill. That is just inevitably true. Do not let it take away your joy. Just follow Christ. We do not know when Rachel and Leah began to make comparisons. We know that when they were married to Jacob, they compared themselves to each other in many ways. We suspect that the comparisons really began very early in their lives because they were sisters.
They grew up in Northern Mesopotamia in the home of Laban. Leah and was older and Rachel the younger. Perhaps in the beginning they compared names. Rachel’s name means “female sheep.” That is the meaning of Rachel. It means “ewe, a female sheep.” That is not a great name. There are better names, but there were also worse names. One of the worst names was Leah. Some people will try to tell you that Leah means “gazelle,” but that is not true. What scholars now believe is that Leah literally means “wild cow.”
We live in a time when the meaning of names is kind of unimportant. We like the sound of a name. We do not really care about the meaning of the name. My wife’s name is Barbara, and I love her name. If you look in one of those name books, it will tell you that the name Barbara means “mysterious stranger,” or it means “stranger in our midst.” But that’s a lot of spin because the true meaning of Barbara comes from the Latin. It comes from the Roman word “barba,” which means “beard.” The Roman people were clean-shaven. The Roman men did not have facial hair, and foreigners tended to grow beards, and so the Romans referred to foreigners as barbarians, from “barba.” They thought of the behavior of foreigners as barbaric. The name Barbara simply comes from barba or from barbarian. It means “bearded one.” It can refer to a foreigner. “Stranger in our midst” and “mysterious stranger,” that is just an effort to put a positive spin on a name. It is hard to put a positive spin on “wild cow.” They probably began by just comparing names. They surely then began to compare the way they looked.
In Genesis, chapter 29, we are told that Rachel was just beautiful. It says literally that she had a beautiful body and a beautiful face. That is unusual language in Holy Scripture. We can understand perhaps why Jacob immediately fell in love with her. We are not told much about Leah’s physical appearance, but we are told that she had soft eyes. The Hebrew word is “rakkowt.” It is normally not a positive word. It usually means soft in the sense of weak. It may be that her vision was poor, but more likely most scholars believe that her eyes lacked sparkle—the sparkle, the life, that was so desired in the Middle Eastern world and in the eyes of women.
They probably began to compare physical appearance when they were very young. When they were married, the comparisons continued. It was Rachel who had Jacob’s love, and Leah was jealous of that. Then it was Leah who was fertile, and Rachel was jealous of that. The comparisons continued. Comparison is dangerous because comparison leads to envy. Comparison almost inevitably leads to sin, leads to envy.
This leads us to our second and final teaching this morning. Envy is deadly. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, identified as such by the church fathers. It is one of the seven deadly sins.
Barbara belongs to a hiking group with some other women here in the church. Earlier in the fall they were taking a walk on the Highline Canal. They normally hike in the mountains, but they were taking a walk on the Highline Canal, and they saw some beautiful-looking leaves and some beautiful-looking plants on the side of the Highline with fall Colorado. Some of them went over to clip those plants and those leaves to bring them home. The leaves turned out to be poison ivy. Barb got poison ivy all over her body. It just was really hard to get rid of and unbelievably powerful. She used all the lotions, the Calamine lotion and all those things, and took hot baths and hot showers and all the things you are supposed to do to try to stop the itching. Ultimately, she had to take prednisone. Things are better now, but envy in some ways is a lot like poison ivy. Envy gets under your skin and begins to fester, begins to boil. It begins to spread, and it is really, really hard to get rid of.
Envy is worse than poison ivy. It is worse than poison ivy because envy truly is deadly. When we’re envious of another person, we normally covet what they have. We not only covet what they have but we might reach the point where we begrudge the fact that they have it. This is the nature of envy. There is a certain kind of hostility that becomes part of envy.
I read some time ago the story of two competitors who had businesses across the street from each other, directly across the street. They were in competition. They had grown to hate each other. They compared their revenue, one with the other, and one did better than the other. The one who did poorly was very, very envious, and he was hostile.
In the story, an angel appears to the man who was doing poorly. He said, “Make a request of me.” This angel of the Lord said, “Make a request of me, any request, and I’ll give it to you. But understand that whatever I give to you, I’ll give twice as much to your competitor across the street. If you want to be wealthy, I will make you very, very rich, but your competitor across the street will be twice as rich. If you want health and you want long life, I will give you health and you will have long life but understand that your competitor across the street will be healthier and he will live longer. Whatever you ask, I will give him double.”
The man thought for a moment, and he said, “Strike me blind in one eye.” Is not that the hideous state that envy can move to, where you not only covet what somebody has, you really begrudge their having it and you begin to move into hostility and even hate?
We look at Rachel and we look at Leah and we see the nature of envy and the competitiveness that envy can produce. Leah envied Rachel’s beauty and Leah envied the love that Rachel had from Jacob. She thought and she hoped that through her fertility, through childbearing, she might be able to compete. Through bearing children for Jacob, she might become his favorite wife, and she might garner his love. So, she bore him Reuben, the firstborn son, and then she gave birth to Simeon and then she gave birth to Levi and then she gave birth to Judah—four sons in a row.
Rachel became jealous. How was she going to compete when she was barren? She was not fertile. She went to Jacob and said, “Give me children or I shall die.” Jacob becomes angry with her and says, “Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” Rachel then goes and makes her maid a surrogate mother. This practice was already condemned in Genesis, chapter 16, but she gives her maid, Bilhah, to Jacob for childbearing. Dan is born and then Naphtali is born. She says she is prevailing against her sister. Those are the words of Rachel. Well, then, suddenly Leah becomes barren, and she cannot produce any more children and she’s desperate because this is her one advantage. She takes her maid, Zilpah, and uses her as a surrogate mother. She gives her to Jacob and Gad is born and Asher is born. The whole thing is really a tragic mess.
Then Leah becomes fertile again and she gives birth to Issachar and Zebulun and a daughter named Dinah. Then finally, in God’s mercy, He opens up the womb of Rachel and she gives birth to her firstborn son. She names him Joseph, which means “he adds,” because she wants this to only be the beginning. “May the Lord add to me another son.” This is her desire, to prevail over her sister. She continues to pray and then finally she does give birth to another son, Benjamin, and she dies while giving birth to Benjamin. She names Benjamin, “Binyamin,” “son of my sorrow.”
The whole story of Rachel and Leah is filled with sorrow because of all the envy and all the pain and all the suffering and ultimately the death. Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave, the Pillar of Rachel’s Tomb. It is near Bethlehem, and the grave of Rachel is near Bethlehem to this day.
God certainly wants us to avoid envy in any form. He wants us to know that comparison is dangerous. He has only called us to follow Him. Envy is deadly because it kills joy. It kills contentment. It can destroy relationships.
I do not know what form of envy might tempt you; whether it’s intellectual envy, financial envy, relational envy. There are many, many forms of envy. Pray about it and remember we are just called to follow Christ.
As we conclude, I want to show you a clip from a movie that illustrates envy. This movie concerns the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Antonio Salieri, who was the court musician, so envied Mozart. In this clip, you see Salieri looking at musical composition composed by Mozart. He sees its brilliance and its beauty, and he sees his relative lack of skill and he is just wrought with envy. This envy actually winds up destroying Salieri’s faith.
Well, Antonio Salieri through flashbacks remembers his envy of the brilliance of Mozart. That envy drove him to insanity in his later years and destroyed his faith. He was angry at God that God would give such talent to a person who lived such an immature life and a life of such little spiritual depth, that God would give such talent to Mozart. We have this warning in scripture. “Beware,” Jesus said, “Beware of all covetousness.” Jesus said, “Seek first My kingdom and My righteousness and I’ll give you everything you need.”
Jesus gave us the Parable of the Talents, wherein He reminded us we’ll never be judged for the magnitude of our gifts. It does not matter how our gifts compare with the gifts of others. Judgement will not even take that into consideration. All that matter is how we use the gifts we have. That is all that matters, so let us close with a word of prayer.