Kisses - Genesis 29:1-19

29:1-11 - At some point on his 550-mile journey from his father Isaac’s house in Beersheba to his uncle Laban’s house in Haran, Jacob has a spectacular vision in which he makes covenants with God and begins his own spiritual transformation. Some time after this vision he “came into the land of the people of the east,” and sees a well. This must have been significant because he doesn’t have a car with air conditioning or a gas station to stop at for something cold to drink. Water was not only as necessary back then as it is today but it was much harder to come by. Jacob pulls up to this well which has a giant stone on the top of it, and three “flocks” of sheep are “lying by (the well)” with their shepherds. Jacob talked to the guys asking where they were from and they answer Haran, he asks if they know “Laban the son of Nahor,” and they answer that not only do they in fact know his but “his daughter is coming with her sheep for water now.”

If we remember, the gathering of water and giving it to animals usually happened in the mornings and evenings because of the heat of the area, but when Jacob is there he notes to the guys with the sheep that it is the middle of the day, why aren’t they giving their sheep the water instead of just waiting there by the well, and the other guys answer that something that I don’t quite understand but it’s something along the lines of “the stone on the well is heavy to move on and off so we are waiting for everyone to show up so we can move the stone and all water the sheep together.” While they were talking, Rachel walks up and Jacob single handedly moves the stone off the mouth of the well, gives Rachel’s sheep water, the “Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept.”

This has always been a problematic verse for me because I see it as he assaults her by kissing her full on the mouth without her even knowing who he is, kind of like claiming her for himself. I might have been projecting a bit there, but reading into it seems much more innocent and less grabby. In my defense we are not an affectionate culture when compared to much of the rest of the world where people kiss cheeks as greetings, hug, etc. It doesn’t say that Jacob kissed Rachel on the mouth it just says that he kissed her. In an article on this verse from radical.net, the author suggests, “don’t picture a romantic kiss. Picture just more family affection and greeting.”

That makes more sense, then to consider that Jacob wept loudly when he saw her, instead of this being a moment when he “fell in love with her at first sight,” let’s look back to the experience Abraham’s servant had when he met Rebekah at the well and he realized that God had answered his prayers to find Isaac a wife. When Eliezer realized that God had sent Rebekah to the well so that she could become Isaac’s wife, he fell on his face and praised God. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the emotion involved produced tears in either the case of Eliezer or Jacob. So instead of Jacob being an entitled douchebag, it seems like he is in fact just relieved and overjoyed about being delivered by God into the safe and loving hands of his distant family.

29:12-19 - The other shepherds had told Jacob that the approaching woman was Laban’s daughter Rachel, so he knew that they were family, but she probably was very confused because she hadn’t been privy to that conversation. Jacob tells Rachel that “he was her father’s brother, and that he was Rebekah’s son: and she ran and told her father.” Laban comes running out and “embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house.” Here’s another example of a kiss but it’s obviously not a sexual kiss, because it was between the two men, uncle and nephew. Jacob tells Laban all about how he came to be in this country and Laban welcomes him and invites him to stay at his house, “and he abode with him the space of a month.” In a time when every member of a household pulls their own weight, Laban feels weird not paying Jacob for the work he is doing around the house, so he asks “tell me, what shall thy wages be?” I’m sure he was expecting a monetary answer, but Jacob comes back with kind of a surprise offer, “I will serve thee seven years for Rachel by younger daughter,” because “Jacob loved Rachel.” There are a few reasons why this is significant. First, Rachel was the younger of the two sisters, and anciently it was not appropriate for the younger child to marry before the older one. Rachel’s older sister was named Leah and verse 17 tells us all we get to know about the girls, for “Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured.” I’m not sure what “favoured” means in this context, whether it was that she was a favourite child to her parents, or beloved in the community, obviously she was very beautiful, and we all know how an attractive physical appearance shapes societies opinions about women.

Rachel was the shining star out of the sisters, and this is through no fault of her own, and we don’t know what “tender eyed” means here in terms of Leah, however we know that Leah is not physically attractive because of the use of the word “but.” If it had said “Leah was tender eyed, AND Rachel was beautiful, then we can deduce that both girls were at least moderately attractive and that Leah had lovely eyes as an appealing factor and Rachel had overall good proportions. We could deduce that, however the word used isn’t AND it is BUT. Leah’s tender eyes are in direct contrast to Rachel’s beauty, the biblical writers aren’t pulling any punches here. As one article says, the Bible is clear and unapologetic, “Rachel was HOT, and Leah was not.”

Another factor that I read once long ago and made sense to me was that it’s possible Leah had some sort of physical or mental disability because Laban is a relatively wealth man in good standing in his community, and as such would have been sought after as a matchmaking partner for Leah. Meaning that because of Laban’s societal status, Leah would have been sought after as a wife for some of the local boys so that they could link up their family and Laban’s. The fact that after all that time, no one ever came for Leah implies that she was not regarded as an eligible marriage candidate. This makes sense because when Jacob shows up, maybe the girls are too young to have suitors come proposition Laban for their hand in marriage, but if Jacob agrees to work for 7 years so that he can marry Rachel, and Leah is older, Laban would have been incentivized to have Leah married off before those 7 years were up.

I doubt that Laban had the “fake out substitute marriage Rachel and Leah” plan in the works when Jacob suggested the arrangement 7 years earlier, and considering how little Laban seems to care for Leah, it would seem to me that Laban spent those 7 years getting richer through Jacob’s Godly favor and industry and trying to marry off Leah. The fact that after 7 years, Laban had not been successful in finding someone willing to take Leah gives more weight to the suggestion that she suffered either physical or mental disability. One thing I read interpreted “tender eyed” to mean blind, and another article suggested that it means that she had a lazy eye or bug eyes or something. All of this is speculation, but reading the concept that by all measures, Leah should have been married off by the end of Jacob’s seven years of work for Rachel, gives more context into the reasons why all of this happened in the first place.