Leah pulled the covering from the bed and fled, wrapping it around her in big clumsy bunches. She was so distraught that she ran to Laban’s room and wept bitterly. “I don’t understand,” she cried. “He did love me, and passionately, until he saw that it was me and not Rachel.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll have to understand,” he said. “The eldest must marry before the younger; everyone knows that.”
“But I thought Jacob had agreed that it should be that way,” she cried.
“No, no,” he said, “we didn’t need to tell him something everyone knows.”
“You tricked him into marrying me,” she charged bitterly.
“You wanted to marry him, and there was no other way. Now you’ve had your wish and you must work out the difficulties.”
The look she gave him was hard, cold, and sorrowful all at once.
“You must understand,” Laban said, “this was not my idea at all. It was the old goat-man under the stairs that hatched this plot.” Without waiting she pulled away from him and ran to the door under the stairs. Flinging the door open, she stared at the ugly little idol. “So,” she said, “it’s you who’ve worked this out. Now you must make him love me.” Somehow she felt this would not be so easy.
* * *
Laban found Jacob pacing the floor of the small bridal chamber. Unbeknownst to Laban, Jacob’s wild anger and frustration were tempered only by the guilty thought that this was how Esau must have felt when he had tricked him out of the blessing. So, Jacob reasoned, I deserve this, but how can I live without Rachel?
“Now I see that you think I have played a cruel trick on you,” Laban said. “Actually I should have told you from the start that we must always marry the eldest daughter before the younger. There was nothing else I could do.”
He waited for Jacob to give some angry response, but when he simply sat and stared at the wall and said nothing, Laban went on. “I’m not as cruel as you might think,” he continued, studying Jacob’s strange lack of response. “You can have Rachel at the end of the week if you’ll promise to work seven more years for her.”
Jacob wanted to cry out at the unfairness of it all. He wanted to shout at his crafty uncle, telling him that he had already worked seven years for Rachel. He wanted to say that he would never, never have worked one day to marry Leah. However, he was so overwhelmed with the feeling that he was somehow being paid back for cheating his brother that he said nothing.
Laban took his silence as acceptance and promptly went and told Rachel all that had happened. Rachel had been crying and suspected that Leah had somehow planned all of this. “No, no,” Laban told her, “don’t blame your sister. Blame the old goat-man idol. He’s the one that put the idea in my head. Actually, you will find it is for the best. I’ve arranged for Jacob to have you at the end of this week, but he’ll have to stay and work seven more years.”
Rebekah said sulkily, “You always blame the old goat-man for any crafty thing you want to do. I know that Leah has wanted Jacob. She thinks he’ll love her but he won’t. He loves me and she’ll live to regret this trick she’s been a part of.”
For the first time Laban began to worry about what he had done. He loved his daughters. What if, he wondered, by trying to manage things, he had actually made it very difficult for them to ever find happiness?
At the end of the week of feasting, Laban kept his word and gave Rachel to Jacob. When it came time for Jacob to claim his bride, he found himself in the same bridal chamber, only this time everything was different. A small oil lamp cast shadows on the whitewashed walls. As was the custom, Rachel sat on the colorful, straw-filled mat among many cushions. He could hardly recognize her. The gleam of a golden headpiece nested squarely in her dark curls, and a dancing waterfall of gold cascaded from each ear. Around her neck was a spiral of gold latticework interspersed with carnelian beads.
She sat with her eyes cast down and her hands, lying on her knees, were upturned. Jacob realized at once that while Leah had been forced by the circumstance to come to him very much as one of the local harlots, Rachel came as a true bride. It was unnerving. Somewhere in all the bridal array was his little shepherdess, and it was his duty to coax her out of hiding.
Here was the crux of the mystery that women spent endless time whispering about and men grew silent remembering. It had obviously been designed from ancient times as a challenge to the groom’s ingenuity. He must win her or she had every right to reject him and flee back to the safety of her family. The wise, confident bride did not give in too easily. Their whole future relationship depended on this moment’s going well. The bride must feel totally accepted and adored, while the groom must take pride in having won, with difficulty, a worthy prize.