Genesis 29:20 Jacob served seven years for Rachel

“Prophets expect more of us than Hollywood does. They expect us to notice, to flesh out with the inner eye of a spiritual imagination such apparently casual comments as, “Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.” (Gen. 29:20.) It’s easy not to notice; there’s much more than we’re used to in those twenty-one simple words condensing seven years. But the force of that titanic tribute to the attractiveness of Rachel and the gallantry of Jacob and the power of the human soul for enduring loyalty is almost totally missed if you miss the unwritten detail between those lines, if you fail to put yourself imaginatively in Jacob’s sandals herding goats and sheep in some place like the Sevier Desert for seven long sun-withered, wind-blasted, grit-flavored, sheep-stinking, backbreaking years of your own ardently impatient youth. (Steven C. Walker, “Between Scriptural Lines,” Ensign, Mar. 1978, 63)

Genesis 29:25 And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah

In American culture, it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the ceremony on the day of their marriage. In Laban’s culture, apparently the bride was kept under a veil for the entire ceremony, allowing Leah to disguise herself as Rachel and marry Jacob without Jacob knowing who he had married. It also means that Jacob and Leah must have consummated their marriage in sufficient darkness, that Jacob didn’t recognize his new wife was Leah until the morning. That’s a pretty dirty trick for Laban to play on Jacob, but Leah must have been in on it as well. History is replete with this theme of the elder sister’s grief at a younger sister’s matrimony. Apparently, Laban was intent on preempting that, “It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.”

Jacob must have thought, “Why didn’t you tell me that seven years ago!”

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