Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 29-30.

There ae multiple places in the Bible where it tells us of a man with more than one wife at a time, most of the time that man serves God.  Consistently, the home life of the man involved is unhappy.  The example of Jacob with Leah and Rachel is no exception.  However what I want to primarily cover today is the way in which Leah named her first four sons.  When Reuben was born, Leah said (paraphrasing),  “The Lord has seen my misery, now Jacob will have to love me.”  When Simeon was born, she said, “Because I am not loved, God gave me a second son.”  When Levi was born, she said, “I have given Jacob three sons, now he will finally love me.”  Then when Judah was born, Leah said, “I will praise the Lord.”  With each of the first three, they were a means to an end.  With each, she saw them as a means to gain love from her husband.  When Judah was born, Leah praised God for him.  Not for what he would bring her, or how it would improve her relationship with her husband: she praised God for giving her another son.  You might think that this suggests that she loved Judah more than the first three, but that is not how I read it.  When Reuben, Simeon, and Levi were born, she thought they were blessings because of how they would change her relationship with Jacob. By the time Judah was born, Leah realized that each of her sons was a blessing to her, in and of themselves.   In the same way, we often see God’s blessings to us in terms of how they will change our place in the world.  In actuality, most of God’s blessings to us have value without changing anything else.  Initially, Leah saw the tasks she needed to do to take care of her babies as the price she had to pay to receive the blessings which they would bring.  By the time Judah was born she realized those tasks were part of the blessing.  In the same way, we should view the work which goes along with whatever blessing God gives us as part of that blessing, because it is.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.