Genesis 30:9–13
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We come now to a section of Genesis that makes modern, tidy Christians a bit uncomfortable. We have sibling rivalry, polygamy, surrogate mothers, and a general atmosphere of domestic strife that looks more like a daytime television show than a chapter in Holy Writ. But the Scriptures are not given to us to provide sanitized, airbrushed portraits of saints who never had a bad day. The Bible is relentlessly realistic about the muck and mire of human sin. The story of Jacob and his wives is a tangled mess. Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah, the woman he did not love, and then worked another seven years for Rachel, the woman he did. This was a deviation from God's created design from the beginning, which was one man for one woman. Polygamy is never presented in Scripture as the ideal; it is always shown to be a source of strife, jealousy, and sorrow.