The Story of a Hidden Root

It seems as if Leah had no one in her life whom she could rely on, or who would truly love her. Not her father, her sister, or even her own husband. But what about God? God saw Leah.

In Isaiah 11:1 we read, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”

Roots are underground, lying in the darkness where you can’t see them. You plant, wait, and hope that new life will one day grow from those buried roots. And this also holds true for one woman’s story in the Old Testament. She was a woman who had to endure a great deal, and for whom it seemed like all hope was lost. Nobody thought that her situation could improve. We’re talking about Leah, whose name, tellingly, can mean “weary” or “grieved.” The Bible describes her this way: “Leah’s eyes were weak” (Gen 29:17).

This is her story.

Leah and Her Father

Leah’s father was corrupt. He was a materialist who was only concerned with appearances. When Laban was a young man, Abraham’s servant came to his town to find a wife for Isaac. The servant met Laban’s sister Rebekah at the well, and gave her a gold ring and gold bracelets. Then we read about Laban: “As soon as he saw the ring and the bracelets on his sister’s arms, and heard the words of Rebekah his sister, ‘Thus the man spoke to me,’ he went to the man. And behold, he was standing by the camels at the spring. He said, ‘Come in, O blessed of the LORD. Why do you stand outside? For I have prepared the house and a place for the camels’” (Gen 24:30-31).

Because Laban saw “the ring and the bracelets on his sister’s arms,” he invited the servant into his home. It was the gold that elicited his hospitality, and the reason he rushed to meet Abraham’s servant at the well. His materialistic attitude never changed. His own daughters, Rachel and Leah, later said of him, “Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money” (Gen 31:15).

Laban was also neither just nor fair. When Abraham’s servant was about to leave, Laban and his mother said about Rebekah, “Let us call the young woman and ask her” (Gen 24:57). Laban had no problem accepting his sister’s opinion. But down the road, he had no interest in what his own daughters might want. Years later, he gave Jacob the older Leah as his wife instead of the younger Rachel, with whom Jacob was in love. He didn’t ask Leah or Rachel what they thought. “But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her” (Gen 29:23). He took Leah and brought her to Jacob.

This also showed Laban as a deceiver, because Jacob had assumed that Laban would lead Rachel to him. He had worked for her for seven years, and Laban had been planning this deception for a long time: “Then Jacob said to Laban, ‘Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.’ So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast” (Gen 29:21-22). This was neither a gaffe nor a spontaneous mistake. Laban had specifically invited everyone in the town and prepared a big feast.

Laban justified his deception with a lie based on a purported tradition: “Laban said, ‘It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn’” (Gen 29:26). Leah’s father was a liar and a cheat, who was prone to going back on his word. After twenty years of working for him, Jacob reproached Laban: “These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times” (Gen 31:41).

Laban had repeatedly changed the wages to Jacob’s disadvantage. It clearly portrayed who Leah’s father was: a man who lived only for money, an unjust man, a cheat and a liar.

Leah and Her Sister

Leah was always in her younger sister’s shadow. The Bible says of Rachel, “[She] was beautiful in form and appearance” (Gen 29:17b). Nevertheless, later it was beautiful Rachel who envied her older sister: “When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I shall die!’” (Gen 30:1).

The sisters’ relationship was characterized by rivalry and competition: “Then Rachel said, ‘With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed’” (Gen 30:8a).

And when it came to the younger sister, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Rachel stole from her father: “Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s household gods” (Gen 31:19). She also deceived him: “Now Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel’s saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about the tent, but did not find them” (v. 34).

Leah had to contend with a sister who was more attractive than she was, who was jealous of her, who saw her as a competitor, and who had no qualms about lying and deceiving to get and keep what she wanted.

Leah and Her Husband

Leah’s husband Jacob, who had never intended to marry her, loved Rachel more than her: “and he loved Rachel more than Leah” (Gen 29:30). Jacob wasn’t much better than his father-in-law Laban either, as we see in a notable story about Jacob and Laban’s flocks, which describes what Jacob did to gain an advantage over Laban:

“Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban. He put his own droves apart and did not put them with Laban’s flock. Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the sticks, but for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s” (Gen 30:37-42).

Jacob was deceitful and greedy, and hardly a hero himself. When Esau, whom he had betrayed, came to meet him, Jacob feared for his life. Leah and her children were among those he sent ahead as a sort of living shield: “And he put the servants with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all” (Gen 33:2).

And when coming face to face with Esau became unavoidable, he flattered and pretended: “Jacob said, ‘No, please, if I have found favor in your sight, then accept my present from my hand. For I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me’” (Gen 33:10).

Leah was married to a man who didn’t love her and who was deceitful, greedy, and hypocritical.

Leah and Her God

It seems as if Leah had no one in her life whom she could rely on, or who would truly love her. Not her father, her sister, or even her own husband. But what about God?

God saw Leah.

“When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, ‘Because the LORD has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me’” (Gen 29:31-32).

Leah discovered what Hagar, who was also despised, had confessed in a previous generation: “You are the God who sees me” (Gen 16:13, NIV). God is a God who sees. “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Ps 34:18).

We read of two instances in which God heard or listened to Leah: “She conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘Because the LORD has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also’” (Gen 29:33). “And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son” (Gen 30:17).

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isa 57:15).

Leah experienced all of this and more. Despite the suffering and injustice she experienced, eventually, she was able to praise her God: “And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘This time I will praise the LORD.’ Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing” (Gen 29:35).

And this brings us to the hidden root, the prophetic aspect of the story. Judah means “praise.” And “it is evident,” says Hebrews 7:14, “that our Lord was descended from Judah.” He is “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Rev 5:5). Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, descended from the woman whom Jacob (Israel) loved less than Rachel. It is one of the hidden roots from which new life would one day come.

Conclusion

Leah’s eventful life confirms what God says of Himself in the Psalms: “At the set time that I appoint I will judge with equity” (75:2). This is a divine principle, even when we’re experiencing hardships and waiting for our Lord. “I am the LORD; in its time I will hasten it” (Isa 60:22b). He achieves His objectives. “His going out is sure as the dawn” (Hos 6:3). And that’s just as true in our lives. “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!” (Ps 126:5).

Leah was eventually able to rejoice and praise God. We will also be able to one day praise God about our own lives, if we hold onto Him like Leah did.

Despite her weak eyes, her difficult father, her sister’s jealousy, and her husband’s injustice, she was the one from whose lineage the Savior of the world eventually came. She was the mother of Judah, the royal tribe of Israel.

Nearly 2,000 years later, Joseph and Mary brought this special descendant of Leah to the temple: “Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel’” (Luke 2:25-32).

That was the wonderful completion of Leah’s story, a hidden root of the coming Lord and Savior of the world.