Genesis 29 Two Wives for Jacob

[seekeroftruth]

Genesis 29:26 Laban replied, “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. 27 Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.”

28 And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. 29 Laban gave his servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her attendant. 30 Jacob made love to Rachel also, and his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years.​

I got this from the easy English commentary.

When there was a wedding, people organised a feast for it. The feast lasted for one week. Jacob could have left afterwards, with his two brides. But Laban trusted that Jacob would stay. Jacob could not trust Laban. But Laban knew that he could trust Jacob.

Later, God’s law did not allow a man to marry two sisters​

So Laban knew he could trust Jacob, the scoundrel. I guess it takes one to know one, right?

Here's a commentary from studylight.org.

Polygamy is not widely practiced in western culture, but we do practice serial marriage. We can think of polygamy as mass marriage in the sense we speak about mass murder: someone who marries more than one at the same time. There is also serial murder: where a murderer kills many, but one at a time. In our modern culture we multiply wives to ourselves; we just do it one at a time.


We can't do anything about our marriages that have broken up in the past, but each of us can do all that we can before God to make sure that from now on, it is one partner for all time.
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