Leah: Hebrew, meaning “weary.”
Leah was a weary girl
who seemed to go unloved—
sold in marriage by her father and
neglected by her lover to be
overshadowed by her little sister,
left alone with her soft and tender eyes.
I am a weary girl
who feels cornered in the shadows—
eyes too blurred to see and
my dreams dying on the floor beside me
while hope slips out the door and runs
locking me in the shadows.
I forget the LORD
who saw this weary girl,
who blessed her with a son; who heard the cry of Leah
and gave her another one.
Six sons God gave her
when He saw she was neglected—
an ancient sign of blessing and honor,
a refuge from disgrace, protected.
And even while she lived entrapped
she praised the God who saw her,
who heard her, who loved her to her end;
while no one thought to record her death
God loved her to her end.
Weary Girl, by Katelynn Martin
In all my time hearing the story of Leah and Rachel in the book of Genesis, I’ve always thought more often of Rachel. She was the one loved by her husband, the one God remembered, and to whom He graciously gave Joseph and Benjamin (Joseph, you know, the famous one who saved Egypt from famine.)
And it seems like every other person I’ve heard talk about this story does the same–Leah ends up in the background, Rachel is the antihero. There’s even a short devotional in my Bible that talks about the sisters this way.
But lately, I can’t stop thinking about Leah. I feel like her. I’ve written several poems about her at this point, and I’ve raged at God on her behalf (mine, too).
Six sons feels like a move to placate her pain and grief. Infuriation burns within me as I think about her father’s deception towards Jacob, swindling him, giving Leah to him in marriage first instead of Rachel–practically selling Leah into a loveless, unwanted, competitive, and humiliating marriage. If this were to happen today, I’d call it abuse.
I was taken aback recently to realize that while Rachel’s death is recorded, Leah’s is not. She seems to completely fall away from the reader’s memory after her daughter is raped in Genesis chapter 34. I didn’t even realize she had died until chapter 49 when Jacob mentions where she is buried.
I read on a Jewish website that Leah’s “soft eyes” (or weak or tender, depending on the translation) meant that her eyes were sore and tired from crying because, as the older sister and a relative of Rebecca (Jacob’s mother), it was assumed she would marry Esau, Jacob’s older twin brother. But Esau married other women, including two Canaanite women who sacrificed to pagan gods, and Leah wept to the LORD to change her future.
Leah feels cheated and trapped to me, without a voice; the God of heaven being the only one left to hear the choked cries in her throat.
When I traipse through my righteous anger and remember to lay aside my Western eyes, I weigh the fact that children were a sign of blessing and favor from God, especially sons, in the ancient world. For a woman to be unable to bear children was massively shameful. That’s why God gave Leah six sons when He saw that she was neglected. While she may have felt grieved and crippled by heartbreak–possibly never finding resolve in it–God protected her from societal disgrace, a thing we don’t know the pain of if we don’t live in an honor-shame culture like she did.
And then I realized that in chapter 49, Jacob had buried Leah with his parents and grandparents–a sign of honor–while he buried Rachel on the way to Bethlehem.
I remember, too, that Judah came from Leah’s womb–the line that the Messiah would come from generations later. Jesus, the Savior of the world, came directly from this unwanted, forgotten, tear-stained, and weary girl.
If I were to remain cynical in my heart, I’d still rage at God and accuse him of placating. Part of me still hungers to do so. What happened to Leah was unfair, unjust. She deserved to be protected by her father. She deserved a marriage devoid of competition, desperation, and neglect. She deserved a good relationship with her sister. She deserved to be fulfilled, to have the life she was designed for.
I’m not ready to tie this all up with a nice, Christian-like bow, as if this were the devotional in my Bible. I still feel compelled to hold Leah’s life with tenderness in my hands, to find myself in it, all while the Holy Spirit keeps showing me where His grace abounds amidst all the sin.
I find I keep looking for nice little bows to tie around each lesson I’m learning, each season of my life–but it’s not working. Each lesson and season bleeds into the next, sometimes blurring all the lines and bypassing my need to cope with compartmentalization. There is no bow to tie around the end of Leah’s story. Her life was bleeding.
And her bleeding life touches mine all these thousands of years later because the God who heard her, saw her in her neglect and affliction, is also my God.
And He bleeds through generations and resurrects the weary and heavy laden, the ones with soft and tender eyes, unto the life we were designed for. Even when it feels like it, He’s not a Father who placates, but who makes beauty from ashes.
I wonder what Leah’s eyes are like now that she can see.
