Wednesday's Wisdom: Leah and a Troubled Marriage

It's the day after Valentine's Day, a day we honor a man martyred for marital love by the giving and receiving of tokens of affection. Today we will discuss another martyr to marital love, Leah, the wife of Jacob.



When God created the world and set the first inhabitants in it He planned that marriage would be between one man and one woman. From this union children would be added to the family.

It was not long before this plan was distorted by sinful men who introduced polygamy. In the family line of Seth we find that the 7th generation of Adam's family was the Godly Enoch. In the family line of Cain we find that the 7th generation of Adam's family is Lamech, the first person recorded to have taken multiple wives. His marital situation was just one thing recorded in Genesis 4:19-24 that would suggest he delighted in doing things contrary to God's design.

Although this practice was not God's perfect plan for the family He allowed it. The Old Testament contains stories of several men who had multiple wives but it doesn't attempt to hide the problems that resulted.

Leah, a woman caught in such a relationship, was Jacob's first wife but not his first choice. Not only did she share her husband with her own sister but she also shared him with two servant girls. The situation might have been common in her culture but it is evident that the lack of love in her marriage caused her heartbreak as can be seen in her own comments.

Leah was also the first wife to bear Jacob a child. She named him Reuben and said, "Now my husband will love me."

When she bore him the second son she said, "Because the LORD hath heard that I am hated, he hath given me this son also."

She said, "Now will my husband be joined unto me," when she bore the third son. How sad! This woman thought that conceiving children would make the man she loved love her in return.

Marriage was designed to be a relationship reserved between a man and a wife. In its perfect form it emulates the relationship between Christ and His church. It is to be a love relationship where children are embellishments and not glue to hold it together. It is to be intimate and exclusive in every sense.

Individuals still distort the marriage relationship to the point that it is almost unrecognizable from what it was when God first ordained it. Infidelity, fornication, and divorce are a few of the most notorious circumstances. It isn't unusual in modern culture for men to have multiple relationships without benefit of marriage. They aren't polygamists but something much worse.

There are some subtle and private ways that true marriages can be troubled as well. This is the case in marriages where someone else holds equality with either of the two marriage partners. No one - not parents or children or friends - should be equal to one's spouse.

Love is something each individual requires to lead a normal physical, spiritual, and emotional life. Our homes, churches, and nations would benefit from a quick infusion of proper marital love!



Disclaimer and clarification: The article above is part of a series about depression taken from the lives of individuals found in the book of Genesis. In no way is this meant to suggest that these persons were suffering from depression but that their experiences and the events were similar to situations that cause depression today.