Читать книгу The Book of Gratitudes - Pablo R. Andiñach - Страница 18

Jacob and Rachel

Darkness and drink had their effect and, after spending the first night with the woman he thought he had chosen, he woke up in the morning to realize it was someone else. He had worked seven years to get Rachel, but it was Leah who was in his bedsheets.

He wasted no time to complain, as his father-in-law gave him all kinds of excuses to justify what he had done. He proposed giving him Rachel after one week if he agreed to work another seven years as payment for her. Thus, the father made sure of placing his elder daughter Leah and wagered that Jacob—whom he knew was seduced by the body of his other daughter—would not hesitate to agree. After all, thought Jacob, seven years had been like a few days to him in order to get Rachel. Another sever years would not be burdensome, especially if she was delivered in advance and he could now enjoy being with the woman he loved. In the eyes of love, fourteen years of labor did not seem like a long time.

It had all started at the well. Rachel arrived leading her sheep and, when Jacob first saw her, he kissed her, he wept and he raised his voice because he knew that he had found the woman for whom he had been waiting for. She stood out for her bronzed face and her slender figure; he had never perceived in another woman that special fragrance that her body exhaled at the end of a long day in the hills with her flock of sheep. A fragrance that was true to her, for Rachel means sheep—she was that beautiful. Rachel was different from the others, and Jacob felt a strange vibration when he walked passed her tent or when he saw her fading into the distance in the desert, leading her sheep. “It’s worth leaving everything for a woman like that,” thought Jacob.

In the long run, his father-in-law’s trick meant that Jacob received four women: Leah and Rachel as wives as well as Bilhah and Zilpah, the two slaves that accompanied them. Faithful to his heart, Jacob always loved Rachel more than Leah and the slaves, which gave rise to jealousy and conflicts among them, and when doing business too. For example, at one point Rachel received a few mandrakes from Leah, to allow Jacob to sleep with her, with such good fortune for Leah that that night she conceived another son when she thought she was sterile and would not give birth again.

Between the four women, they gave Jacob twelve sons and one daughter; Dinah the curious.

(Genesis 29–30)