A Tale of Two Sisters

What Paul wrote in the book of Romans about the conflict between Gentile Christians and Jews would not seem to have much to do with the patriarchal stories of Genesis. The connection with Genesis comes to light, however, by close consideration of the language Paul uses. In Romans 10 and 11, Paul reasons that the favorable response of so many Gentiles to the Gospel is meant to force unconverted Jews to give attention to the word about Jesus. He describes the Jewish reaction as one of jealousy or envy: Moses says, “I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding...” (Rom. 10:19). “Inasmuch as I am an apostle to the gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them” (Romans 11:13-14).

The subject of jealousy calls to mind chapters 29 and 30 of Genesis, which contain the story of Jacob’s wives. Fleeing from the murderous anger of his brother Esau, Jacob travels north to the home of his uncle Laban. Jacob falls in love with the younger of Laban’s two daughters, Rachel, and agrees to work seven years for Laban in exchange for her. When the marriage takes place, however, Laban substitutes his older daughter Leah for Rachel in the bridal chamber. When Jacob becomes aware of the trick, Laban insists that he must keep Leah as his wife but agrees to give Jacob Rachel as well in exchange for another seven years’ work. Jacob has little love for Leah, who is described as having “weak eyes,” but she is blessed with children to ease her misery at being rejected. By contrast, the beautiful Rachel enjoys Jacob’s love but remains childless for some time. The Scriptures portray an intense jealousy between the rival sisters, who jointly bear the twelve sons destined to become the ancestors of all Israel.

The prophecy hidden in the story of Jacob and his wives began to be fulfilled when God, like Jacob, entered into a covenant or symbolic marriage with the people of Israel, after their coming out of Egypt. During the institution of the covenant under Moses, Israel presented itself as a beautiful, that is, obedient people willing to learn God’s commands: “When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, ‘Everything the Lord has said we will do’” (Ex. 24:3). But no sooner had the covenant been concluded than some of the Israelites fashioned an idol in the form of a golden calf. “They have been quick to turn aside from what 2 I commanded them,” God told Moses (Ex. 32:8). Over and over again Israel disobeyed, murmuring against God and Moses, refusing to enter the Promised Land at the appointed time and, in later history, backsliding into idolatry, injustice and sexual immorality. God had not received the beautiful wife he had been promised, just as Jacob had not. In the Psalms, God says to the nation:
“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.’” (Psalm 95:8-10).

God says that the people had seen His works with their eyes, yet their hearts had not understood. In effect, Israel proved to have weak spiritual eyesight. In the discussion about Jews and Gentiles in Romans, Paul quotes yet other scriptures about poor spiritual vision on the part of a majority of the Jewish people:
“The others [of the nation of Israel] were hardened, as it is written: ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.’ And David says, ‘...May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever’” (Romans 11:8-10).

Apparently without realizing it, Paul when writing to the Romans invokes key elements from the story of Jacob’s wives, including jealousy and weak eyesight on the part of God’s covenant wife, Israel. Paul points out that Israel, while pushed aside by God for their disobedience, was not lost entirely: “I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself....So too, at the present time there is a remnant [of Jews] chosen by grace” (Romans 11:1, 5). God Himself says something similar in Isaiah when He promises to call His people back “as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit--a wife who married young, only to be rejected” (Isaiah 54:6).

The type of Israel is, of course, Leah, who had weak eyes and was passed over by Jacob in favor of Rachel. Nevertheless, Leah was not rejected absolutely; rather she became Jacob’s wife before Rachel and also was the first to bear children. In the same way, Israel was taken into a relationship with God first and, in spite of its overall waywardness, produced many men and women of faith during the old covenant period. All the while, God gave hints that people of obedient heart from any nation were those whom He loved most. Jesus notes that there were many Israelite widows in the days of the prophet Elijah, “yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet none of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:26-27).

When a new marriage covenant was brought forth through Jesus and then extended to obedient Gentiles, mistrust and spiritual jealousy were aroused in the Jewish people of the first century. Even the Christian congregation was affected by this friction (Acts 15; Galatians 1). The final result, according to Paul, will be the salvation of all who are truly Israel, whether Jews or Gentiles--just as the jealousy between Leah and Rachel ended with the laying of the foundation of the Israelite nation (Romans 9:6; 11:26). As Jacob labored a perfect or complete period of seven years for each wife, God will, through Christ, complete the work of bringing forth a new creation made up of people from every ethnic background: “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

The lack of faith on the part of ancient Israel has continued to resonate up to the present. As with fleshly Israel, the greater number of Christians throughout history has not had eyes for God, but paid Him lip service due to their circumstances of birth. The covenant remains open only to those who respond in obedience prompted by faith: “Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16). The spiritual blindness of so many has not prevented children from being born, in a spiritual sense, to Leah and Rachel in the form of faithful disciples from among Jews and non-Jews.

The ill feeling between the wives of Jacob was not in itself pleasing to God, as is evident from the Mosaic Law’s command that never again should a man be married to a woman and her sister while both still were living (Leviticus 18:18). Yet God was able through the emotions of imperfect humans to create a prophetic depiction of future events. If this prophetic analogy, which so perfectly anticipated the entry of Gentile believers into the new covenant, had occurred to Paul, he surely would have called attention to it as he did other Old Testament allegories (Romans 9:7-9; Galatians 4:22-31). It is all the more remarkable, then, that Paul touches on the key elements of the story simply by making general statements about the gathering of believers from the nations. Once again, scripture passages separated widely by time of composition and immediate subject weave themselves together into a seamless testimony to the foreknowledge of God and the inspiration of His written Word.

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