The story of the marriage of Jacob and Rachel is a rich tapestry woven with intriguing tales of love and hate, sex and deception, greed and disappointment, envy and rivalry, passion and infertility, and hostility and violence. In other words, Genesis presents the marriage of Jacob and Rachel as a microcosm of the world. Their marriage has within it all the makings of the world: pain, unfairness, cruelty, and short-lived pleasures and triumphs. Perhaps one way to understand the concept of a microcosm is to see it as the innermost circle in a set of concentric circles that are formed through a ripple effect. At the very center of the concentric circles, where the ripple effect begins, is marriage. The emotional dynamics of marriage affect the immediate family, which is the next circle out. The dynamics of the family affect the extended family, and so on, in ever-widening circles. For example, Jacob loved Rachel and hated Leah (compare Gen. 29:31).

These relatively simple dynamics of love and hate had a devastating effect on the relationship of the two sisters, Rachel and Leah, who had the misfortune of being married to the same man—Jacob. As they both loved Jacob and vied for his affection, they grew to hate each other intensely. Then this dynamic of love and hate reappeared in the troubled fraternal relations of their sons with even greater violence. Jacob loved Joseph, the son of Rachel, his beloved deceased. Envious of their father’s love, the children of Leah and the children of the concubines hated Joseph. They kidnapped him and, unable to murder him, sold him into slavery. From there, the dynamic of love and hate continued in the ever-widening circles of relations.

In our story, the rock that began the ripple effect was love. Genesis 29:19 tells us that Jacob loved Rachel. This single event, Jacob’s love for Rachel, set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the Exodus and beyond. The entire history of Israel, not to mention Christianity, owes its existence to that single event in history—Jacob loved Rachel. That was it. That was the first rock thrown. Jacob did not come to Mesopotamia to love or hate anyone. He was simply glad to have arrived safely at his uncle’s home. Leah did not always hate Rachel, her little sister, nor did Rachel hate Leah. If anything, they probably loved and looked after each other. Laban was not the vicious man waiting around to exploit Jacob.

But all this changed when Jacob loved Rachel. In fact, the whole world changed, you might say, with this single event. If Jacob had not loved Rachel, he would not have hated Leah. He might have simply married the one that Laban gave him to marry, probably Leah, and that would have been the end of the story. Jacob would not have ended up with four wives and twelve sons, and there would not have been the twelve tribes of Israel. If Jacob had not loved Rachel, who knows what might have happened to the rest of salvation history?

Accordingly, and not surprisingly, one of the aims of the story of Jacob and Rachel is to define love. The first definition it gives of love is infatuation with beauty. Genesis 29:17–19 tells us that Jacob was consumed with Rachel’s beauty, so much so that he gave fourteen years of his life as a dowry for her. Song of Songs notwithstanding, however, Scripture speaks rather negatively of such infatuation with beauty. The sons of God married the daughters of men for their beauty (Gen. 6:2). Samson loved Delilah (Judes 16:4; compare 14:3), and Amnon loved Tamar (2 Sam. 13:1–4ff.) because of these women’s extraordinary beauty. David was also infatuated with Bathsheba’s beauty (2 Sam. 11:2–4).

Yet these are all stories of disaster told with a frown. The story of Jacob and Rachel is no exception. Like the other stories, this story is also critical of falling in love with a woman for her looks. Disapproval of Jacob’s infatuation with Rachel’s beauty is perhaps most evident in the statement that God blessed Leah with sons because she was hated for her looks: "When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel [the more beautiful] was barren" (Gen. 29:31 RSV). Certainly the story of Jacob and Rachel promotes marriage based on love, and it nowhere disparages feminine beauty, but it does warn the reader about the destructive potential of infatuation.

The second definition of love we find in our story is that love is a choice. To say that Jacob loved Rachel is to say that he chose Rachel. He chose Rachel above Leah and above all the other women of the world. To love in the context of marriage means to choose. And this notion of having to choose is what creates the liability and beauty of marriage love. Marriage love is exclusive, and it differs from all other forms of love because of this exclusive nature. For example, Scripture calls upon us to love all humankind and to discriminate against none. Jesus says: "Love [even] your enemies" (Matt. 5:44).

This is not the case with marriage love. Marriage love by definition discriminates. The various Greek words for love fail to do justice to this concept of marriage love. Marriage love must be exclusive, eternally exclusive. Marriage love means choosing one, and then choosing that same one over and over. This is what sets the marriage agape apart from the ordinary agape. By the same token, hate in marriage is synonymous with rejection, eternal rejection. To choose one means to reject all others forever. For better or for worse, this is the only variety in which marriage love comes. Consequently, marriage love implies jealousy. When we are denied the love we feel we are entitled to from our spouses, bitter jealousy and anger flare up in us.

The story of Jacob and Rachel is disturbing and fascinating, because this story, unfolding against the backdrop of a polygamous marriage, reveals this dark side of marriage love in bolder strokes than any other love stories in the Old Testament. The deep structure of marriage love is one of exclusive election, and this cannot be altered. To toy with marriage love outside of the exclusive monogamous relationship is to skirt with trouble. This is the point of the story. Remarkably, Scripture describes God’s election of Israel as marriage. Like a bridegroom, God chose Israel, rejecting all the other nations of the earth. It is this exclusive character of love that makes postmoderns wary of both marriage and divine election.

Perhaps the most fitting metaphor of marriage is a well. In Scripture, the well and marriage have a close correlation. The well is where the servant of Abraham met Rebekah, Isaac’s future wife (Gen. 24:11). The well is also where Moses met Zipporah, his future wife (Exod. 2:16&150;21). In the story of Jacob and Rachel, however, there is something a little different about the well where they met. There was a large stone placed on the mouth of the well (Gen. 29:2). We are not told why the stone was placed there.

I, however, seem to see in the description a telling metaphor of marriage love. Like the stone, marriage love is there to offend and to ward off outsiders who may be tempted to seek access to our marriage. Marriage love, as it were, sits on the mouth of our marriage to safeguard its purity and freshness. Marriage brings together the most fundamental units of reproduction, male and female, to share goods, the most intimate of human emotions, and their bodies with each other, to produce and provide for each other and their offspring. At the heart of this network of relations, there is a well that needs to be guarded with all one’s might to keep it exclusive, closed to all outsiders. In our story, the world changed when Jacob moved the stone for Rachel (v. 10). The text seems to beg the question: Who are you moving the stone for today?

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