Fiction

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The mandrakes tasted like sand in her mouth. Rachel sighed, closed her eyes and Jacob’s face filled her mind - "How did it get to this, Jacob? Fighting over mandrakes with Leah? As if I can’t go to the fields and get mandrakes myself? Fighting over you ... my beloved husband ..."

She sighed again - "...you have so many faces, Jacob - you are Leah’s husband, the father of Leah’s children, the father of Leah’s handmaid’s children, the father of my handmaid’s children - but the face I sorely long for - the father of my children - has eluded me..."

She opened her eyes and took another mouthful. She knew Jacob loved her, she had no doubts about that. The love was there from the first time they met each other and did not diminish even when her father tricked Jacob into marrying Leah, her older sister, ahead of her.

It was a harsh reality that Leah had to live with from the day she got married to Jacob, and her pain was evident in the names she gave her sons when they started arriving. Reuben:"The Lord has seen my misery and now my husband will love me", Simeon:"The Lord has seen I am not loved and has given me this so", Levi:"Now at last my husband will be attached to me because I have borne him three sons."

"Oh yes, Jacob," Rachel continued, "Leah knows you don’t love her, but I have my pain too ~ I’ve had to bear the shame of being barren, to watch while she’s borne you son after son, to resort to giving my handmaiden to you to bear children for me, to see the looks of pity and hear the sly asides from the tribes-people..."

Swallowing hard, her mind went back to earlier on that day. Leah's son, Reuben, had gone into the fields, found some mandrakes and taken them home to give to his mother. When Rachel asked Leah for some of Reuben’s mandrakes, their deep-seated rivalry had sprung up and instead of either saying yes or no, Leah took the opportunity to accuse Rachel of taking Jacob away from her.

"What an irony, Jacob" - Rachel laughed bitterly - "How could she? You were mine from the start, long before you married her!"

As she took a sip of water, she wished she hadn't risen to the bait - but she had, and had traded her husband’s companionship for the night for Reuben’s mandrakes. Loneliness bit into her like a living thing, twisting and turning, raging and hurting. Pulling her shawl tighter around herself, she whispered to Jacob’s imaginary face, "I never thought it would come to this..."

There were still some morsels of food in the bowl, but she pushed it away abruptly, got up, and stepped outside the tent. Her gaze went up past the roofs of the other tents, up to the velveteen sky where millions of stars were twinkling, and her thoughts went to the God who had promised that Jacob’s descendants would be multiplied like the stars of the heaven.

She wiped away a tear and asked – "Do I have a place in that plan, Lord? Jacob now has eight sons - I claim two as mine, but the reality is they will always be known as my handmaiden's sons. Do I have a place in Your plan, Lord?"

As she stood quietly, still looking at the stars, it occurred to her that Leah’s fourth son had been named Judah - which meant "Now I will praise the Lord."

When she thought a little bit more about his name, it seemed that at least with Judah, Leah had stopped trying to make Jacob love her and instead had shifted her gaze to God.

Looking higher, trying to see beyond the stars, she whispered –"I’ve never seen it that way before, Lord, has my focus been wrong all this time? It’s true that I’m the beautiful one, the one that Jacob loves. But my beauty hasn't taken away my shame and neither has Jacob’s love. Jealousy and tantrums haven’t done any good and my scheming hasn’t helped either."

Then she went back into the tent, slowly went down on her knees, bent her face to the ground and whispered – "Lord, nothing I have or have done has worked. I’ve run out of myself. I’ve run out of options ...tired and spent. If indeed, my focus has been wrong, I’m sorry, please forgive me. You are the only One I will look to now. Please touch my life, Lord."

Then the Lord remembered Rachel, He listened to her and opened her womb. She gave birth to a son and said, "God has taken away my humiliation..."


Adapted from Genesis 29-30, Genesis 22:17 and insights from a teaching at one of KICC’s Winning Women's Conferences.

Copyright (c) 2011 Puaichie Badejo. All rights reserved.

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