Genesis 29:18~

Jacob had fallen in love with Rachel, so he said: “I am willing to serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”

This is a point a couple friends of mine made:

Young people shouldn’t be in a hurry to start dating or to find “the right person” because true love is patient and if two people really love each other, it doesn’t matter how long it takes them to wind up together, they are willing to wait.

Genesis 29:32~

So Le′ah became pregnant and gave birth to a son and named him Reu′ben, for she said: “It is because Jehovah has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will begin to love me.”

And so the race for who could bare the most children begun, for somehow Jacob, who had originally set out to marry Rachel, wound up with 4 wives.

(If you are unfamiliar with the story, what happened is that Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah. He signed up to work another 7 years to get permission to marry Rachel. Rachel was barren and so she gave him her servant to have kids in lieu of her. Leah didn’t want to be left behind so she also gave Jacob her own servant. {Gen. 29:25-27; Gen. 30:3,4; Gen. 30:9}).

The point I want to highlight is that even today, women seem to be under this false illusion that if they have a man’s child or children, he will automatically love her, as if there were something someone could do to project love out of someone else.

In this case I am referring to romantic love.

But, as we saw from the first passage, love is something that flows naturally from one’s self. It cannot be forced or shut off or transferred into a third person.

A lot of women today, especially in my own Latin culture, get themselves pregnant hoping this way their boyfriends will want to marry them.

That is not how love or marriage works. These relationships tend to fall apart within the first ten years leaving deep emotional and financial scars.

On an opposite note, Genesis 30, verses 1 and 2, read:

When Rachel saw that she had borne no children to Jacob, she became jealous of her sister and began to say to Jacob: “Give me children or else I will die.”  At this Jacob’s anger flared up against Rachel, and he said: “Am I in the place of God, who has prevented you from having children?”

Even when you are deeply in love with someone, this doesn’t mean you will be in perfect synchronization or pure bliss, or that you will never need to confront their flaws.

On occasion it will be entirely normal to “flare up in anger” and argue, because we are all imperfect and different.

That doesn’t nullify or subtract from true love in any way. True love endures and becomes more refined.

The moral of all this:

One wife is more than enough. 😉