Bashan Ministries

When no one wants to know you: When you feel unloved: When you are rejected: When you feel used...

You may Be a Leah

If you have ever felt used and abused, taken for granted, treated like a leper, misunderstood, ignored, always been there for others, but no one ever seems to help you, or got the feeling you are not welcomed in the group... join the club.

This story may explain some things and encourage you. What I shall share here may be a blessing to you and provide some answers to questions you may have about what have been happening to you.

We shall start at the time when Isaac told Jacob to find a wife...

ISAAC called Jacob and blessed him and commanded him, You shall not marry one of the women of Canaan.
Arise, go to Padan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father, and take from there as a wife one of the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother.
May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you until you become a group of peoples. May He give the blessing [He gave to] Abraham to you and your descendants with you, that you may inherit the land He gave to Abraham, in which you are a sojourner.
Thus Isaac sent Jacob away. He went to Padan-aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau’s mother.. Genesis 28:1-5

The blessing (bārak) we read of in the bible is unique. It cannot be transferable. It is powerful and it can change lives. Today, when we say something like, “God bless you”, it is not the same. This really is only a form of greeting, but to bless someone, you impart something into their life and was extremely important to all involved.
To bless another person really means that you empower them in some way that is totally out of the normal, possibly creating the environment that impacted the future. To bless another, means that a greater one passes something on to another. It means to endue with power for success, prosperity, fecundity, longevity and the like. It was usually futuristic and so was prophetic in nature.

The Old Testament describes God as the only real source of blessing. His presence confers blessing as seen in 2 Samuel 6:11-20 and according to Deuteronomy 10:8 etc, it is only in His Name that others can confer blessing. When we talk therefore about the blessing, we are relating to the Covenant keeping nature of God.
Isaac was thus passing on God’s blessing that was originally given to Abraham and designed to pass on to all people like you and me who have become heirs by faith.
Traditionally, Esau should have received this blessing, but as you know, sold out to satisfy his primal cravings. Jacob’s name (yaʿaqōb in the Hebrew) means heel catcher or supplanter. I suppose we could call him a kind of con man, or trickster, but God had a plan. It is this plan that is of interest to us now.

Isaac then sent him on an assignment. If we regard things that happen in our lives as the result of an assignment, it could make a world of difference. It could provide answers to you as to why things happen as they do.

And Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there overnight, because the sun was set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down there to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!
And behold, the Lord stood over and beside him and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father [forefather] and the God of Isaac; I will give to you and to your descendants the land on which you are lying.
And your offspring shall be as [countless as] the dust or sand of the ground, and you shall spread abroad to the west and the east and the north and the south; and by you and your Offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed and bless themselves (see Genesis 12:2-3; 13:16; 22:18; 26:4; Acts 3:25-26; Galatians 3:8, 16)

And behold, I am with you and will keep (watch over you with care, take notice of) you wherever you may go, and I will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done all of which I have told you.
And Jacob awoke from his sleep and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.
He was afraid and said, How to be feared and reverenced is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gateway to heaven! And Jacob rose early in the morning and took the stone he had put under his head, and he set it up for a pillar (a monument to the vision in his dream), and he poured oil on its top [in dedication]. And he named that place Bethel [the house of God]; but the name of that city was Luz at first.
Then Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me food to eat and clothing to wear, So that I may come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God; And this stone which I have set up as a pillar (monument) shall be God’s house [a sacred place to me], and of all [the increase of possessions] that You give me I will give the tenth to You. Genesis 28:10-22

His journey was going to take him 400 miles, so it was no small undertaking. Something like this takes dedication and commitment and once more, we see the obedience factor, because he could have easily found a wife anywhere and not go through the things he did. Here is a key to what things might seem to be happening to you. You could be going through some “stuff” on your journey towards your promise, but I have good news for you—God has you covered.
There is no record of anyone going with him, so it seems that he traveled alone and here is another point to consider.
You may feel as if you are all alone on your own journey, but that is not really true. We are not alone. God has promised to never leave us like orphans. He told Jacob that he would be with him, watch over him with care, take notice of him wherever he was and will do what He said He would do—and that was whilst he was still a bit of a scoundrel. He hadn’t yet wrestled with that angel who changed his life!
God can do things like that for you too and it is possible also that you may not even be aware of what is happening behind the scenes. God could be working on something when you are right in the thick of it all, but you can’t see the wood for the trees. One day, you could ask yourself, “What was I so concerned about? Why was I so worried?”
Notice the emphasis I placed on that scripture reading.

Genesis chapter twenty-nine describes Jacob’s arrival at his destination. He saw a well that had a stone rolled over the top as a covering and three herds of sheep nearby. He asked the men there who owned the well and they told him it belonged to Laban. Shortly after, Rachel arrived with her flock of sheep and Jacob watered them. He returned to Laban’s home and introduced himself. He thought that he had accomplished his mission and lived there for one month and Laban then offered him wages for his service. The deal was that he worked for seven years for the woman of his dreams. The con man was going to be conned, but he didn’t care.
He served Laban for 7 years, but counted them as if it was only one day. That is 2555 days, not counting leap years.
So Ya‘akov worked seven years for Raḥěl, and it seemed only a few days to him, because he was so much in love with her. Genesis 29:20

After the seven years were over, Jacob asked Laban for his wife. Weddings then often took a long time with celebrations and feasting until the actual wedding night and the father then brought his daughter to her husband. They entered the tent and consummated the marriage. Laban also gave Zilpah to Leah as her servant.

Jacob was horrified when he realized that he had been tricked. He had worked for Rachel. Leah was the ugly one!
She was the girl with crossed eyes, a tooth missing, walked pigeon toed and had and a big wart on the end of her nose.

And in the morning it came to be, that see, it was Lě’ah. So he said to Laḇan, “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Raḥěl that I served you? Why then have you deceived me?”
And Laḇan said, “It is not done this way in our place, to give the younger before the first-born.
“Complete the week of this one, then we give you this one too, for the service which you shall serve with me still another seven years.”
And Ya‘akov did so and completed her week. Then he gave him his daughter Raḥěl too, as wife.And Laḇan gave his female servant Bilhah to his daughter Raḥěl as a female servant. Genesis 29:25-29

And he also went in to Raḥěl, and he also loved Raḥěl more than Lě’ah. And he served with Laḇan still another seven years. And יהוה saw that Lě’ah was unloved, and He opened her womb, but Raḥěl was barren. Genesis 29:30-31.

Children were considered a blessing and childless woman was not treated well.
It was shameful not being able to produce an heir, but Jacob favored Rachel in preference to Leah. Preferential treatment in a family can cause all kinds of problems. The sibling rivalry that existed between Joseph and his brethren led to murderous intent in their hearts. It was of course all going according to God’s plan, but Joseph must have wondered what was happening.
Sometimes things do happen in life and we can wonder what on earth is that about and perhaps adopt a bad attitude in the process. We really do need the wisdom of God at all times. Sometimes it is better to stop; take a deep breath; bite our tongue and ask God for answers.

Leah loved her husband!

Her love was not reciprocated!

She had to contend with a rival in the house and her husband did not really love her.

God did!

If you ever feel rejected, unwanted, second class and negative things like that, there is always a God of comfort who knows full well what is happening in your life and is working on something.

It may take a little time, but He is always there.

I know that God is a God of love and mercy, gentleness, goodness, mercy and so on, but He is also a righteous God and even in the New Testament days in which we live, His judgment in that context has not changed, but thank God for Jesus.
He took the brunt of the judgment of sin for us, but there is still a righteousness that prevails and a judgment that is sure.

God loved Rachel and He loved Leah, but He prevented the favorite one from bearing a child.

Leah had a baby, not Rachel. Actually, Leah had four sons and I think that this was part of God’s plan all along

Hebrew names are important. A baby’s name was often chosen deliberately. It could be a prophetic declaration of sorts. It may have been given as a result of some occurrence. Sometimes a person’s name was changed to indicate a change in his or her future life. God had been working on His plan to keep His covenant with Abraham and it meant that babies had to be born.

I suspect that Leah’s life was not very happy. The love and affection she wanted, seemed to be lacking in her marriage.
She would turn toward her husband only to find him showering the other woman with it.
One day she found that she was pregnant and joy overcame sadness. Leah had a son and called him Reuben (רְאוּבֵן).
The name she gave him came from another word ra’ah (רָאָה) that means see.
I imagine her declaring, look what has happened. It was a pure expression of Joy. “See! A son is born”.

Surely the man would have been pleased to have an heir, but no! Rachel was still his favorite and Leah relegated to the back room of the house. In her teary nights, Leah would have cried out to God and again bears a son who she called Simeon. His name (שִׁמְעוֹן) comes from the Hebrew word Shema (שָׁמַע) that means hear. God heard her! Let me tell you that God hears your cry! The call of a rightoues person never falls on deaf ears.

Shortly afterwards, she has another son and called him Levi (לֵוִי). This is significant. Surely, she reasoned, now that I have given him a third son, Jacob will become more attached to me. It is significant because the name comes from another word that means to attach. It is Yelave (יִלָּוֶה), but no, Jacob still does not give her the proper attention she deserved.

The friction in the home persisted. Leah still cannot set aside the rivalry that existed between the two women and ease the frustration she had with an uncaring husband. If he were a pastor today, I sure would not like to buy his books on how to have a good marriage.

She now has a fourth son and this time it is all different. This time, Leah praised God for her son. I wonder if she had grown weary of crying out to God to make that man love me and give me attention. I wonder if she had adopted a different attitude to life in general. I say that, because it is easy for us to fall into a trap of complaining about our lot. Rather than asking God to change that other person, or to get me out of this place I am in, we could adopt an attitude of, “This is where I am. This is what I have got. This is where God put me and I am going to make the most of it”.
We do not just lay down and accept it, with a whatever will be—will be approach”. We do not give thanks for the dramas, but thank God when they are happening. Paul said-

You have been put to no test but such as is common to man: and God is true, who will not let any test come on you which you are not able to undergo; but he will make with the test a way out of it, so that you may be able to go through it. 1 Corinthians 10:13

Thank [God] in everything [no matter what the circumstances may be, be thankful and give thanks], for this is the will of God for you [who are] in Christ Jesus [the Revealer and Mediator of that will]. 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Things can and do change. We can have an influence over our destiny. It is possible at times to change our circumstances. I am not talking religious talk, but we can find out from God what is happening, what He has said about it and what He wants us to do and then go about it. Many times, we can change things by the power of our profession of faith and declaring God’s specific word to us—and sticking to it until the results are evident.

I am convinced that something happened to Leah. Perhaps she saw herself as God sees her. Perhaps she “got over it”.

Whatever it was, she had another son and gave him a name that affects us now.

She called this son Yehuda (יְהוּדָה), coming from the Hebrew word than means praise.

I know someone who came from this line and He is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah!

Even to this day, the people of Israel call themselves Yehudim or, Sons of Judah. I have Jewish blood and have been trying with great difficulty in tracing my family lineage. All that I can discover so far is that my ancestors migrated to South Australia in the convict era. No convicts came to South Australia and my ancestors apparently had a cattle property near Clare. This may explain why I am the way I am “and it is all Leah‘s fault!” Ha!

I only share that to illustrate that things that may affect you or me at some time in our lives can have a meaning or a root cause, so it behooves us to check it out if we can.

This is not the end of the story. I was about to bring this to a conclusion, when the Lord showed me something I had never seen like this before.

Once Leah had given birth to Judah, she had menopause. The bible says that she gave up childbearing, so if that is not menopause, I do not know what else it could be.

Now there are two stories involved. Rachel also has one as we see here.

Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she became jealous of her sister; and she said to Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.” Genesis 30:1

In the following verses, we see that Rachel had big problems with Leah and, still unable to have children, gave her servant to Jacob according to custom and her servant bore children. Leah then gave her servant to Jacob.

There is a series of births in the chapter until something happened.

In verses 16-21, Leah suddenly became fertile again!

She had already ceased childbearing, so something happened and she gave birth to Issachar, Zebulun and Dinah. See verses 16-21.

Suddenly, Rachel’s prayers were answered and she had Joseph.

You may well ask, “What is all this about?”

I am glad you did. Joseph was needed to bring God’s promise to Abraham into reality.

This series of events took many twists and turns, including supernatural intervention by God into the lives of men.

Divine intervention has not stopped. As we get closer to the return of the Lord we should expect it, rather than reject it, but that is another story and I will share more on that soon.

Perhaps our Leah had to go through all that stuff for this purpose. Leah was important. So too were those other women, but Leah—the forgotten one; the one who slept in the back room more often than not; who was treated like so many goods and chattels; who was despised and rejected; the “ugly”one played a vital part in the plan of God. Another meaning for her name is weary. You may have grown weary in life, waiting for God’s promise; waiting for acceptance, or fulfilment or some other thing, but if Leah was blessed more than her sister, your testing and waiting will produce better fruit..

God has a plan for you and He is working on it right now, but it may have to have some working out in the process.

We are coming into an era when things are changing. There have been people who have been prominent and there have been people who have been a Leah and you could be one of them. There are people in the church who have had their glory and time in the limelight and those who have been mistreated, misunderstood, abused and misused—and you could be one of them.

In closing therefore, let me encourage you. The best is yet to come....

Until we meet again

Be blessed