What Does Genesis 29:28 Mean?

Jacob did so, and completed her week. Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. The compliance is total and unremarked. Jacob completed the seven days with Leah and then received Rachel. The narrative gives no indication of what that week was like for Jacob, for Leah, or for Rachel waiting during her sister's wedding week with the man who loved her. The week is passed over in silence. The weight of what happened in it is left entirely to the reader's imagination.

The giving of Rachel after the week is narrated with the same formal verb used for Leah's giving in verse 23: Laban gave (vayiten). The contrast is that Rachel's giving is straightforward and desired, not substituted and hidden. When Laban now gives Rachel openly and in daylight, the verb carries none of the sinister weight it carried in verse 23. The same action, properly executed this time, produces what Jacob always sought.

The result of Laban's duplicity is that Jacob has two wives who are sisters, a situation that will generate intense domestic conflict for the next decade. The Torah would later prohibit marrying two sisters simultaneously (Leviticus 18:18), but the prohibition exists precisely because the situation was known to produce suffering. The legislative wisdom of Leviticus 18 is written partly out of what the stories of Genesis showed about the effects of such arrangements. Leah and Rachel's conflict throughout chapters 29-30 is the experiential background for the prohibition.