t similarly problematic in regard to the first marriage of Jacob. The text explains that it was Laban who "took Leah, his daughter" (29:23) and put her into the marital bed instead of Rachel, the bride of Jacob was expecting. However, whether she willingly, or even complicity, fulfils Laban's plan, Leah is nonetheless the key agent in a plan to divert the family history as it is anticipated by the text.For seven years, Jacob toiled for Sara. She was his intended bride. And, as the text later demonstrates, it is Rachel who gives birth to the heir of the Abram blessing, proving that she is the real matriarch destined to produce the next generation of leadership for God's select people. However, Leah supplants Rachel and becomes a stumbling block to Jacob's destined union. Though it is her father who is portrayed as the villain, Leah is not blameless and she receives retribution. She is forever unloved by her husband, and her children are denied the divine blessing. Her role may only be of passive conspirator but she is still the faulty link in this ordained history. And, like Eve, Sara, Rebecca, and Rachel, Leah has the potential to ruin the human universe that God, in Genesis, is painstakingly trying to build. Leah's trickery might be overlooked as a daughter's compliance to a cunning father if it did not indirectly produce one of the most controversial episodes in the book of Genesis: the rape of Dina. Of all the mothers of Jacob's children, it is Leah who gives birth to Dina. The text suggests that complications arise when divinely ordained roles are tampered with. Leah, the usurper of her sister's nuptials, is not only weak eyed (20:17) and unloved (29:31) in the text, but also the mother of Jacob's only daughter, the one that turns out to be a source of family shame and provocation for tribal warfare. These uncomplimentary attributes and associations negatively characterize Leah and allude to her illegal manipulation of God'...
