Nothing could be more charmingly poetic than this story as told by the old Hebrew chronicler.  The language is so simple yet so pictorial that we fancy we can actually see Jacob as he accosts the shepherds at the well to ask after his uncle Laban, and they reply “Behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep.”  We see him as he rolls the stone from the well’s mouth and waters his uncle’s flocks; we see him as he kisses Rachel and lifts up his voice and weeps.  He kisses her of course by right of being a relative, and not as a lover; for we cannot suppose that even an Oriental shepherd girl could have been so devoid of maidenly prudence and coyness as to give a love-kiss to a stranger at their first meeting.  Though apparently her cousin (Gen. 28:  2; 29:10), Jacob tells her he is her uncle; “and Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s brother."[286] There was the less impropriety in his kissing her, as she was probably a girl of fifteen or sixteen and he old enough to be her grandfather, or even great-grandfather, his age at the time of meeting her being seventy-seven.[287] But as men are reported to have aged slowly in those days, this did not prevent him from desiring to marry Rachel, for whose sake he was willing to serve her father.  Strange to say, the words “And Jacob served seven years for Rachel” have been accepted as proof of self-sacrifice by several writers, including Dr. Abel, who cites those words as indicating that the ancient Hebrews knew “the devotion of love, which gladly serves the beloved and shuns no toil in her behalf.”  In reality Jacob’s seven years of service have nothing whatever to do with self-sacrifice.  He did not “serve his beloved” but her father; did not toil “in her behalf” but on his own behalf.  He was simply doing that very unromantic thing, paying for his wife by working a stipulated time for her father, in accordance with a custom prevalent among primitive peoples the world over.  Our text is very explicit on the subject; after Jacob had been with his relative a month Laban had said unto him:  “Because thou art my brother shouldst thou therefore serve me for naught? tell me what shall thy wages be?” And Jacob had chosen Rachel for his wages.  Rachel and Leah themselves quite understood the commercial nature of the matrimonial arrangement; for when, years afterward, they are prepared to leave their father they say:  “Is there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house?  Are we not counted of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and hath also quite devoured the price paid for us.”

Instead of the sentimental self-sacrifice of a devoted lover for his mistress we have here, therefore, simply an example of a prosaic, mercenary marriage custom familiar to all students of anthropology.  But how about the second half of that sentence, which declares that Jacob’s seven years of service “seemed to him but a few days for the love he had for her?” Is not this the language of an expert in love?  Many of my critics, to my surprise, seemed to think so, but I am convinced that none of them can have ever been in love or they would have known that a lover is so impatient and eager to call his beloved irrevocably his own, so afraid that someone else might steal away her affection from him, that Jacob’s seven years, instead of shrinking to a few days, would have seemed to him like seven times seven years.