And soon followed the bitterest trial of Leah’s life,—­the shame, sorrow, and widowhood of her only daughter; avenged by those who neglected to guard her—­while the husband, though indifferent to the sorrow and love of the wife, must have felt the anguish of the father.

And the rivalry and strife of the sisters was over.  “Give me children or else I die,” was the cry of the wife whose wishes had been laws—­and the prayer prompted by hate and envy was answered.  Yet Rachel died.  And in that hour of mortal agony, of bitter suffering, Leah probably stood by her sister.  With affections estranged, love turned into bitterness, with hearts alienated, but fates inseparably united, they had passed their days.  Their tents had been pitched side by side,—­the voices of their children had been mingled together as they fell upon their mothers’ ears,—­they had been called to worship at the same altar,—­they had been members of the same household.

Forced thus to dwell together, constantly to meet, to be familiar with the same objects, to have the same interests, they were alienated, but not separated; and if their feelings were crushed, they were not all uprooted.  As Leah saw her younger, her beautiful sister in the hour of extremity, in the agonies of a mother’s sufferings, the sympathies of a woman must have risen with the love of a sister, and bitter tears of repentant sorrow must she have shed upon the pallid brow and quivering lips, as the hopes and the memories of youth and childhood gathered around, to reproach her for that deceit by which she had sown their path through mutual life with thorns, and made their joys to be but ashes.  There are no tears so bitter as those which are shed by affection, too late revived, over those whom we have loved and yet injured,—­over those from whom we have suffered ourselves to be estranged.

Rachel was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.  She was not laid in the sepulchre of Abraham.  The children were left to the fostering care of her hated sister.  Her sons passed through trials from which she could not guard them, and they came to honours while she knew it not.  At this distance, her life seems to us a dream—­a few years of pleasant childhood, a short vision of youthful love,—­then comes the strife of life, its stern discipline, its bitter trials, its disappointed hopes, and its termination in the grave.

As we dwell upon the characters so truthfully delineated in the word of God, and follow the record of human pride, passion and infirmity, we are taught at once to magnify and adore the patience, the forbearance and the mercy of Jehovah.  And let us remember that it is because these characters are reflected in the pure mirror of truth that the dark shades so plainly appear.  In every age the heart of man is the same; but the temptations which especially evince this depravity may be peculiar to some particular age or condition.

We know not how long Leah survived her sister.  Her advancing years were not exempt from affliction, and age brings its own trials; yet prosperity rested upon Jacob—­and in the decline of life she may have known happiness desired, but not realized, in youth.