So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.
Jacob's first seven years of work for Laban fit into one sentence: long labour that felt short. The verse says nothing about wages or hardship. It only shows what love did to time, and commentators read it two ways — as a window into human love, and as a picture of Christ working to win His bride.
Love That Shortens Time
The measure of the years was not the calendar but the heart. One writer turns Jacob's experience into a test of how we wait for the Lord:
J Wilson SmithTo say in your heart that the Lord delays His coming is a very clear, though silent, way of saying you do not want Him to come. He is not the ruling desire. Jacob served seven years for his wife, and they "seemed to him but a few days, because of the love he had for her." His heart was in it, and the years flew by like days. Love wiped out time. The story explains the great secret of the power of an all-absorbing object of affection.
One writer sets studying prophecy against longing for the Lord Himself:
William KellyHe waits and longs for the Lord because he loves Him who first loved us... One person may know prophecy very well and have none of that hope; another may be full of the hope and know nothing about prophecy... If you love someone, you delight to see them. Being away from the person you love is hard. There may be very good reasons for the delay, but the delay tests your patience, and the hope that the one you love will come back soon is the greatest joy.
What the Service Cost
"A few days" describes the feeling, not the facts. The work itself was hard, and one writer spells out what it involved:
J. G. BellettHe had to bear the weight and heat of a long, hard day before he could take Rachel as his own. The law of her people, the law of her country, and the greedy demands of Laban had put him on these terms. He had to endure sun by day and moon by night, to work night and day, and to have his exile stretched out — or go without his Rachel.
A Wife Priced Like Property
The arrangement itself is no model. One writer faults both men for putting a price on a wife, and contrasts that with how marriage began:
L. M. GrantRachel did not belong to Laban, and both Jacob and Laban were wrong to put a money value on a wife. When the Lord created a woman for Adam, He gave her to him as a gift by grace, and grace should always rule in the sacred relationship of marriage. Still, Jacob was willing to work seven years for all this because of his deep love for Rachel.
Another writer warns against judging those days by later standards:
William KellyThen came the humbling test of the younger daughter, offered on the same terms of long service. To Jacob those years seemed like only a few days, because he loved her. But we must not measure this case, any more than others in Old Testament times, by the light the Saviour later shed on marriage, as on everything else.
The One Place Jacob Pictures Christ
This stretch of Jacob's life stands apart from the rest. One writer marks it as the single exception:
C KnappBy day the heat consumed him, and the cold by night, and his sleep fled from his eyes. But love lightened the load and took the bitterness out of those long years... And this is the only phase of his life in which the patriarch Jacob appears to picture our Lord, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."
Read alongside the law of the servant who refuses his freedom for love of his wife, the picture stretches past the cross into a service that never ends:
The Bible TreasuryJacob's seven years of service for Rachel pictures Christ becoming a servant to win the church. This pictures a service that never ends, gladly taken up to keep her. The more we think about the depth of love and the height of devotion here, the further beyond our understanding they seem.
Leah and Rachel Read Forward
Commentators differ on what the two sisters represent. One reading assigns them to two peoples:
J. N. DarbyI have no doubt that Leah represents the Gentiles, and Rachel the Jews.
Another traces the order of events rather than the identities:
William KellyIt appears that Rachel was the first beloved wife, but in fact the last to enjoy, and bear the fruits of, the relationship... Leah before this is the mother of many sons, as there are before Israel comes into full and happy view.
Summary
- Love measures. Seven years shrank to days for Jacob, because love, not the calendar, set the length of the wait.
- Love pays. The feeling was light; the work was not — heat by day, cold by night, sleepless work under a greedy employer.
- Love gives. A wife bought as wages reverses Eden, where God gave the woman as a gift. Grace, not bargaining, belongs in marriage.
- Love serves. In this one scene Jacob resembles Christ, who endured the cross for the joy set before Him and serves on to keep the bride He won.
- Love waits. Love made Jacob's years fly. The same love makes a Christian long for the Lord's return instead of saying He delays.