“When Leah saw that she had left bearing, she took Zilpah her maid, and gave her Jacob to wife.”
When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. The escalation is clear: Leah, having stopped conceiving, enters the surrogate competition by giving Zilpah to Jacob. What Rachel did through Bilhah, Leah now does through Zilpah. The application: competitions escalate through imitation. Each party matches and raises the other's move. The family is now four women — two wives, two surrogates — and their children are the tokens of a contest.
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
Publish a note on this verse
0/2000
No notes on this verse yet. Be the first to write one!