The trickster is tricked

Jacob, Jacob, Jacob... all that scheming with your mother to steal Esau's birthright and you thought you'd get away scot-free?  I don't think so.

Genesis 29 is the story of Jacob's wooing of Rachel and then having Leah slip between the sheets instead. Fourteen years total he worked for Rachel, and he ends up with her, Leah, and two bonus slavegirls thrown in for good measure:  Zilpah and Bilhah.

God knows that Leah is hated, so he opens her womb and Rachel is barren.  Hmph.

Word play I liked:

Jacob met Rachel at a well (such a fertile place to meet future wives - see also Abraham's servant looking for a wife for Isaac and meeting Rivkah/Rebecca at the well in Gen 24).

She is there to water the flock.  So Jacob steps up and waters it for her.  וישק (vayyashke).  He watered.  And in the next line, he kisses her!  וישׁק -- exactly the same consonants, but with vowels it is (vayyishshak). He kissed. 

What fun it must have been to try to figure out what that passage meant before the Masoretes added the vowels to the text in the Middle Ages.

The other word play that piqued my curiosity is this:  what the heck is wrong with Leah?  Her eyes are weak? tender? lovely? (Gen 29.17) Which does your Bible use?  HALOT says weak, as does the Greek Septuagint (LXX), which was translated from the Hebrew in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE.

But what caught my eye is that in verse 33, Leah says that God has looked "on my affliction".  And I always confuse the word for affliction עני (aniy) with the word for eye, עינ (ayin).  Connection? or coincidence?  Who knows?