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1: Rachel and Leah
- Augsburg Fortress Publishers
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PART I Sister Pairs [52.90.227.42] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:57 GMT) 1 Rachel and Leah Like brother stories, a sister story is a narrative paradigm that construes the family primarily upon its horizontal axis. In a sister story, identity is determined and the narrative is defined by the sibling bond, as opposed to the more hierarchical parent-child relationship. As I note in my introduction, brother stories dominate the Bible. By the time we meet sisters Rachel and Leah in Genesis 29, Cain has killed Abel, Isaac has usurped Ishmael, and Jacob has deceived Esau. At the conclusion of Rachel and Leah’s sister story, brothers return to the spotlight as Joseph and his brothers become the focus of the narrative. The Bible’s prevailing trope of fraternal rivalry is essentially about patrilineal descent in which paired brothers fight for their father’s and for God’s blessing. Pairing the brothers helps focus the rivalry and makes clear who is the elder and who is the younger and who, therefore, should have the legitimate claim to their father’s property.1 There can be only one winner, one blessed heir in the patrilineal narratives. Naturally, a good story defies cultural expectations, and younger brothers, more often than not, claim their father’s and God’s blessings. Examining this motif in separate works, both Frederick E. Greenspahn and Jon D. Levenson observe how the status of the Bible’s younger sons reflects Israel’s status, and how their stories reflect Israel’s national story.2 Like Israel, younger sons have no inherent right to the status they acquire in the course of their narratives.3 And like Israel, younger sons must experience exile and humiliation to acquire their blessings.4 Isaac faces his father’s knife. Jacob is sent to Paddan-aram to serve and fall victim to his uncle Laban. Joseph is sold into servitude in Egypt. For Greenspahn and Levenson, brothers are not only essential figures in Israel’s story; they are Israel’s story. Without the right to inheritance, it is logical that biblical sisters play little part in the patrilineal narratives. Their stories, therefore, cannot reflect, and arguably are even inessential to, Israel’s national story. For Levenson, sisters 19 Rachel and Leah are part of the humiliation Jacob must suffer to assume his position as designated heir.5 Unlike for brothers, it does not formally matter which sister was born first. Not granted the rights of primogeniture, sisters are essentially interchangeable within their families. Although Rachel and Leah’s father Laban insists that custom prevents a younger sister from marrying before the elder (Jacob is not bothered by this custom),6 he blithely exchanges this one for that [זאת-את-גם לך ]ונתנה, one sister for another.7 Similarly, Saul promises first one daughter, then the other to David, and indicates that either daughter could serve as an effective trap for David. Even when the sister narrative is about inheritance, as in the story of Zelophehad’s daughters, birth order is not significant or even mentioned. In this remarkable story, five sisters appear before Moses as equal claimants to their father’s property after their father died without leaving sons or heirs.8 The sisters’ names appear in a different order in Num 27:1 and Num 36:11, which makes it impossible even to speculate on their birth order. Like brothers, sisters appear in pairs throughout the Bible. Lot’s two daughters,9 Rachel and Leah, Michal and Merav, and Rebel Israel and Faithless Judah are paired sisters. The appearance of paired sisters suggests that they share a narrative function similar to paired brothers. For Greenspahn, sibling pairs become “the locus of competition.”10 He understands the pairing of siblings, along with other paired biblical characters like wives, to be a literary convention that highlights differences and emphasizes the hero’s virtue. Isaac and Jacob appear calm and thoughtful next to their wild and impetuous brothers Ishmael and Esau. According to Greenspahn, God values these highlighted qualities.11 As with brothers, the pairing of sisters pits one sister against another and focuses their rivalry, though without implications for inheritance and blessing.12 My reading reveals a more complex picture in which the convention of pairing sisters at times highlights distinct characteristics of each sister and induces conflict, while at other times, it brings the sisters in relation to each other and enables them to cooperate. The relationships between paired sisters are depicted with a greater...