Commentaria in Genesim
Third, others think that Lia suffered from lippitude properly so called: for our Interpreter seems to mean this. Fourth, and best, the lippitude of Lia seems to have been mere weakness, softness and tenderness of the eyes, by which it comes about that they cannot be fixed long upon any object, but are restless and prone to tears, so that the pupils seem to swim in their orbs; for this is what the Hebrew raccot signifies.
Tropologically, St. Gregory, Pastoral Rule, part 3, chapter 11: Bleary-eyed, he says, is he whose eye, that is, the keenness of the mind, is darkened by humour, that is, by earthly affections and works.
Note that although in seeking a wife virtue and character are first to be looked to, yet beauty may be looked to in the second place, both that conjugal love as well as desire may rest in her and not turn aside to others, and that from a beautiful woman more vigorous and more beautiful offspring may be begotten. So Abulensis. And this is what St. Thomas means when he teaches that it is not lawful to take a wife for the sake of beauty, so that beauty alone calls you from celibacy to marriage; but yet, supposing that you wish to marry, it is lawful to choose a beautiful woman rather than a plain one, for the sake of a more agreeable life together and a steadier love; although it is not seldom true, that saying of Domitian: “Nothing is more pleasing than beauty, nothing briefer.”
18. I WILL SERVE THEE.—Note: by this service, so long and hard, Jacob, according to the ancient custom, bought for himself as wives both Lia and Rachel. For it was the custom among the Greeks, Romans and Hebrews that men bought a wife for themselves by paying a price. So David bought Michol for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, 1 Kings 18; I shall say more at Exodus 4:25.
20. THEY SEEMED TO HIM BUT A FEW DAYS, BECAUSE OF THE GREATNESS OF HIS LOVE.—You will say: Love is impatient of delay, and reckons a few days as very many.
I answer that this is true as to feeling, but not as to estimation: for as to the affection and desire of possessing Rachel, the days of service seemed to Jacob very many; but as to estimation, that is, for so beautiful a prize, the price of this service seemed to him small, and the days of so long a labour seemed few and little, that is, his labour seemed to himself small, compared with so great a reward. The days are here put, by metonymy, for the labour of those days. So St. Jerome and St. Augustine.
22. HE MADE THE MARRIAGE—the wedding feast. For this is the Hebrew mishteh. From that time, therefore, feasts were celebrated at weddings, but by the pious with the fear of God, as is plain of Tobias, chapter 9. Athenaeus gives the reason, book 5: “By custom and by laws,” he says, “it has been established that there be a banquet at weddings: both that we may venerate the gods of marriage, and that it may be a testimony”; to the guests, namely, that the bride and bridegroom are pleased with their marriage; but these feasts gradually grew into great luxury and abuse, as St. Chrysostom shows at length here.
23. AND AT NIGHT.—For virgins, when they were married, went in out of modesty to the bridegroom’s chamber in darkness, and Lycurgus enacted this by law among the Spartans, according to Plutarch.
24. WHEN MORNING WAS COME HE SAW LIA.—Lia sinned by obeying her parent; for she consented to a violation, nay to adultery and incest: for she knew that Jacob was the husband not of herself but of her sister Rachel. Laban, however, sinned more gravely, who by his authority and counsel led her into the crime. Jacob is excused by ignorance, by which he in good faith thought that she was Rachel, not Lia.
Symbolically, Richard of St. Victor, in his book On the Twelve Patriarchs, explains it thus: “How Lia is substituted while Rachel is hoped for, those easily know who have learned how often this happens, not so much by hearing as by experience. For what else do we call Holy Scripture but the chamber of Rachel: in which we doubt not that divine wisdom lies hidden under the fitting veil of allegories? In such a chamber Rachel is as often sought as spiritual understanding is searched out in sacred reading. But as long as we are as yet little able to penetrate sublime things, we do not yet find the long-desired and diligently sought Rachel; we begin therefore to groan, to sigh, not only to lament our blindness but to blush for it; and then let us not doubt that in the chamber of Rachel we have found not her but Lia. For as it belongs to Rachel to understand, to meditate, to contemplate, so it certainly belongs to Lia to weep, to groan, to sigh.”
27. FULFIL THE WEEK OF DAYS OF THIS MATCH—in which thou art joined to Lia in marriage and marital affection: for the first union was adulterous, not marital. Laban wished therefore that Jacob, the error being recognised, should take as his wife Lia, whom he had known; and Jacob did this to look to the shame and honour of Lia.
The sense therefore is, as if Laban said: Let the seven days of this feast of Lia pass, O Jacob, in which her wedding is celebrated according to custom: these over, I will give thee Rachel also, on this condition, however, that thou serve me for her other seven years: for it would be shameful and disgraceful to Lia if within the days of her wedding thou shouldst bring in her sister as a second wife. Hence it appears that the wedding feast and banquet was then usually kept for seven days, as it is now kept for three. The same is intimated in Judges 14:12.
28. THE WEEK BEING PAST, HE MARRIED RACHEL.—Josephus errs, therefore, when he asserts that Jacob married Rachel after the second seven years of service, that is, after fourteen years from Jacob’s flight and his arrival in Haran, in which he served Laban; for from this place and what follows it is plain that Jacob married Rachel after seven days had passed from his marriage with Lia, and afterwards served for her another seven years. The same is plain from the contention of Rachel, barren, with Lia, fruitful and bearing, verse 31. So St. Jerome, Augustine, Alcuin and others.
Rachel and Lia are types of the active and contemplative life. Tropologically, Rachel and Lia, the sisters, signify the twofold life, namely the contemplative and the active. First, Lia is to be taken, that is, the laborious (for this is what Lia means in Hebrew) and bleary-eyed: because the active life is intent on earthly things, anxious and variously distracted; then Rachel, that is, a ewe, namely the rest of contemplation, which as being beautiful we ought to pursue with as great love as Jacob loved Rachel. See St. Gregory, Morals, book 6, chapter 28, and St. Augustine, Against Faustus, book 22, chapter 52. And St. Bernard, in his book On the Manner of Living Well, to his sister, chapter 53: “The active life,” he says, “serves God in the labours of this world, while it feeds the poor, receives, clothes, visits, consoles and buries them, and bestows upon them the other works of mercy. And yet Lia is fruitful in sons, because many are active, and few contemplative. But Rachel is interpreted a ewe, or seeing the beginning (as though Rachel meant, he saw the beginning), because the contemplative are simple and innocent as sheep, and strangers to every tumult of the world, so that, cleaving to divine contemplation alone, they may see Him who says: I am the beginning, who also speak to you.” And a little before: “So that now it pleases to do nothing, but, all the cares of the world despised, the soul burns to behold the face of its Creator: so that now it has learned to bear with sorrow the weight of corruptible flesh, and with all its desires to long to take part in the hymn-singing choirs of the angels, to seek to be mingled with the heavenly citizens, to rejoice in eternal incorruption in the sight of God.” And below: “As the active life is the sepulchre of the secular life, so the contemplative life is the tomb of the active life. For those who ascend to it are buried in the quiet of contemplation. This Magdalene chose, to whom therefore it was said by Christ: Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her. Therefore, as one dead to the love of the present life, separate thyself, as one buried in a tomb, and have no care for the world.”
It is taught that Rachel surpasses Lia, that is, that contemplation excels action, and this is proved by eight reasons. The first is, “because the contemplative life befits man according to that which is best in him, that is, according to the intellect, and with respect to its proper intelligible objects. The second, because it can be more continuous than the active. The third, because it brings more holy delight. For, as St. Augustine says, sermon 26 On the Words of the Lord: Martha was troubled, Mary feasted. The fourth, because in the contemplative life man is more self-sufficient, since he needs fewer things. The fifth, because the contemplative life is loved for its own sake, the active is ordered to something else. The sixth, because it consists in quiet. The seventh, because the contemplative life is occupied with divine things, the active with human. The eighth, because it is according to that which is most proper to man, namely according to the intellect,” etc.