Commentaria in Genesim
It is better therefore to embrace the contemplative life, while obedience and charity permit, than to follow the active. This St. Augustine taught, book 19 On the City of God, chapter 19: “The love of truth,” he says, “seeks holy leisure: the necessity of charity undertakes just business; which burden if no one lays upon us, we are to give our time to the perceiving and beholding of truth,” etc. “Happy the house,” says St. Bernard, sermon 3 On the Assumption, “and ever blessed the congregation, where Martha complains of Mary,” etc., that is, where the contemplation of divine things so prevails and rules that external action, as it were, complains of it. An unhappy congregation is that in which Mary complains of Martha: because no time is left to Mary, that is, to contemplation, the whole being spent on external things.
of the Twelve Patriarchs, which is entitled Benjamin the Lesser: “Rachel,” he says, “is the study of wisdom, Lia the desire of justice; but we know that Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days, because of the greatness of his love. Why dost thou wonder? According to the greatness of her beauty was the greatness of his love. For what is possessed more sweetly than wisdom, what loved more ardently? Her beauty surpasses all beauty, her sweetness exceeds all sweetness. For she is more beautiful than the sun, and being compared with the light, above all the order of the stars, is found before it. Hence it is to be asked why all shrink so from the marriage of Lia, who sigh only for the embrace of Rachel. Perfect justice bids us love our enemies, leave our parents and every possession of our own, bear evils patiently, and everywhere decline the glory offered us. But what is thought more foolish, what more laborious, by the lovers of this world? Hence it is that by them Lia is believed to be bleary-eyed, and is reckoned laborious.”
Second, the same author below explains these two wives of Jacob otherwise, symbolically: “To every rational spirit,” he says, “that is, to Jacob, a twofold power is given: one is reason, the other is affection: reason by which we discern, affection by which we love. These are the twin wives of the rational spirit, from whom noble offspring arises. From reason, spiritual senses; from the other, ordered affections. It is to be known therefore that affection truly begins to be Lia when it strives to compose itself to the rule of justice; and reason is without doubt called Rachel when it is illumined by the light of true wisdom. But who is ignorant how laborious the one is, how pleasant the other? Surely not without great labour is the affection of the mind restrained from the unlawful to the lawful, and rightly is such a wife called Lia, that is, laborious. But what is more pleasant than to raise the eye of the mind to the contemplation of the highest wisdom? When reason is enlarged to contemplate it, it is deservedly honoured with the name of Rachel; for Rachel is interpreted, seeing the beginning.
In like manner our Pineda, book 1 on Solomon, chapter 4: Jacob and Rachel, he says, are symbols of the wise man and of wisdom; hence as Jacob loved Rachel, so Solomon loved wisdom: which he beautifully shows and deduces by nineteen parallels.
31. BECAUSE HE DESPISED LIA.—The Hebrew, Chaldee and Greek have, that he hated Lia, that is, that he loved Lia less than Rachel, so that Jacob seemed to hate Lia in comparison with Rachel. This hatred therefore was not positive but negative, namely a lack of love, arising from this, that Lia was bleary-eyed and plain, and that by fraud she had substituted herself for Rachel to Jacob. Similar is John 12:25, and elsewhere.
HE OPENED HER WOMB—he made her fruitful by giving her offspring: on the contrary, to close or shut the womb is to make barren.
Note here how God distributes His gifts, so that He gives some to all, but all to none. Thus to Rachel He gave beauty, but not fruitfulness: from Lia He withheld beauty, but gave what is greater, namely fruitfulness, and that from her stock, namely from Juda, Christ should be born. Note again here that fruitfulness is a peculiar gift of God.
a son, whom God has given me, looking upon me with eyes of mercy when I was despised by my husband. For this is what Lia adds: “The Lord saw my affliction,” in Hebrew, my abjection and affliction. The Blessed Virgin had regard to this when she sang: “He hath regarded the humility (tapeinosis, that is, littleness, lowliness, abjection) of his handmaid,” because He gave me a son, not Ruben, but Jesus Christ. She does not therefore proclaim the virtue of her humility: for that would have been pride; but acknowledges and confesses her lowliness: which was in fact an act of humility, which God loves, regards and exalts. Whence: “The devil hates nothing worse than a humble man and a lover of God,” says St. Anthony in Athanasius. The same saint saw in a vision the world full of the snares of demons, and asked: “Who shall escape them, Lord?” and the Lord answered: “Humility.”
33. THAT I WAS DESPISED.—The Hebrew, Chaldee and Septuagint have, that I was hated, that is, less loved, as I said on verse 31.
SIMEON.—Simeon is the same as hearing, or being heard, from the root shama, that is, he heard; that is, God heard my affliction and my prayer.
Let mothers note, and imitate, the piety and gratitude of Lia, who established a perpetual memory of the benefit given her by God, namely offspring, in the very name of the child, so that as often as she saw and named the child she might remember and give thanks for the divine kindness shown to her; and the child likewise, when he came to the use of reason, would do the same. So Anna gave back and offered her Samuel to God, and called him Samuel, that is, asked and obtained of God, 1 Kings 1:26. So the Blessed Virgin offered her Son, and called Him Jesus. So the mother of St. Bernard offered him when newly born, and laid him on the altar of the temple. St. Elizabeth, daughter of the king of Hungary, was wont to do the same with each of her children when newly born: who therefore all turned out pious and holy, as her Life has it. So the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Baptist, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Dominic, St. Bonaventure, St. Bernardine, St. Nicholas of Tolentino, St. Elzear the Count, St. Francis of Paula and others, offered to God by their parents at their very birth, were illustrious in holiness and miracles.
34. LEVI.—He is the father of all the Levites. Note that “Levi” is the same as coupling, cleaving, or addition, joining, as if she said: I have now added three sons to my husband by bearing them; therefore henceforth he himself will be joined and bound to me with greater love.
35. JUDAH.—In Hebrew “Judah” is the same as confession, or praise. Note here the series of Jacob’s years. Jacob, fleeing Esau, came to Laban in Haran in the 77th year of his age, as I said in chapter 27; at the beginning, after the seven years in which he served Laban, he takes Lia and Rachel, that is, in the 84th year of his age; then soon, Lia being fruitful, in the first year after the marriage, as it seems, that is, in the 85th year of Jacob, Ruben is born to him, then Simeon in the 86th year, soon Levi in the 87th, and lastly Judah in the 88th. Observe here a notable example of chastity in Jacob, who lived unmarried until the 84th year of his age, and then first took a wife.
Allegorically, the twelve Patriarchs were figures of the twelve Apostles. Second, Jacob had many sons, but not by one wife; so also Christ had many sons, but not from one people or region. Third, Jacob has wives, both free women and handmaids, by whom he begets sons; so also Christ has true pastors and hirelings, and bears with both, that they may beget sons for Him. Fourth, the wives of Jacob vied with one another as to which should bear Jacob more sons; so also pastors eagerly strive to beget sons for Christ. Fifth, Bala and Zelpha bear sons to Jacob, but themselves remain handmaids; so hirelings preach good things to others, but themselves remain hirelings, and often wicked. Sixth, Jacob admitted to his inheritance even those born of handmaids; and Christ receives all who are converted to Him, whatever life has gone before, John 6: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me, I will not cast out.” And Matthew 8: “Many shall come from the east, etc., and shall sit down with Abraham,” etc. Seventh, Jacob had two wives, one beautiful, the other ill-favoured; and the spouse of Christ is inwardly beautiful like Rachel, by reason of the grace and gifts of the Holy Ghost, but outwardly ill-favoured, by reason of the cross and adversities. Eighth, Lia’s ill-favouredness did her no harm, but she was the more fruitful for it; so adversity profits the Church, and then most of all she bears fruit when she is most hard pressed.