Commento su Genesi 29:25

ויהי בבקר והנה הוא לאה AND IT CAME TO PASS, THAT IN THE MORNING, BEHOLD, IT WAS LEAH —But at night it was not Leah (i. e. he failed to recognise that it was Leah) because Jacob had given Rachel certain secret signs by which they could at all times recognise one another, and when Rachel saw that they were about to bring Leah to him for the marriage ceremony, she thought, “My sister may now be put to shame”, and she therefore readily transmitted these signs to her (Megillah 13b).

והנה היא לאה, whenever something had not been known or recognised previously the word הנה alerts the reader to this fact. (compare Genesis 41,7 והנה חלום, “it was a dream.”) Until Pharaoh awoke he had taken what he saw in the dream as being real.

ויהי בבוקר. When morning came, etc. The reason the Torah uses the word ויהי which always relates to some painful experience is simply that Jacob experienced anguish that Rachel had been denied him.

ויהי בבוקר והנה היא לאה, for he had not recognised her until morning as we explained. The aggadic explanation mentioned by Rashi that Rachel had given her sister Leah the codeword which she and Yaakov had agreed should serve to preclude such a swap is well known.

והנה היא לאה, “and lo and behold it was Leah.” Our sages (Megillah,13) ask the obvious question: “had she not been Leah up until now?” What did the Torah mean by writing “and here it was Leah?” They answer that Yaakov had supplied Rachel with a secret code to protect himself precisely against the duplicity practiced by Lavan under the wedding canopy when the girl’s face is veiled so the groom cannot see her. When Rachel became aware of what her father was doing, she realized that her sister was going to be publicly shamed. She therefore decided to spare Leah the embarrassment and told her of the secret code. Bereshit Rabbah 71,5 phrases it thus: “Rachel made silence her trademark (vocation); as a result all her sons were able to keep secrets, on the other hand, Leah made gratitude her trademark (vocation); as a result we find that all her sons are recorded as confessing errors and giving thanks to G’d. Binyamin, a son of Rachel knew that Joseph had been sold but he kept the secret. Saul, a descendant of Binyamin is reported in Samuel 10, 16 as ואת דבר המלוכה לא הגיד לו not telling even his uncle that Samuel had told him he would become king. [The uncle had been aware that Saul had had an interview with Samuel the Seer and titular head of the nation. The prophet had told him not to worry, that the asses had been located. Ed.] Another descendant of Rachel who was distinguished by keeping silent at crucial times was Queen Esther who obeyed Mordechai’s instructions not to reveal her identity even when such a refusal resulted in the King threatening to depose her.” (Esther 2,20).
Leah’s son Yehudah confessed that he had been wrong in bringing Tamar his daughter-in-law to trial as a whore. Moreover, The Torah credits him with giving thanks to the Lord (49,8), and we find David, Yehudah’s most illustrious descendant composing innumerable hymns to G’d including Psalms 136,1 in which he asks the Jewish people to give thanks to the Lord. Another descendant of Yehudah, Daniel, was in the habit of praying to G’d as a way of giving thanks to Him (Daniel 6,11).

(25-26) Du kennst die hiesigen Sitten nicht. Wenn bei uns jemand um die Jüngere anhält, so meint er stillschweigend auch die Ältere, da es bei uns nicht Sitte ist, die Jüngere vor der Älteren zu verheiraten. Er kann daher zu der Jüngeren nur durch die Ältere kommen und bekommt erst die Ältere und dann die Jüngere. Das ist alles ganz in Ordnung. Nach Leas Hochzeit kommt dann Rahels. Die "geben wir" dir dann. In dem "wir" liegt die ganze lokale Statthaftigkeit seines Verfahrens — die er ihm vorlügt. Natürlich musst du mir dann noch sieben Jahre dienen!

ויהי בבוקר, “when it had become morning, etc.” during the entire night Leah had pretended to be Rachel, using three different items to identify herself as her sister, which Rachel had received from Yaakov, one had to do with the laws of menstruation, the second one with the laws of challah, and the third one with the lighting of candles on Friday night. We are told the following in B’reshit Rabbah 70,19: all night long people were singing what sounded like the praises of Leah, sort of hinting to Yaakov that he was being swindled. Yaakov, who had no reason to fear that the town’s people wished him ill, did not suspect being tricked when Leah always answered when he addressed her as Rachel. In the morning when he found out that he had been tricked by Leah, and he complained to her, she responded that she had learned from him to do this, as when Yitzchok had asked him if he was his firstborn son Esau, he had answered in the affirmative. This is when Yaakov began to hate her as is reported in verse 31, where G–d is reported as taking note of that. Yitzchok himself had told Esau that his brother had tricked him.

ויהי בבקר והנה היא לאה, “and when it was morning Yaakov found out that the woman in bed with him had been Leah;” this verse teaches us a great deal about how chaste a person Yaakov was, and that he had hardly exchanged any words with who he thought was his wife while having marital relations with her. Had he been speaking with her, surely he would have known from her voice that he had been deceived. After all, he had lived in her proximity for the last seven years, and she was no stranger to him. If you were to ask that seeing that the so called marriage ceremony was clearly invalid, as the woman under the wedding canopy had not been the one with whom he thought that he had exchanged sacred vows, we would have to answer that as soon as he found this out he had relations with her for the purpose of legalising their marriage.

והנה הוא לאה, and behold it was Leah! The reason the Torah writes הוא with the letter ו, is best explained by Bereshit Rabbah 70,12 where the local people are described as singing all night long (in Aramaic) הא ליא, הא ליא. Jacob understood only in the morning what that singing had been all about. This explanation also explains the need for the word הנה satisfactorily.

רמה Grundbedeutung: schleudern. Was man schleudern will, muss man erst in die Hand bekommen und auf der Hand ruhen lassen; sobald es aber dort ruht, schleudert man es weg. Ebenso der Betrüger. Er kann nur den betrügen, der sich ihm zuvor in die Hand gegeben, der ihm zuvor getraut. Nur das Vertrauen ist Mittel zu seinem Verderben.

מה זאת עשית לי? What is this that you have done to me? We need to understand what exactly Jacob referred to with this complaint. If it referred to the fact that Laban had tricked him, he already mentioned this by saying: "why did you deceive me?" We must therefore search for something else that Jacob complained about.

Jacob did indeed complain about two matters. 1) That Laban had given him Leah instead of Rachel. 2) That he had done so in such a deceptive manner. Jacob thereby revealed that had Laban forced Leah upon him he, Jacob, would have been less concerned than now that he slept with one woman while believing he slept with another. This deception had far-reaching spiritual consequences, as we already alluded to earlier on verse 23.

It is also possible that Jacob referred to the humiliation experienced by Leah who now found herself Jacob's wife and had to expect that her husband would hate her instead of love her. Jacob's question "why did you deceive me?" indicates that he had immediately decided not to divorce Leah but to keep her as a wife.

He also displayed wisdom by the choice of his words, realising that what had been done could not be undone. He realised that it would not have been moral to reverse what had been done but resolved to marry Rachel also. In this manner he hoped that Laban would not now demand an even higher price for Rachel by suggesting that they make a new agreement. He complained to Laban that the latter had seen fit to achieve something by deception which he could have achieved amicably (i.e. that Jacob marry Leah also).