창세기 29:17의 주석

רכות TENDER — She thought she would have to fall to the lot of Esau and she therefore wept continually, because everyone said, “Rebekah has two sons, Laban has two daughters — the elder daughter for the elder son, the younger daughter for the younger son” (Genesis Rabbah 70:16).

רכות, beautiful; our sages in Taanit 24 say that when a prospective bride has beautiful eyes, the bridegroom need not have the rest of her body checked out for possible blemishes. Black eyes are not considered as beautiful as white ones. [I suppose the reference is to blue ones. Ed.]

יפת תאר, possessed of beautiful features, as described in Isaiah 44,13 ובמחוגה יתארהו.

ועיני לאה רכות, Leah's eyes were soft, etc. It is not customary for the Torah to reveal physical blemishes of such righteous people as our matriarchs. Therefore, the meaning of this comment must be to tell the reader that Laban could never have claimed that Rachel was Leah or vice versa because even their eyes were totally different. Leah was not only not as beautiful as her sister Rachel, but she suffered from a blemish, i.e her eyes were not attractive. Since Leah and Rachel were so different from one another in their external appearance Laban had no way of cheating on Jacob by palming off the wrong daughter on him.

The eyes of Leah were soft: She was beautiful, but her eyes were soft and teary,

ועיני לאה רכות, “Leah’s eyes were sensitive;” according to Onkelos, this is a compliment, Leah’s eyes being round and lustrous like those of a young and beautiful calf. Targum Yonathan omits the comparison with a calf. Apparently, when the Torah points out Leah’s eyes as being beautiful, this is in contrast to the remainder of her physical features which were not attractive. Other commentators who view the comment as describing a flaw, feel that the Torah was at pains to point out that Leah’s only physical flaw were her eyes. Her sister Rachel, however, was flawlessly beautiful.

ועיני לאה רכות, “and Leah’s eyes were soft.” Rabbi Avraham [Ibn Ezra] commented on this that someone called Ben Efrayim said that the word רכות really should have been spelled with the letter א, meaning ארוכות. I can only comment that his own name should have been spelled without the letter א. [In other words, his comment is without foundation.]

Because she thought she would fall to the lot of Eisov. [Rashi is answering the question:] Why does the verse speak badly about this righteous woman? He answers: “Because she thought...” I.e., from her bad point we learn her good point. You might ask: The verse implies that Leah also was of beautiful form, but had tender eyes. If so, why does the verse contrast her with Rochel by saying, “Rochel was of beautiful form”? It should rather say, “The eyes of Rochel were beautiful.” The answer is: Since Leah’s eyes were not beautiful, she was not beautiful either. For it says in Taanis 24a: “If a bride’s eyes are beautiful, her entire body need not be checked.” Thus it was rightly said that “Rochel was of beautiful form.”

Statt zu sagen: Lea war minder schön, ist es eine Feinheit, von ihr nur das zu rühmen, was schön an ihr war: sie hatte zarte und milde Augen, im Gegensatz zu Rahel, die überhaupt: schön war.

ועיני לאה רכות, “Leah’s eyes were soft, so that due to her beautiful eyes she appeared beautiful all over,”[the expression רך appears next to טוב, “good, when” the calf served by Avraham to the angels in Genesis 18,7 is described) in contrast to Rachel, whose body was beautiful, but whose eyes detracted from this as she cried a lot, fearing that her lot would be to be married to Esau after Yaakov would divorce her due to her barrenness. (No source quoted for this unusual interpretation)

תאר FORM — this denotes the shape (outline) of the face, just as the verb formed from the same root in (Isaiah 44:13) “he marks it out (יתארחו) with a pencil” old French compas.

יפה תאר, as in Isaiah 44,13 במחוגה יתארהו, “he marks out a form with a stylus.” This is a reference to the shape of her nose, forehead, lips and cheeks.

ויפת מראה, her skin looked very healthy. Colour is something which attracts closer inspection by the sense of sight.

But Rachel was of beautiful form and fair to look upon, without any blemish. And "form" refers to the shape of the face and the rest of the body, the posture, and skin color which was write and red (pink), and the hair was dark.

יפת תואר ויפת מראה. Both her face and her body were beautiful. Beauty may expresses itself in two ways. 1) Every individual feature is beautiful by itself; We have examples of this by Solomon in his Song of Songs where he describes the beauty of different parts of the anatomy. 2) There is such a thing as an overall beauty of both the facial features and the body. The Torah describes Rachel as blessed with both these kinds of beauty.

מראה OF BEAUTIFUL APPEARANCE — this denotes the beauty of her features (a good complexion).

יפה מראה, healthy looking skin.

The expression יפת תואר may also be understood as "objectively beautiful," whereas the expression יפת מראה may refer to the impression Rachel made on those who looked at her.