WORD STUDY – TENDER EYES – ‘AYANI RAKAK  רכות עיני  

Genesis 29:17 “Leah [was] tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured.”

You remember the story of how Jacob was fooled into marrying Leah when he was in love with Rachel. I read something in the Jewish Talmud about this story. In Christianity, it is traditionally accepted that Jacob preferred Rachel because she was more beautiful than her sister Leah.  Some commentators even say that the Hebrew word for tender eyes which is rakak means to be weak and that she had weak eyes or even a disfigurement.   Poppycock!

You trace this word rakak into its Semitic root, deep into the Canaanite language and you find the only concept of weakness comes from the idea that a person has such a tender heart that they could not go hunting because they could not bear to harm an innocent animal even for their own survival. Such a person was said to have ‘ayani rakak or eyes of tenderness.  This is really an ancient idiom to express the idea of a gentle, loving, and caring person. 

Remember Leah was the mother of Judah from whom David descended and eventually Jesus. To me, the picture is almost Messianic.  Leah was a caring, loving woman, the one who brought home stray cats and dogs.  She had so much love to give and longed for the love and affection of Jacob who just outright rejected her.  I see a picture here that we miss if we follow the traditional path of this story.

You see in the Talmud (Bava Batra 123a) we find Judaism teaches something much different about Leah than Christianity.  It is taught that because of Leah’s weak eyes or tenderheartedness, she understood that one of her future children, this would be Judah,  would father a great king, King David.  I personally believe she also knew the Messiah would descend from her.

The Talmud teaches that she heard at the crossroads people saying, “Rebecca has two sons, and Laban has two daughters;  the elder will marry the elder, and the younger will marry the younger.”  As she sat at the crossroads she inquired, “ How does the elder one conduct himself.?”  They replied, “He is a wicked man, a hunter of animals.”  She then asked about the younger man and they said, “He is a wholesome man who cares for his mother and farms.”  And Leah wept until her eyelashes fell out.  At that moment she was determined to marry the younger son, Jacob. Perhaps Laban treachery was only because he wanted to protect his tender-hearted daughter from a possibly abusive husband.

Perhaps Laban figured that once Jacob got over his bedazzlement with the more outgoing and charming Rachel he would see the true loving nature of Leah and would fall deeply in love her and forget all about Rachel. Which is why he had Jacob work another seven years for Rachel so he could see that his true love was just in his own backyard.

To me, this is a story that illustrates our relationship with God. We go to church, we serve God, we do our duty for God, just as Jacob did his duty for Leah.  Yet, all the time Leah yearned that he would perform these duties because he loved her and not because it was a duty. Just like God allows us to perform our duties but all the time, just like Jacob He yearns for us to do these things out of love.  Yet, we continue to miss out on a truly loving God in our own backyard.

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