ספר בראשית

An alternate interpretation of this somewhat obscurely ‎worded verse above. When concentrating on the section ‎ויאהב גם ‏את רחל מלאה‎, “he also loved Rachel better than Leah;” we must ‎examine the meaning of the word: ‎גם‎ in this verse. We are used to ‎find this word when comparisons are being made to something ‎that preceded it; here, however, there is no question that ‎Yaakov’s love for Rachel had preceded his love for Leah as we ‎know already from Genesis 29,18.‎The wording of our verse throws light on Rashi’s ‎explanation on Genesis 30,22 “G’d remembered Rachel;” ‎according to Rashi, G’d remembered not only that Rachel had ‎given her sister Leah the secret code that was designed to alert ‎Yaakov in the event Lavan were to trick him, but also that Rachel ‎was most unhappy at the prospect that once her sister had ‎become the wife of Yaakov it would now be her lot to become the ‎wife of Esau, a terrible prospect, especially as she feared that ‎Yaakov would divorce her seeing that she had not born any ‎children for him. Looking at this commentary, it appears that ‎according to Rashi, G’d had two separate reasons for ‎‎“remembering” Rachel at that time. Actually, this is not so; how ‎can one imagine that Yaakov would divorce Rachel because she ‎had no children, when he himself had already been blessed with ‎numerous children both from Leah and from the servant maids?‎According to Bereshit Rabbah 70,16 the reason why the ‎Torah in 29,17 reveals that Leah had “weak” eyes, is to alert us to ‎her having wept excessively at the prospect of her having to ‎become the wife of a wicked person, her cousin Esau. At least, this ‎is what she had heard about her father’s plans for her, something ‎that was common gossip in Charan. At the time when Rachel had ‎handed Leah the secret code between Yaakov and her, it was not ‎clear yet that Yaakov would also marry Rachel so that she need ‎not have worried. It was therefore an even greater act of self ‎sacrifice on the part of Rachel to have revealed the secret code to ‎her sister at the time, as not only would she most likely lose the ‎chance to become Yaakov’s wife, but would wind up with a ‎husband who was a wicked person. Rashi meant that G’d ‎now remembered not only that Rachel had acted altruistically at ‎the time when she revealed the code to her sister, but she had in ‎addition had reason to believe that she had thereby condemned ‎herself to becoming the wife of Esau. When Yaakov, after also ‎marrying Rachel, instead of harbouring anger at her for revealing ‎their secret, became aware of her true motives, he also loved her ‎for her piety. In other words, his original love for Rachel is ‎considered by the Torah as a given; Yaakov in the meantime had ‎found out to what length of self-sacrifice Rachel had gone in ‎order to save her sister Leah embarrassment. He therefore loved ‎her doubly. If we translate the word ‎מלאה‎, “on account of Leah,” ‎instead of as “more than Leah,” the verse does not present any ‎problems at all. ‎