Leah was tender eyed, but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured. Genesis 29:17
Some of the experts have advised that men who want to have intelligent children should choose a wife for her smarts instead of her looks. That’s a lesson that is lost on most young men; a girl who can be described as ‘beautiful and well favoured’ will always have more suitors than a young woman known for being ‘tender eyed’. The term seems to mean that Leah was less than attractive, at least as far as her eyes were concerned. She was obviously less lovely than her sister, and her father had to resort to trickery to get her married off. Between the two of them – plain-jane Leah and gorgeous Rachel – these women became the mothers of the nation of Israel. But it was the less-than-lovely Leah who was the most blessed of the two.
We tend to think more highly of Rachel than of Leah because the younger woman was the beauty who was Jacob’s favourite. We sympathize with her for being cheated out of having Jacob as her husband first, and because she was deprived for so long of having children. But the record of Scripture marks Leah as the more honourable. First, Leah was the mother of six of Jacob’s twelve sons and of his only daughter. One of those sons was Judah, the one through whose lineage the Messiah would come. Secondly, we read of no idolatry on Leah’s part, but Rachel actually stole her father’s idols when Jacob and his family left Laban. It also appears that Leah – and not Rachel – also shared the same burial place as Jacob. We should not write off Leah when comparing these two women.
There are brothers and sisters around us who often get ignored or neglected because they lack the social and physical characteristics of others whose company we prefer. Some Christians can’t speak or express themselves as well as others, so we don’t enjoy holding conversations with them. Some Christians have physical limitations that we find it awkward to appreciate, so we don’t seek their company. But if we look a little deeper, sometimes, we can see that God is using and blessing those less-favoured saints in ways that others can’t be used. Just as Leah was three times as fruitful as Rachel, the ‘tender eyed’ folks among us may be in for far more reward than the others.
Never look with disdain on any fellow saint. Only God can measure their worth and know their value to Himself. -Jim MacIntosh