A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Rachel, youngest daughter of Laban
RACHEL,
The youngest daughter of Laban, the Syrian, the beloved wife of Jacob, the patriarch, mother of Joseph and Benjamin;—how many beautiful traits of character, how many touching incidents of her husband's life, are connected with her name! Rachel was the true wife of Jacob, the wife of his choice, his first and only love. For her, "he served Laban seven years, and they seemed to him but a few days, for the love he bore her." At the close of this term, the crafty father, who wished to retain Jacob in his service, practised the gross deception of giving Leah instead of Rachel, and then permitting Jacob to have the beloved one as another wife, provided he would serve another seven years! Thus Rachel really cost her husband fourteen years' servitude.
She was "beautiful and well-flavoured," Moses tells us; yet surely it was not her personal charms which gained such entire ascendency over the wise son of Isaac. Jacob must have been nearly sixty years old at the time of his marriage; and if Rachel had been deficient in those noble qualities of mind and soul, which could understand and harmonize with his lofty aspirations to fulfil the great duties God had imposed upon him, as the chosen Founder of the house of Israel, she never would have been his confidant, counsellor, friend, as well as his lovely and loving wife. That she was this all in all to her husband, seems certain by the grief, the utter desolation of spirit, which overwhelmed him for her loss. He cherished her memory in his heart, loved her in the passionate love he lavished on her children till his dying day. Her two sons were, in moral character, far superior to the other sons of Jacob; and this is true testimony of her great and good qualities. She died in giving birth to Benjamin, while Jacob, with all his family, was on his way from Syria to his own land. She was buried near Bethlehem, in Judea, and Jacob erected a monument over her grave. Her precious dust was thus left, as though to keep possession of the land sure, to hers and her husband's posterity, during the long centuries of absence and bondage. And, as if to mark that this ground was hallowed, the Messiah was born near the place of Rachel's grave. She died B.C. 1732.