The devil can play games with us about our integrity. You have some slender justification and it becomes excuse for much deception and many hostilities. That is not honesty before the Lord. Do we have glaring sins which continue: hostile, unloving family relations? God may chastise us and we may find ourselves on the receiving end of what we deal out to others. God is determined to fashion us by the experiences he chooses for us.
‘Fulfil her week’ – the Hebrew is ‘fulfil her period of seven’, or ‘fulfil her sevened’. This could refer to a literal week and, if so, is explained by the custom of spending a festive week to celebrate the marriage (Judges 14:12). Understood this way, it would mean that Laban is asking Jacob to see out the festive week for Leah, and then he will immediately give him Rachel also, on condition that he serves Laban another seven years for her. This would then be a literal week. Calvin and others prefer to understand the word as referring not to seven days but to seven years. Fulfil her [Rachel’s] period of seven, just as you have fulfilled Leah’s, and I will give you Rachel also as wife. If the first interpretation is correct, ‘her week’ is Leah’s week (seven days), while if the second is correct, it is Rachel’s week (seven years). ‘We will give thee this also’ – the word ‘this’ is feminine and refers to ‘this daughter’ (the one Jacob is talking about), i.e. Rachel, also.
When did Jacob take Rachel as wife? The time needed for all the children to be born and other events to take place points to Leah and Rachel both being married a week apart. Unless this is the case, it is not possible to reconcile Genesis 30:25 with 31:41. According to Genesis 31:41, Jacob’s service is divided into 3 periods, 7 years for Leah, 7 years for Rachel, and 6 years for Laban’s cattle. But the last 6-year arrangement was prompted by Jacob coming to ask Laban permission to leave, and this occurred only after Joseph was born, the last of the children born in Haran. If Jacob did not marry Rachel until after 14 years of service, there would not have been time for her to discover her barrenness, have two sons via Bilhah, and herself give birth to Joseph, all before negotiating a further period of service for Laban’s cattle. Rachel was therefore married in anticipation of another seven years’ service. This earlier marriage is linked by some interpreters to the idea of a literal week after which the marriage took place. The order in which events are related in verse 30 tends to confirm this.