for us."

Instead of the sentimental self-sacrifice of a devoted lover for his
mistress we have here, therefore, simply an example of a prosaic,
mercenary marriage custom familiar to all students of anthropology.
But how about the second half of that sentence, which declares that
Jacob's seven years of service "seemed to him but a few days for the
love he had for her?" Is not this the language of an expert in love?
Many of my critics, to my surprise, seemed to think so, but I am
convinced that none of them can have ever been in love or they would
have known that a lover is so impatient and eager to call his beloved
irrevocably his own, so afraid that someone else might steal away her
affection from him, that Jacob's seven years, instead of shrinking to
a few days, would have seemed to him like seven times seven years.

A minute examination of the story of Jacob and Rachel thus reveals
world-wide differences between the ancient Hebrew and the modern
Christian conceptions of love, corresponding, we have no reason to
doubt, to differences in actual feeling. And as we proceed, these
differences become more and more striking:

"And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my
days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. And
Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and
made a feast. And it came to pass in the evening, that
he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and
he went in unto her.... And it came to pass, in the
morning that, behold, it was Leah: and he said to
Laban, What is this thou has done unto me? Did not I
serve with thee for Rachel? Wherefore then hast thou
beguiled me? And Laban said, It is not so done in our
place, to give the younger before the first-born.
Fulfil the week of this one, and we will give thee the
other also for the service which thou shalt serve with
me yet seven other years. And Jacob did so, and
fulfilled her week; and he gave him Rachel his daughter
to wife."

Surely it would be difficult to condense into so few lines more facts
and conditions abhorrent to the Christian conception of the sanctity
of love than is done in this passage. Can anyone deny that in a modern
Christian country Laban's breach of contract with Jacob, his
fraudulent substitution of the wrong daughter, and Jacob's meek
acceptance of two wives in eight days would not only arouse a storm of
moral indignation, but wou