The most romantic stories in the Bible

The first story is about Jacob. Now Jacob, son of Isaac wanted to get married. So he went to his uncle’s crib, who had two daughters. One hot. The other not so much. The oldest daughter was not so hot because the Bible says, “Leah had weak eyes”. I suspect she was squint. The younger daughter’s name was Rachel and she was damn hot too. How do I know? “For the Bible tells me so” (sorry, couldn’t resist) the Bible tells us that “Rachel had a lovely figure” mind you, this was before the invention of bikinis. The Bible continues about Rachel “and was beautiful”. And you guys thought the Bible wasn’t shallow sometimes?

Jacob wanted hot miss thang, Rachel. Duh, obviously. He was in love with her. Jacob was broke and had nothing, he offered to work for his uncle for seven years in order to afford to marry Her Royal Hotness, Rachel. Laban, Rachel’s dad agreed to this arrangement. Jacob worked for a whole seven years to get her. As the Bible puts it “but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her”. Ahhh, so romantic.

Then the seven years came to pass and he said to Laban, “Malume, give me my wife”. OK, now brace yourself for the next few sentences. “My time is completed and I want to make love to her.” This guy! Jacob basically said to his fiancée’s dad: “I wanna shag your daughter dude. It’s been a while.” Can you imagine telling your future father-in-law that you want to “make love” to his daughter? The audacity of this man. In fact, give this man a Bell’s!

The wedding happened. She was covered, brought to him in the night. They shagged and as we would say in the black custom to indicate that a lot of shagging happened: “They shagged and shagged, and shagged and shagged and shagged.” So when morning came, there was Leah! He’d been doing the dirty with her all along.

Obviously Jacob is pissed off now. He worked seven years, a whole seven years to marry the hot one, now he gets the not-so-hot-one. His uncle, the deceitful conniving bastard says: “Sorry nyana. But according to our custom, the older daughter has to get married first.” Probably said in Generation’s traditionalist voice — Khaphela. Then Uncle Laban also gave him the hot daughter, Rachel, but he had to work another seven years for her too.

The second story is a short one. It’s the story of the romantic Elkanah, prophet Samuel’s dad. Elkanah had two wives, this dude had nothing on Jacob Zuma. Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah had children by the truck-load or should we say camel-load? Hannah on other hand had nada. He’d go to the temple with his wives every year. This dude loved Hannah even though she had no kids. The wife with the kids would be rather bitchy to her for she had no kids. So she’d always be crying and would not eat. Elkanah would always say to her: “Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you more than 10 sons?”

I think the “don’t I mean more to you than 10 sons” bit is the most romantic thing I’ve read in the Bible. For what he is saying is this, I don’t love you for a reason. The only reason I love you is because I love you. You don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is be you. That is all. It’s almost a prophetic image of Christ who loves us despite ourselves. We don’t have to do anything for him to love us. He loves just nje.

Pastor Khaya over and out.