Resuming the view of Jacob as typical of Christ in his earthly character, we find him come to the people of the East, where there are “three flocks” waiting around a well which is as yet closed. When it is “high day” he opens the well and the waiting sheep are supplied. Isaiah prophesies of the future time when “Israel shall be third with Egypt and Assyria,......whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hand, and Israel mine inheritance.” “And thither were all the flocks gathered “—Jew, Gentile, and Church of God—at least these three nations are evidently marked for special recognition and favor.
But for one of them is still more especial favor. Of Israel it is said, “Thy Maker is thine husband,” “saith the Lord; for I am married unto thee: “ so here we find the type in Rachel, so long wooed yet withheld, so long barren, so long idolatrous, so great a cause of sorrow and anxiety, and yet so greatly and ceaselessly beloved. We must remember that it is the course of the earthly Messiah which we are regarding here, and therefore it is in entire consistency that Rachel is the one on whom the chief care and affection seems to be bestowed. Leah (who is regarded as typifying the Gentile) was the first obtained, but was not the first sought, and here, in connection with the earthly Messiah and earthly dispensations, it is seen in a somewhat secondary light. For all that she is the most fruitful, and is honored in the births of Judah and Levi, the Ruler and the Teacher, King and Priest.
If Leah typified the Gentile, it is not surprising that we should read that she was “tender-eyed:” the organs of outward vision were impaired. In this dispensation we walk “by faith and not by sight.” It is a saying as old as Plato, that “when our bodily eyes are at worst, generally the eyes of our souls see best.” Democritus was blind, yet he “saw more than all Greece besides” (if he saw half as much as his namesake, Democritus junior, it is easy to believe that statement). “Some philosophers and divines,” says this last-named, “have put out their eyes voluntarily, the better to contemplate.” Who has heard such lofty anthems, as the two blind musicians Handel and Bach? who has seen such ecstatic visions as the two blind poets Homer and Milton? Leah would appear to have been neither particularly favored either in respect of outward appearance or outward vision; but from the little we read of her, in regard to naming her children, she seems to have had much inward and devout perception. This is what should be all true of the church in its earthly history, like its Lord having no beauty to the outward man that it should be desired; and characteristically and peculiarly-walking by faith and not by sight.
Faith should be of course characteristic of the devout in any dispensation, but there is no dispensation in which it is so emphatically necessary that men should not walk by sight as in this, the church era: for even Israel had to take some cognizance of the providential and national movements around them, and shape their policy to some extent accordingly. But now we are told, “Ye are not of the world.” “Set your affection—or regard, or mind, τὰ ἄνω φρονεῖτε—on things above.” It is well to be accurate here: walking by sight does not mean the exercise of reason, sight refers to the outward evidences of mere external things, and may be contrary to faith, as every day we find it may be contrary to reason; for instance, if we look down over the bulwarks of a ship in progress, sight tells us that the water is rushing to the rear and our ship is stationary, but reason convinces us that it is the ship that moves and not the water. Reason—true reason not mere “reasoning” —never can contradict faith but travels in the same line, though in an infinitely lower plane. However much it is condemned in theological writings, the exercise of reason is nowhere condemned in the scriptures, where it is said, “Come, let us reason together,” and that Paul “reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath.”
A powerful opponent of Christianity says in a sarcastic passage, “Our most holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it, to put it to such a trial [the trial of reason], as it is by no means fitted to endure.” This foolish kind of attack no doubt has got some encouragement from well-intentioned persons who spend their time in reasoning against the use of reason, as if it were not God's very best providential gift. Nor is sight itself to be condemned; is that not also a divine gift? It is the walking by it that is condemned, for it is a mere “dead reckoning,” and no sailor would travel by such means—that is, by calculation from the log and the steerage, when there is a single star visible in the heavens to guide him.
But in order to effect this union Jacob has to serve through weary years of bondage: he is a typical servant too, in some small sense not unworthy to foreshadow Him “Who took on Him the form of a servant.” He submits to the wrongs of an injurious master in silence, he serves patiently, and suffers without complaint, his wages are changed ten times but he answers not again. Meanwhile the discipline that characterizes his life is steadily developing its effects. “God hath one Son without sin,” said St. Austin, “but none without discipline.”