Jacob's Second Kiss

Josef von Führich,  Jacob Encountering Rachel, 1836

It is only the second kiss mentioned in the Bible – and it happened beside a village well.

No doubt Rebekah told her son Jacob, how as a young woman she had watered a stranger’s camels and gained a husband for her initiative (see previous posts). Now, twenty years later, Jacob himself stood by that same well.

The most breath-taking girl he had ever seen was leading her flock to water. Some dim-witted shepherds were loitering, waiting for help to move the large stone well-cover so they could water their herds (and perhaps ogle or flirt with the girl). Jacob, a master of spontaneity, single-handedly hefted the massive stone away from the well-mouth and drew water for the woman and her sheep.

The shepherds had told him she was the daughter of Laban, his uncle – which made the pretty one, his cousin. Each time he drew up a skin of water and poured it for the sheep, he glanced at the face of the comely shepherdess.

Wiliam Dyce - The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel - 19thCentury

And when he finished, he did the most spontaneous, guileless thing he had ever done. He kissed her on the cheek and dissolved into tears. The virile stone-mover, the energetic water-carrier, the young man who had crossed a hundred miles of desert to find relatives - was home. He told the astonished girl that he was her cousin, the son of her legendary aunt, Rebekah.

As Frederick Buechner says in his historical novel Son of Laughter, it was through the door of that kiss that Jacob entered the house of the years that followed.

Little did he know at that moment the hopes and heartbreak that awaited him in his life with this woman. It is worth the read in Genesis 29-35 – and it all started with Jacob uncovering that well.

There was more than water released in that act. Jacob’s whole future opened up. Rachel became a wellspring of inspiration, joy and sadness in his life. But further, the years ahead exposed the dark well of Jacob's soul, the murky recesses of his character.

Govert Flinck - Isaac Blessing Jacob, 1639

That kiss by the well is the second kiss in the Genesis story of Jacob. Weeks earlier Jacob deceived his blind father Isaac with a kiss at the most sacred filial moment imaginable, when the old patriarch was passing on his fatherly blessing. Jacob lied, impersonated his older brother and stole the family blessing.

The first kiss violated family trust; the second began a new chapter in Jacob’s life. Jacob embodies the duality in all of us. He is both scoundrel and man of destiny and he will wrestle with God his whole life. Jacob teaches us about earthy spirituality and a God who embraces us in all our shrewd duplicity, a God who rips off well-covers, exposes his heart and kisses us with undeserved love.