Age Is Not a Factor: Age Differentials in Genesis

Large Age Differences in Married Couples in the Bible

The story of Jacob meeting Rachel at the well serves as the primary example of the classical Biblical love story. One could consider it the only example of “true love” found in the Bible.¹ Other love stories do not reach the same status of true love because either the lovers fall out of love, if they were ever actually in love to begin with (David and Michal), or the relationship is based on lust (Amnon and Tamar).²

Most readers conceptualize the relationship of Jacob and Rachel as people of the same age. The common image is that of two young people in love with each other. Jacob will then prove his love for Rachel by agreeing to work seven years as the bride price to marry her. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, talking about their love in one of his drashot, says: “A young girl who is in love with a young boy – is there an emotion which is more powerful, more committing, than such a love, a young person?”³ This rhetorical flourish reflects the impression most readers have. Similarly, Gustav Dore, the famous French engraver and illustrator, illustrated the Grande Bible du Tours. These engravings reflect his perceptions of Biblical personages as they were in the events that the Bible relates. He draws Jacob and Rachel as young adults of the same age.⁴

While this is the common perception we have, Bereishit Rabbah 70:18 states that Jacob was, in fact, an 84-year-old man when he married Rachel. This midrash mentions Jacob’s age to explain why Jacob speaks in a coarse way to Laban, Then Jacob said to Laban, ‘Give me my wife for my time is fulfilled, that I may cohabit with her’ (Gen. 29:21).⁵ This midrash is included by Rashi in his commentary to Genesis 29:21.

Although the midrash does not indicate how this particular age was arrived at, the calculation is precise based on other verses. When Jacob goes down to Egypt with his family in the second year of the famine, Joseph presents him to Pharaoh. Pharaoh asks Jacob his age (Gen. 47:8-9), and Jacob answers that he is 130 years old. Genesis 41:46 tells us that Joseph was 30 years old when he is appointed by Pharaoh as viceroy of Egypt. Add the seven years of plenty and two years of famine before Jacob comes down to Egypt and Joseph was 39 when he saw his father again after being sold as a slave into Egypt. This means that Jacob was 91 (130 - 39) when Joseph was born. If Joseph was born at the end of the 14 years that Jacob worked for Laban, then Jacob was 77 when he first met Rachel and 84 when he married her seven years later.

The question then becomes how old was Rachel when she met Jacob at the well and he first falls in love with her. The Torah never provides Rachel’s age. Ramban (Nachmanides) in his commentary on Genesis 29:9 suggests that the only reason that Rachel was a shepherdess, tending her father’s sheep, was because Laban was impoverished and could not afford to hire a shepherd. Ramban surmises that Laban sends Rachel to be responsible for the sheep because she was still a child, not having reached puberty. He states that women who were physically mature and practiced modesty stayed home because, otherwise, the male shepherds would molest them.

Accepting these statements by the commentaries and doing the math, the age gap between Jacob and Rachel becomes noteworthy. If one accepts that Jacob was eighty-four after working for seven years for Laban, then he was seventy-seven when he met Rachel at the well. If, as Ramban says, Rachel was prepubescent, then she would have been quite young, up to ten or eleven years old. This is not a story of a young man in love with a young girl as the age difference between them would still be a minimum of sixty-five years.

One could, of course, take issue with Ramban and say that Rachel was a mature adult woman. Laban sends her as his shepherd because he knows that he is a powerful, respected man in the community. The other male shepherds will not touch her, fearing his wrath. But, according to the mores of the time, this was not usually the case. Grown women did not work as shepherds. Rachel’s older sister Leah was not a shepherdess.

Genesis 29:11 states that Jacob, after singlehandedly removing the stone from off the mouth of the well, kissed Rachel and broke into tears. Commentaries like Ibn Ezra and Ramban say, trying to address the question of a righteous man kissing a woman in public, that Jacob gave Rachel a chaste kiss either on her head or on her shoulder. This is the type of peck given to a little girl and not love’s first kiss.

Still, the Torah portrays the relationship between Jacob and Rachel as a romantic one. Jacob loves Rachel and agrees to work for Laban for seven years as a shepherd to marry Rachel. Genesis 29:20 states and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her. Jacob, after being deceived into marrying Leah, even works an additional seven years to marry Rachel. He does not quit his job although he has grounds to.

Genesis provides other examples of the patriarchs as older men marrying much younger women. The primary example being Abraham. After his beloved Sarah dies, Abraham takes another wife, Keturah (Gen. 25:1-2). Keturah gives Abraham six sons. Genesis 23:1 records Sarah’s age at the time of her death as 127. Abraham was 10 years older than Sarah, who was ninety when she gave birth to Isaac (Gen. 21:5). Genesis 21:5 states that Abraham is one hundred. If Abraham married Keturah within the year of Sarah’s death, then he would have been 137 years old. According to modern day medical science, women can bear children up to the age of fifty. Midrash Tanhuma (Chaye Sara 8) brings different opinions regarding whether Keturah is to be identified with Hagar. If not, then she would have been a lot younger than Abraham or would have needed to be at least forty-four years old when she first married him to have six children within modern medical norms. If it is accepted and Keturah is Hagar, then she would have been past child bearing age and her six other offspring were miraculous. Hagar’s son, Ishmael, is thirteen years old when he is circumcised and Abraham is ninety-nine (Gen. 17:24-25). As Isaac is thirty-seven years old when Sarah dies, Ishmael would have been fifty or fifty-one. This would make Hagar at least sixty-three when she marries Abraham under the name Keturah. This calculation assumes that Hagar had, at least, reached the age of puberty when Sarah gave her to Abraham to be his second wife because she conceives immediately. Abraham’s marriage to Hagar then serves as another example of a much older man (Abraham at age 86 when Hagar gives birth to Ishmael) having a relationship with a younger woman.

Different Moral Assumptions

One can justify the age inconsistencies between the patriarchs and their wives in different ways. First, when people read or study a text, they read with certain biases. People often read with a certain fixed image in their mind. They automatically assume that the behavior of the individual will be in accordance with the current moral code. Professor Joshua Berman calls this a form of reading a text within a cultural context.⁶ Our modern concept of morality looks askance at old men marrying young girls. According to Berman, the Torah, although it speaks to all generations, was written within another context, the cultural context of the ancient Middle East.⁷ Our modern standards, those of Modern Western civilization, are not necessarily congruent with the moral standards of the ancient Middle East. As Westerners reading the text from a different cultural perspective, we imagine the story differently. At the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, society possibly condoned the arrangement of older men marrying much younger women. Marrying a child bride would have been considered perfectly normal, morally acceptable behavior. Nowadays, modern society condemns the practice of child brides.

Deuteronomy 15:12 refers to women being sold into slavery: If a fellow Hebrew, man or woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall set him free. Rashi, based on the Talmud, comments here that the text is referring to fathers who sell their young daughters who are under the age of twelve as servants or as child brides.

Jacob, also, makes a contract with Laban to purchase Rachel because he works for seven years to acquire her. She is his wages. Gen. 29:15 states, Laban said to Jacob, ‘Just because you are a kinsman, should you serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?’ In Gen. 31:15 Rachel and her sister Leah also say that they were sold to Jacob: ‘Surely, he regards us as outsiders, now that he has sold us and has used up our purchase price.’

Child brides are also mentioned elsewhere in the Torah. In his commentary on Genesis 25:20, Rashi, based on Seder Olam Rabbah chapter 1, mentions that Rebecca was only three years old when Isaac married her. One can also argue that Dinah, Jacob’s daughter through Leah, was only eight or nine years old when she is seized by Shechem, the son of Chamor, and raped. After kidnapping Dinah, Shechem then asks to marry her.⁸ Another case of very young marital age is the story of Yehudah and Tamar. In Genesis 38, Yehudah marries Tamar, his daughter-in-law, after she is widowed from two of his sons, Er and Onan. Commentaries, relying on a discussion found in TB Sanhedrin 69a-69b, say that Yehudah’s children, Er and Onan, were younger than Tamar (who would have been aged 12), perhaps aged 8 or 9 when they married her.⁹ Yehudah is older; probably in his twenties.

A Different Natural Reality

TB Sanhedrin 69b also has a discussion on what age are men and women physically fit to have intercourse. It states that women are fit for relations starting from age three. Men can have intercourse starting from age nine (some hold from age eight and a day). The Talmud also adds that boys below the age of nine can have relations but cannot impregnate women before they reach puberty, but that at the time of Abraham, boys at the age of 8 could impregnate women.¹⁰ This Talmudic discussion suggests the theory that medical norms regarding aging and the ability to procreate were different at the time of Noah and the patriarchs. Physical strength at the time of the patriarchs was different, starting at younger ages and continuing into advanced old age.

Genesis 11, moreover, provides a stronger proof as to why the age differential is not important in Biblical couples. The list of the ten generations after Noah up to Abraham implies that modern laws of nature did not apply even after the Flood, with the men listed living extraordinary long lives, particularly the closer they lived to the time of Noah. Shem lives 600 years, his son Arpachshad 438.¹¹ Even if one would argue that the years were somehow counted differently in the time of Noah and Shem, they still lived long lives. Abraham is the tenth generation after Noah, Jacob is twelfth generation. If people were understood to be physically stronger and healthier at an older age, this would imply that the women also remained physically healthy and fertile to an older age. Sarah, for example, was beautiful and desirous at a ripe old age. Pharaoh’s servants praise her to Pharaoh when Sarah is sixty-five.¹² She only gives Hagar to her husband, Abraham, as a second wife when she is seventy-five. Our modern medical scientific standards, therefore, do not necessarily apply to these early Biblical figures.

Age Is Irrelevant

Another way of looking at the problem of age differentials depends on the understanding of why the Torah is telling the story of Jacob and Rachel in the first place. The Torah is presenting their romance with a specific goal. Jacob loves Rachel and wants to have his children from her. The narrative describes what love, faithfulness and righteousness are. The story emphasizes the character of Jacob and strives to teach about behavior. The Torah is not bothered by age inconsistencies. The consequences of the relationship are what are important. Their actual ages have no relevant bearing on the narrative.

Conclusion

The narrative of Jacob and Rachel serves as a lesson as to how people will read and interpret a Biblical text. People either read a text episodically or in a sequential order. Assuming that Jacob and Rachel are the same age merely demonstrates that the reader is viewing the story as an independent, separate unit. The reader then imposes, albeit subconsciously, his or her own value system on the story and understands it based on his or her own realities. Saying that the couple are young lovers makes the image of their love more acceptable to the reader. As people tend to miss or not notice certain realities of a given situation because it does not fit with their moral outlook and perception,¹³ they simply overlook the real ages of Jacob and Rachel. When, however, one reads the story from the perspective of the life of Jacob, following the order of events as a sequence, then Jacob’s and Rachel’s true ages reveal themselves. This differential can be explained in terms of changes in societal mores or changes in nature itself. Ultimately, from the perspective of the message of the Torah, the age differential is considered irrelevant.