Jacob didn't waste all of those fourteen years sitting around and waiting for Rachel.  He learned about cattle, sheep, goats and camels.  He learned, and kept to himself, the secrets of breeding genetic strains of colors in those animals.  And he would ask for his wages to be all of the speckled ones.  Laban would agree, and all the fouls would mysteriously be speckled.  So Laban would change Jacob's wages to all the striped ones.  And then, all the fouls would end up striped.  Jacob knew what he was doing.  After twenty years of this, Jacob possessed hundreds and hundreds of animals.  He then took his livestock, and his wives, and left to go back to his father Isaac's house to face Esau--without telling Laban he was leaving.  Three days later, Laban found out and came after him.

And just when we thought Rachel was the finest woman that we had thus far encountered in the Bible, we find out that she had stolen Laban's idols.  Why would she do that?  Did she worship them?  Or just like to look at them?  It certainly lets us know that her father Laban was not a man of the one true God.  And makes us wonder, if she was going to steal something, why was it idols.

And when Laban comes to reclaim his cattle, daughters, and idols, his daughter Rachel sits on the idols and says that, "...she is in the monthly way of women and can't get up."  She had been raised by a man who was not a shining example of honesty, so lying was not a new thing for her.  Mercy.  Every time think that I have found a woman of the Bible that is perfect, she proves that she is just like all the rest of us.  Flawed.

Which is interesting.  We usually hear how wonderful these characters were.  These people of God.  These people that God had blessed.  But in truth, God had to work with people that were sinful.  And still he blessed them.  Just like he does today.  We are all so undeserving of his mercy.

Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, Hagar, Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah, Rachel.  Women like you and me.  Learning from their mistakes and going on.  Enduring.  Loving their husbands and raising their children--with very little recognition for their contribution to the story of God's people who were the ancestors of Jesus.

And then, there is Dinah--Leah's daughter--the sister of Jacob's twelve sons.  She's next.