Three’s company too: A midrash on everyday misogyny,Leah,Rachel,Jacob,and the comedy of errors of this Hebrew Bible dysfunctional family

Introduction

Come and knock on my door … (Come and knock on our door).

We’ve been waiting for you … (We’ve been waiting for you).

Where the kisses are hers and hers [and hers and hers] and his,

Three’s [no wait … five’s] company too. ¹

These opening words are lyrics adapted from the theme song of the hit 1970s sitcom, “Three’s Company.” Remember the bouncing theme song and the show’s risqué premise: two single women living with one single man in the same apartment. These days, of course, that living arrangement would be no big deal, but in 1977, when the show came out, the American television audience was scarcely used to TV shows about people living together out of wedlock, let alone the provocative suggestion of a ménage à trois. The main characters in the show, Jack Tripper (John Ritter), Janet Wood (Joyce DeWitt), and Chrissy Snow (Suzanne Sommers), never did end up in bed together, but the possibility of this threesome was a carrot-chasing fantasy for all the millions of viewers who tuned in every week. The notion that hapless and clumsy Jack Tripper might be able to have one or both of his young, attractive female roommates was irresistible to American television audiences of the late 1970s: two women, one man.

At this point the reader may be asking, “What on earth does this sitcom relic have to do with biblical matriarchs, with Leah, Rachel, Jacob, and let’s not forget about Zilpah and Bilhah?” And the writer would answer you saying, “That’s a really good question.” Let me try to explain. An obvious similarity between the two stories in terms of narrative structure is the threesome configuration: two women, or four women, one man. The man in each situation is a point of focus for the female characters. My attention in these two disparate tales is the unseen but ubiquitous character that weaves them together through time and space: misogyny. I do not mean blatant misogyny, replete with graphic images of women being beaten or raped; I mean banal, everyday misogyny that is so ingrained into our psyches that we might not even notice it. Everyday misogyny gets contextualized, especially when we are talking about the past, as if the harm that it caused is invalid because that is just the way it was back then.

“Three’s Company” first aired in 1977, and was loaded with sexual innuendoes that objectified and stereotyped its female characters. The show was said to be “basically innocent and harmless.” ² But sexism, even served up with shallow plot lines and slapstick comedic antics, is never harmless. The first episode of “Three’s Company” has Jack openly gawking at Chrissy’s backside as she leans on the stove where he is cooking breakfast. The dialogue in this scene unfolds:

This was said with Jack hanging over and conspicuously looking up and down Chrissy’s backside while she leaned on the stove.

Jack said this while still lecherously running his head up and down her backside, completely ignoring Janet.

Chrissy’s response indicates that Jack’s unsolicited advances were totally unnoticed by her, the ditzy blonde, which of course, got a hardy roar of laughter from the studio audience. And when the breakfast was ready, Jack called Janet and Chrissy to the table; he led Chrissy to her chair and pulled it out for her. Janet stood across the table from Jack, cleared her throat looking for the same personal attention from Jack, for him to pull her chair out, too. But Jack, looking at Chrissy the whole time, waved his hand at Janet, totally dismissing her. Dismissing Janet also got a hearty roar of laughter. Thus, in the first episode of “Three’s Company,” we learned that not only is objectifying women funny, but dismissing and ignoring them is also funny. It all seems harmless enough, right? Or is it? Both women were being treated like things, the thing worthy of Jack’s attention, and the thing not as worthy of Jack’s attention.

Sexism and misogynistic views shape and have been shaping women’s stories, women’s lives, and women’s worth for millennia. This is not news and only appeared to become news with the ascension of the #metoo movement over the past couple of years. The sexually predatory behavior of powerful men in the entertainment industry, the news media, and politics began to be revealed. One after the other, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey, Aziz Ansari, John Conyers, and scores of others were accused, exposed, and whisked out of the public eye. It seemed that suddenly, misogyny was news and not just the usual spectacle of everyday sexual harassment and abuse that women over centuries have endured. Decades of groping, unwanted advances, quid pro quo quickies, and forcible rape were brought into the light of day. The everyday clothes that disguise the raw, gaslighting demon of sexual violence were stripped off and misogyny stood naked before us. It seems as though the realizations brought about by the #metoo movement, the ruined careers, and the arrests made in some cases would be enough to bring about a cultural shift, a desire in men to rethink, and reorient their attitudes toward women. But misogyny, like every form of hate/oppression, is about fear and having power over another. Consequences for individual men, no matter how powerful those men are, do not equal systemic change. Indeed, when the #metoo dust settled, it was still just as funny to objectify, dismiss, or ignore women.

The inspiration for juxtaposing the stories of Leah, Rachel, Jacob, Zilpah (Leah’s maid/servant/slave), and Bilhah (Rachel’s maid/servant/slave) with “Three’s Company” came to me last summer as I was reading Genesis 29 and 30 in preparation for a couple of sermons. As the story unfolded in Genesis 29 and 30, Jacob could finally have/marry Rachel after seven years of laboring for her, but Laban, Jacob’s uncle, tricks him and substitutes Leah, Rachel’s older sister, into the wedding bed with Jacob; I could not help but think that Rachel is the Chrissy character and Leah is Janet. The text says, “Leah’s eyes were lovely, and Rachel was graceful and beautiful. Jacob loved Rachel” ⁴ (Janet was nice, but Chrissy had a lovely backside. Jack lusted after Chrissy). The text does not tell us how Leah felt about being sneaked into a bed with a man who awaited her younger sister, but the first words out of Jacob’s mouth to his uncle Laban upon the discovery of Leah were, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel?” ⁵ Therefore, while we do not know how Leah felt, we get a good idea of how Jacob felt about the switch. Laban, not missing a beat, bargains with Jacob for another seven years of labor for the younger daughter, Rachel, whom Jacob loves.

Jacob agrees to Laban’s terms, and labors another seven years so that he can finally have/marry Rachel, and the threesome configuration with Leah, Rachel, and Jacob begins. The text tells us that, “Leah was unloved, [so God] opened her womb,” while Rachel was loved, but jealous of Leah because Rachel had not yet become pregnant. It is important to remember that in the cultural context of this story, a woman’s worth was dependent upon whether or not she could provide male heirs for her husband. While the sibling competition is a foreseeable byproduct of the threesome, it is a sad situation for the sisters because neither one seems to have what she wanted; Leah had sons but was unloved, while Rachel was loved but “by a man she does not say she loves,” ⁶ and she had not yet had any sons. Meanwhile Jacob leapt back and forth between the two sisters’ beds. He and Leah had seven children altogether, six sons and one daughter, which is a lot of sex to have with someone you do not love. Rachel was not able to conceive at first, so in her jealousy, she offered Jacob Bilhah as what Dr. Wilda Gafney terms a “womb-slave” ⁷ so that she could lay claim to the children that Bilhah birthed. Jacob obliged Rachel’s wish and he and Bilhah had two sons. Meanwhile, Leah stopped conceiving for a period of time after the first five sons, but in her desperation for Jacob’s love, she offered Jacob Zilpah, her “womb-slave.” ⁸ This is where the story for me became a comedy of errors played out on women’s bodies.

As I read what transpires in Gen 30:3–24, I imagined it as a sitcom, much like “Three’s Company,” with multiple women, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah swarming around Jacob, the one man. Moreover, Jacob just happens, seemingly by no fault of his own, to be sleeping with not one of the women but all of them. Think of the show’s ratings! I imagined a scene with Jacob running in and out of the women’s bedrooms. He slips out of Leah’s bedroom, maybe running into Rachel in the hall. He yawns and pretends that he is going back to his bedroom so she will not know that he’s heading to Bilhah’s bedroom. I imagined the show would be filled with abundant sexual innuendoes and mundane sexist humor that makes Jacob somehow look innocent while simultaneously calling the women’s looks and credibility into question and putting them at odds with each other, undermining and jealous of each other. Further, I imagine that each time Jacob went to one of the women’s bedrooms, his character would use physical comedy or slapstick like tripping over something, making a big production of getting to the woman’s bed, and then right before entering the bedroom, he would look directly into the camera and shrugging with his hands in the air say, “What’s a guy to do?” The audience roars with laughter. The punchline in the comedy of errors in this show, in this dysfunctional Hebrew Bible family story, is the bodies of women—their bellies, their breasts, their thighs, and their wombs.

The bodies of the women who birthed the twelve tribes of Israel were the punchline of this story, adding entertainment value for the reader or hearer. The bodies of the women who birthed the twelve tribes of Israel were the bait and the bargaining chips that Laban used to secure free labor from Jacob; fourteen years of labor was the price for Rachel, never mind that three other women, whose willingness to give their bodies is never clarified, let alone considered. The bodies of the women who birthed the twelve tribes of Israel were the “battlefield,” as Dr. Gafney puts it, “in the war for Jacob’s attention and affection.” Gafney goes on to say, “Through the sexual and reproductive occupation of their bodies, people who would be known as Israel came into being. Through the wombs of Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah, Israel’s people were birthed by choice or by force … They are casualties of nation building. But their children, their grandchildren, and their descendants will claim and be claimed by the God of their patriarchs.” ⁹ These four women birthed a nation, a people, a legacy with which their names are scarcely associated; they are the mothers, the matriarchs of God’s people Israel. Yet, unless we approach Genesis 29 and 30 with a hermeneutic of suspicion and commit to the full humanity of each of these women, seeing them as more than just wives, or slaves, and the maker of male heirs, we run the risk of their stories forever being viewed through the eyes of misogyny—female bodies owned—and overshadowed by the patriarchs.

In order to commit to the full humanity of these biblical matriarchs, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah, we must identify and name the harm that was done to each of their bodies, their minds, their hearts, and their lives. We must name that Leah was substituted, willingly or not, into Jacob’s bed by her father. We must name that Leah was desperate for the love of Jacob who loved her sister, but still frequented her bed, ¹⁰ driving home the painful fact that sex was not love. We must name that Rachel was the object of Jacob’s desire and his love, though we are never told that she also loved him, and that whether or not she loved him, she was bound by her culture to provide male children. We must name that Rachel eventually died in childbirth, giving her life for the tribe of Benjamin. ¹¹ We must name that Bilhah and Zilpah were not given a voice or a story. We must name that consent to their bodies was denied them, that Laban, Rachel, Leah, and Jacob all had more say over their bodies than they had. We must name that without their consent, they were raped, even if they acquiesced. Actually, we must name that none of these women, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, or Zilpah, had the full power of consent to their bodies. Leah and Rachel’s bodies were given by a man to another man. Bilhah and Zilpah were given by a man as maids/servants/slaves to his daughters with the full understanding that they could then be given to another man with no consent. This was normal, everyday misogyny for the context.

To name the harm done to Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah is to bring some honor and some healing to their memories. If we simply decide that cultural context excuses harm, the idea that’s just how it was back then gives a pass to objectification, humiliation, and physical and sexual violence against women. If we simply agree with the notion that there was just no such thing as consent so we cannot critique the text, then we will continue to perpetuate the same abuses endured by our biblical matriarchs. We cannot necessarily judge the behavior of Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, Zilpah, or even of Jacob and Laban (though Laban’s behavior was pretty underhanded) against a twenty-first-century backdrop. Although we cannot judge the content contextually, we can mine the text, listening for the voices that have no dialogue, paying attention to the marginalized, looking for the story that is under the story. In doing so, we learn that some of the most important characters, especially the women in the Bible, do not have names and are never given a voice. Our dedication to the women in the Bible gives them a voice, however. Naming the harm done to our biblical matriarchs acknowledges their full humanity and offers healing to their bodies that were taken from them for the benefit of men.

Women’s bodies are still objectified for the benefit and entertainment of men and for television audiences. “Three’s Company” is long off the air, and while, admittedly, I do not watch a lot of new shows, I can tell you that if you turn on “Law & Order” (any iteration), or “CSI” (any iteration), the female characters will be wearing low-cut tight sweaters. Their characters may be strong women, smart and tough, but in many cases, female characters on television shows still exist for the male gaze. Although much has changed in terms of sexism, much has stayed the same. Naming the harm to the female characters in all of our stories—the stories of Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah and the stories of Janet and Chrissy—benefits all women. Naming the harm helps us to see our humanity in a culture that dehumanizes us, helps us to reclaim our bodies in a culture that objectifies us, and helps us to stand in our wholeness in a culture that reduces us to body parts—breasts and thighs and butts. The women’s bodies in the stories of Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah, the bodies in the stories of Janet and Chrissy, and the bodies of countless women in other stories, are the bodies of all women in all times and places. Our harm, our wholeness, and our humanity are represented in every woman’s story. Everyday misogyny is woven into the fabric of our culture; it is normalized and therefore may not be noticed right away. If we cannot identify misogyny when it is disguised as normal, then we might not realize we are being harmed. Naming the harm caused by patriarchy and misogyny in all women’s stories, from the Hebrew Bible to pop culture, lifts up and honors every matriarch.