“And the LORD said to her,
"Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be
divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.”
Genesis 25:23
What does
she see in him? Surely, like me, you’ve
sat in the congregation at a wedding more than once, staring the couple before
you. It couldn’t be the looks or the
brain power, to be sure. Wouldn’t be the
prospect for success or the pleasant disposition. Surely, she could do better for herself.
And yet
those promises are made. Such bold
things they are to say to another person, who is surely to change, and not
always for the better. “Will you have
this man, this woman?” Love which must choose, if it is to be love. What does she see in him? Isn’t it merely that she sees him, and that
is enough.
The
blindness of love: it must be about the oldest of all jokes. In A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Titania
awakens to fall in love with Bottom, recently turned into a donkey, he gets the
best line: "And yet, to say the
truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.[1]” Pascal may have been mulling over higher
things, but he was making the same general point when he wrote: “The heart has
its reasons, which reason does not know.[2]”
