Jacob thought he was having sex with Rachel on the wedding night

[tonychanyt]

Genesis 29:

18 Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.”

Genesis 29:

21 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife, for my time is completed, that I may go in to her.”

i.e., give me Rachel.

Time to get married:

22 Laban gathered all the men of the place and made a feast. 23 Now in the evening he took his daughter Leah, and brought her to him; and Jacob went in to her.

Jacob did not find out that it was the wrong woman until the morning. How could that be?

25 So it came about in the morning that, behold, it was Leah! And he said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served with you? Why then have you deceived me?”

Jacob mistook Leah for Rachel on the bed of the wedding night, all night. The irony here is that Jacob the deceiver was deceived.

What happened?

It was the scheme of Laban. He had a contingency plan for Jacob's wedding night. He had made sure that before the consummation, Jacob would have eaten and drunk so much that he couldn't tell the night from the day. It might even involve smoking. Whatever the means, Laban had made sure that Jacob could not distinguish Leah from Rachel that night.

This wasn't unique, years earlier Lot's daughters tried it also in Genesis 19:

31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”