And it came to pass in the evening
After the feast was over, and the guests were departed; when it
was night, a fit season to execute his designs, and practise
deceit:
that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to
him,
to Jacob, in his apartment, his bedchamber, or to him in bed: for
it is still the custom in some eastern countries for the
bridegroom to go to bed first, and then the bride comes, or is
brought to him in the dark, and veiled, so that he sees her not:
so the Armenians have now such a custom at their marriages that
the husband goes to bed first; nor does the bride put off her
veil till in bed F15: and in Barbary the bride is
brought to the bridegroom's house, and with some of her female
relations conveyed into a private room F16; then
the bride's mother, or some very near relation, introduces the
bridegroom to his new spouse, who is in the dark, and obliged in
modesty not to speak or answer upon any account: and if this was
the case here, as it is highly probable it was, the imposition on
Jacob is easily accounted for:
and he went in unto her;
or lay with her as his wife; a modest expression of the use of
the bed.
F15 Tournefort's Voyage to the Levant, vol. 3. p. 255.
F16 Ockley's Account of Southwest Barbary, c. 6. p. 78.