Beautiful
It seems that all of our forefathers were married to beautiful women. The Torah is actually very explicit on this point.
Shortly after Avraham came to Eretz Yisrael, there was a famine in the land. He and his wife Sarah fled to Egypt to avoid the famine. As they approached Egypt, Avraham said to Sarah, “I have known that you are a woman of beautiful appearance.” (Bereshit 12:11) It turns out that this was not just Avraham’s biased opinion. We are also told that the Egyptian’s saw how beautiful Sarah was and took her directly to Paro!
Yitzchak was married to Rivkah. Two times the Torah relates that she was beautiful (Bereshit 24:16 and 26:7) using the expression that she was “fair to look upon.” In fact, the first time this trait is mentioned, the Torah says that Rivkah was “very fair” and the Netziv understands from the addition of the word “very” that Rivkah was the most beautiful maiden in that place.
Our father Yaakov married two sisters: Leah and Rachel. When the Torah describes these two women it says (Bereshit 29:17) “Leah’s eyes were tender and Rachel was beautiful of form and beautiful of appearance.”
Why is the Torah telling us so much about how beautiful these women were? Every Friday night we recite the words of Aishet Chayil, from the last verses of Sefer Mishlei (Proverbs), the wisdom of King Solomon. The next to last verse says:
Proverbs 31:30 Grace is false and beauty vain; a woman who fears Hashem, she should be praised.
We could be tempted to view this verse as a rejection of physical beauty. Let’s completely forsake the physical and embrace only the spiritual. The Vilna Gaon suggests another approach: Grace is false and beauty is vain when they are divorced from fear of Hashem. Without fear of Hashem then they are like a jewel in a pig’s snout. But when a woman fears Hashem, then also the grace and beauty are to be praised.
May this be true of all of our wives and daughters.
