The Youngest at the Wedding
On the night Lavan deceived Yaakov, he gave the youngest maid, Zilpah, to Leah, so that Yaakov would not realize whom he was marrying.
Seven years had passed, and to Yaakov they had seemed like a few days, so great was his love for Rachel. He came to Lavan and asked for his wife. Lavan gathered all the people of the place and made a feast. Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer relates that all the men of the place gathered to show kindness to Yaakov.
But Lavan had another plan. When evening came, he took his older daughter Leah and brought her to Yaakov. The Torah pauses at that moment to say that Lavan had given his maidservant Zilpah to Leah as her maid. Rashi explains the reason. It was the custom in those days to give the older maid to the older daughter and the younger maid to the younger. Zilpah was the youngest of them all, still a child in years. Lavan gave the youngest maid to the older daughter so that Yaakov would not realize that it was Leah being brought to him.
Chazal teach that Zilpah was Lavan's own daughter, born to him by a concubine. Rashi says plainly that Lavan gave her to Leah in order to deceive Yaakov. In the morning Yaakov saw that it was Leah, and he said to Lavan: Was it not for Rachel that I worked for you? Why did you deceive me?
Lavan's trick did not have the last word. The young girl he had given to Leah as part of his trick became, in time, a wife of Yaakov herself and the mother of two tribes of Israel.
Source: Bereishis 29:20–25; Rashi on Bereishis 30:10 (from Bereishis Rabbah 71:9); Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 36; Rashi on Bereishis 31:50 (from Bereishis Rabbah 74:13). English: The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah (2022); Pirke de Rebbi Eliezer, trans. G. Friedlander (London 1916).
Rashi says that Lavan gave Zilpah to Leah in order to deceive Yaakov: even a gift to his daughter became part of his trick. Most of us would never do what Lavan did, but small versions are common: asking a coworker to say you are in a meeting, having a child tell a caller that you are not home. This week, if you are about to ask someone to cover for you, stop. Say the true thing yourself, and leave the other person out of it.