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 : and in Barbary the bride is brought to the bridegroom's house, and with some of her female relations conveyed into a private room ; 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.
Tournefort's Voyage to the Levant, vol. 3. p. 255. Ockley's Account of Southwest Barbary, c. 6. p.