November 16, Genesis 30
When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. - Genesis 30:1
The emotional trauma created by polygamy troubled Jacob's family. Rachel voiced her desperation in her outburst to Jacob, "Give me children, or I shall die!" (There's a dark, sad self-prophecy in that. She did have children, and did indeed die during the birth of the second child.) Jacob's angry response also shows his frustration. But it tells us that he knew and believed God, and knew he wasn't God.
Rachel and Leah were sisters, but their relationship was ruined by competition and comparison with one another. Envy is like a potent dye. It spreads through and stains the heart and life of its host. It colors all that it touches. Jacob's polygamous household was the perfect breeding ground for envy. When it flared up, it brought misery and troubles to Jacob and his family. Rachel was envious of her sister. Jacob already had four sons with Leah, and Rachel had not conceived the first time. Jacob favored Rachel and admired her beauty, but Rachel couldn't give him a child.
Polygamy returned to the Abrahamic line when Rachel employed the same strategy Sarah used years before to get a child. She gave her servant Bilhah to Jacob, and the slave girl became a concubine. She bore two of Jacob's twelve sons. Leah, not to be one-upped by her sister, gave Jacob another concubine, Zilpah, who produced two more sons for Jacob. The babies’ names are reflections of the bitter rivalry between Leah and Rachel.
The story goes on and the situation grows worse with each new baby and mother. Leah had two more boys and at least one girl, Dinah. Finally Rachel had the son she prayed for and had tried to produce by her own ungodly scheme. Instead of being content, Rachel was already thinking about the next baby she could have when she named the first one. "Joseph" means "another," as in "May God give me another son."
Jacob's wives also showed signs of being under the influence of paganism and superstition. The incident about the mandrakes shows that they believed in the plant's aphrodisiac qualities. Rachel was willing to "buy" the mandrakes for the price of letting Leah have their husband for a night. Leah accused Rachel of not only stealing her husband, but also her mandrakes. There's neither faith nor science behind the idea of how mandrakes might help a woman conceive. But the superstition was strong.
Jacob's actions may also reveal some superstitious influence on his thinking. After he made the deal with Laban to take only the black, striped or spotted cattle for his wages, he peeled strips from sticks of poplar, almond and plane trees, and laid the peeled sticks in the feed troughs when the animals were there. If the animals saw the stripes during their breeding, it was supposed to produce the kind of animals that would belong to Jacob. Again, superstition and not science was behind such a practice. The possible exception is that God may have told Jacob to do that, and his doing it may have been an act of obedient faith. In that case, it still wasn't science, but God causing Jacob's multicolored flocks to swell.
The new deal between Jacob and Laban came about when Jacob first announced his intention to leave Laban and go back to his home country. Laban persuaded him to stay longer, and showed his own superstition. He claimed he "learned by divination" that the Lord had blessed him because of Jacob. That's as pagan an idea in Laban as in Pharaoh who divined from his cup in Egypt. (Joseph will use that as part of his masquerade with his brothers years later, and they will believe it.)
The eye of faith can discern God's control over all the events described in this chapter. He had promised to be with Jacob and he was. God is well able to grant or withhold conception of a child; the fruit of the womb really is "his reward" (Psalm 127:3). God was in control of Jacob's departure time from Laban as well as the wealth he would take with him when he left.
These ancient folks had the same struggles and weaknesses that still plague us today. We should read about their struggles with a sympathetic eye, and trust that God is still sovereign over our circumstances as surely as he was in control of theirs.
Copyright © 2021 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—November 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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