Part Two

Genesis 30:9-24

If you were giving a title to these verses, it might be “The Battle of the Sisters.”  What a mess!  Jacob is being passed around like a stud horse and it not just between the two wives it now includes their servant girls. Can you imagine this happening in our culture today?   The attitude or mind-set was on productivity and not so much on the sexual relations, if not why would any woman give her maid to her husband.  In that culture, son equated security that the mother would have in her old age.  But it is impossible to over look the jealousy that is between the sisters.

We may have uncovered the motives that drove the sister, but what is behind Jacob going passive and doing what he is told.  Henry M. Morris has this to say on page 467 of “The Genesis Record,” “As far as Jacob was concerned, he seems to have been rather pliant, going indiscriminately to whichever bed was most conveniently available at the time.  Perhaps, virile as he was, he rather enjoyed the sexual variety, which this household rivalry afforded him.  It also would be important in the future accomplishment of God’s promises regarding the nation, which would come from him.  Much of his indiscriminate moving about from bed to bed, however, was simply due to his desire to keep peace in his family, insofar as possible, by not favoring either wife in excess.”

As we look into the bed of Jacob we see that Leah is not going to be out done by little sister, so she offers Jacob her servant to be his wife.  Leah’s maid is named Zilpah and she gives Jacob two sons in rapid speed and Leah names them Gad meaning “Fortunate” and Asher, meaning “Happy”. 

These two sisters are like little children, what one has the other wants, and picking up the story in verse fourteen we have this account; “In the days of wheat harvest Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah.  Then Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”  Once more Henry M. Morris gives this insight on page 468, “The mandrake is a small orange-colored berrylike fruit, much esteemed in ancient times as an aphrodisiac and inducer of fertility.  It has been called the “love-apple” and, in Western countries, the “May-apple.”  It has also been used as a narcotic and emetic, especially its large roots.  It was valued in promoting fertility and no doubt both Leah and Rachel desired it.”

So Leah made a deal for Jacob’s services with Rachel, and it is clear, that given a choice, he is in Rachel’s bed.  He sleeps with Leah and she once more with child, it is the fifth son Issachar meaning “Reward”.  Her reward was that it seems as if Jacob was spending more time with her and she gave him a sixth son, named Zebulun, meaning “Dwelling.”  And after six sons, God blessed Jacob with a daughter by Leah named Dinah, meaning “Judgment.”

And now the rest of the story; “Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.”  God is the giver and yet it takes many of us years before we turn to him and stop trying to do what we cannot do without His blessing.  And she had Joseph, and the meaning of his name can be derived both from “Taken Away” and “May He Add.”  She has been blessed and her shame taken away and now she is asking God to bless her with another son.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice