Jacob Part 12: Rakhel's Scheme to Build a Family
Notes
Transcript
God Sees Leah
God Sees Leah
Last time we were together we talked about
Read that just to get our bearings
31 When the Lord saw that Leah was neglected, he opened her womb; but Rachel was unable to conceive. 32 Leah conceived, gave birth to a son, and named him Reuben, for she said, “The Lord has seen my affliction; surely my husband will love me now.” 33 She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said, “The Lord heard that I am neglected and has given me this son also.” So she named him Simeon. 34 She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said, “At last, my husband will become attached to me because I have borne three sons for him.” Therefore he was named Levi. 35 And she conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Therefore she named him Judah. Then Leah stopped having children.
Rakhel’s Scheme to Build a Family
Rakhel’s Scheme to Build a Family
macro summary chart of the center of the center of the center of the Yaaqov story. So we just watched Yahweh seeing and showing compassion in favor to the unloved Leah.
The first four sons of Israel.
What's gonna follow are three shorter narratives that are all gonna sound notes of Eden failure.
So if Yahweh providing life where there was no life, remember it began with Yahweh showing compassion on Leah, but Rakhel was barren, unrooted. So in the midst of unrootedness, there's fruitfulness. Yeah, so it's an Eden note followed by a failure in Eden note, which is times three here.
1 When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she envied her sister. “Give me sons, or I will die!” she said to Jacob.
2 Jacob became angry with Rachel and said, “Am I in the place of God? He has withheld offspring from you!”
3 Then she said, “Here is my maid Bilhah. Go sleep with her, and she’ll bear children for me so that through her I too can build a family.” 4 So Rachel gave her slave Bilhah to Jacob as a wife, and he slept with her. 5 Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. 6 Rachel said, “God has vindicated me; yes, he has heard me and given me a son,” so she named him Dan.
7 Rachel’s slave Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. 8 Rachel said, “In my wrestlings with God, I have wrestled with my sister and won,” and she named him Naphtali.
9 When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her slave Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. 10 Leah’s slave Zilpah bore Jacob a son. 11 Then Leah said, “What good fortune!” and she named him Gad.
12 When Leah’s slave Zilpah bore Jacob a second son, 13 Leah said, “I am happy that the women call me happy,” so she named him Asher.
"And Rakhel she saw that she had not given birth for Yaaqov, and she became jealous of her sister.
And she said to Yaaqov, 'Give me sons. If not, I should just die.' And Yaaqov," sensitive husband that he is, "Burned with hot anger against Rakhel. And he said, 'What, you think I'm Elohim? Am I in the place of Elohim? Like I'm the one withholding from you the fruit of your womb?'"
And she said, all right then, no empathy there. So I've got this idea, got this idea. "'My dad gave me a slave, Bilhah, go into her so she can give birth onto my knees, and from her I will also be built up.'
"She gave to him her servant Bilhah as a wife. And Yaaqov went into her, and Bilhah conceived, and she birthed for Yaaqov a son. And Rakhel said, 'God has vindicated me. And he also has heard my voice.'"
He heard my sister's voice, now he has heard my voice and given me a son. "So she called his name Dan." The Hebrew word for vindicate is "dananni." So she named him Dan. Dananni, Dan.
"Rakhel's servant Bilhah conceived again and birthed for Yaaqov a second son. And Rakhel said, 'Wrestlings of Elohim I have wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed.
So she called his name Naphtali." The word for wrestlings is "naphtuley" and wrestled is "niphtalti." So with naphtuley, niphtalti, so I named him Naphtali.
We've been here before. Abraham, Don't know how I'm ever gonna have a fruitful womb. I've got an idea, I've got this slave. So we're clearly, we're replaying Sarah's failure because of, and who does Sarah give to a Avraham? Hagar. Who was Leah likened to in the previous story? Hagar.
The unloved who was given. So there's so many comparisons and contrasts to the previous generation.
Look at their dialogue.
She equates not having children with death.
And Yaaqov gets really angry and says, "Listen, you think I'm an elohim?" Think of the Eden story here. What does the snake say to the woman? "Oh, you know, if you eat of the fruit, you'll become elohim." So this is this ironic inversion where he is like, "What, you think I'm an elohim, that I can make you pregnant, give you fruit of the womb?" Fruit of the womb. Remember, Eden and the womb are analogies to each other.
So just as Sarah's failure to trust God resulted in her taking of what she shouldn't have taken, a slave, and giving her, that's their replay of the garden failure. And so now here is the granddaughter of Sarah replaying the failure of her grandparents. And so she names these two sons. I mean, here's the sad irony is vindication.
This is my vindication.
And when you read the psalms, and the psalmists often cry out for vindication using the same exact verb in this language, but this is just this weird, sad, twisted version of it.
I mean, you can just feel it.
wrestling with my sister.
we're planting a little seed right here that's gonna sprout in a few chapters from now when there's a midnight wrestling match.
So the younger daughter who is loved but not fruitful, somehow thinks that her fruitfulness is the result of my wrestling, her struggle.
And so she even attributes her fruitfulness, she said, "God vindicated me, but man, I've been slugging it out here and I've overcome." So she attributes God's gift to her own might in her struggle.
So that's messed up.
So would these two sons be considered Rachel's or Bilhah's? Because at this point, Bilhah is now a wife.
Yes. Yeah, totally. I think this is how it works with- Culturally, this is how it works with concubines, these like second-tier wives. 'Cause what she says is, "Here's Bilhah, but she's my property. So she gives birth onto my knees."
So she carries it, but she's my property, so it becomes my child.
So what's interesting is as it's gonna go on, the two children that she's going to personally have become her loved, her favorite and loved sons, she never mentions these two sons again. But her plan is for them to be transferred to me so that I am built up by the birth of these children.
So they're slave sons, they're property, but they're the way that I can add value to my husband's estate.
How Eden, like Eve, God built-Yeah, God built the woman.. And in that case, the woman was God's gift and God's building. And then when Sarah, the word "built" doesn't appear very many times. God builds the woman in Eden. Cain builds his city to protect himself. Even when God said, "I'm gonna protect you anyway," Cain goes, says, "Yeah, cool, thanks." Then he goes and builds his own, like, walled city to protect himself.
2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
And then Sarah,
And then Sarah has no children. And so what she says is, "Go into my slave.
she literally says is, "Perhaps I can build up myself." I'll build my own.
Yahweh's not gonna give me something, I'll build my own. I'll build my own seed. So it's this portrait of what God builds to provide what people can't provide for themselves, and then what people build to try to provide for themselves when they think God isn't coming through for them.
I think it's such a sad commentary that when we are lacking and we want something so desperately that we'll abuse somebody underneath us for our own purposes and build up whatever it is we're trying to build.
in one sense, I think this story is trying to help us see any fruit of the womb is always a gift of God.
But it's even more sad because in this story every child is an Eden gift. But then to twist that into self-elevation.
The tragedy is going to, who's the most famous Danite?
This is a great Bible trivia.
Samson.
2 There was a certain man from Zorah, from the family of Dan, whose name was Manoah; his wife was unable to conceive and had no children. 3 The angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Although you are unable to conceive and have no children, you will conceive and give birth to a son.
Samson's mom was she barren?
The hyperlinks so start to meld together
"There was a certain man from Zorah named Manoakh," "Rest," it's Noah's name built into a noun, "from the clan of the Danites and a wife who was 'aqarah, unable to have children. And so God gives them a child, they dedicate him as a set apart one like Samuel, a Nazirite.
And he goes on to be a drunken, marrying all these Canaanite women. He sees them, they're good in his eyes, he wants them. And he ends up with his eyes put out, and his only moment of victory is the moment he gives up his life. he's like this antichrist.
He is like this sad, distorted, inverted seed of the woman. This is the Samson story, and it begins like this.
So all of these men, all of these stories from barrenness to birth through parents or the children that end up being these, it's just sad.
Hebrew Bible is full of these stories. You gotta stop and just be like, what is all this about? Like, they're all, they must all have some core message that the Hebrew Bible is just filled with this motif. And I think we're close to the heart of it right here. When humans take the Eden gifts of God, but twist them into their own agendas, it just becomes this weird perverted echo chamber of distortion.
Verse 9.
"So Leah, her sister, saw that she had stopped giving birth, and" this is implied, but not stated, she saw, man, my sister's plan worked, maybe I could make that work for me too. "So she took her servant Zilpah and she gave her to Yaaqov as a wife. And Leah's servant Zilpah birthed for Yaaqov a son. And Leah said, 'By fortune.' So she called his name Fortune." The word "fortune," ah, god, it's the name of a Canaanite deity, Fortune. The God Gad.
Gad is the name of a deity of good luck, equivalent to the Greek →Tyche and Latin →Fortuna. Gad is mentioned together with →Meni in
Fortune in English is just, maybe, fate. It's totally been secularized. But Fortuna was a Roman deity, the goddess of chance, Fortuna.
But so fortune is a precise English translation. So she names her child after a Canaanite deity.
"Leah's servant Zilpah birthed for Yaaqov a second son. And Leah said, 'By my blessing for women will call me the blessed one.' So she named him Asher." The most common Hebrew word for blessing is "barak" or "baruk," "berakah." But there's this close synonym which is 'asher, which means, well, actually, "fortunate" is a good English translation, not in its technical meaning, but anyhow.
So blessing and fortune.
You are like, oh, this is a little bit different than "I praise Yahweh." So whatever redeemed mindset she had, it takes a weird turn right here.
So now we've had two failure narratives.
The sister and then her sister, and then it gets even more weird and interesting.
Summary
Summary
Rakhel’s actions with Yaaqov are an intensified replay of Sarah’s actions with Abraham, as well as a contrast with Rivqah from Genesis 25:21.
Sarai is barren and schemes her own way to produce the promised seed, accusing Abraham when the plan doesn’t work.
Rivqah is barren, but Yitzhaq intercedes for her, and Yahweh restores fertility to her womb.
Rakhel is barren, accuses her husband for not giving her sons, and then schemes her own way (identical to Sarah’s) to produce seed.
Of Mandrakes and Bowls of Stew
Of Mandrakes and Bowls of Stew
14 Reuben went out during the wheat harvest and found some mandrakes in the field. When he brought them to his mother Leah, Rachel asked, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”
15 But Leah replied to her, “Isn’t it enough that you have taken my husband? Now you also want to take my son’s mandrakes?”
“Well then,” Rachel said, “he can sleep with you tonight in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.”
16 When Jacob came in from the field that evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must come with me, for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” So Jacob slept with her that night.
17 God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. 18 Leah said, “God has rewarded me for giving my slave to my husband,” and she named him Issachar.
19 Then Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. 20 “God has given me a good gift,” Leah said. “This time my husband will honor me because I have borne six sons for him,” and she named him Zebulun. 21 Later, Leah bore a daughter and named her Dinah.
22 Then God remembered Rachel. He listened to her and opened her womb. 23 She conceived and bore a son, and she said, “God has taken away my disgrace.” 24 She named him Joseph and said, “May the Lord add another son to me.”
"So one day Reuben was out in the days of the wheat harvest. And he was in the field and he found some duda'im," duda'im.
Mandrakes. So he find some mandrakes in the field. It's a type of like a fruit, semi-citrus. Kind of like what we would, or mango or something like that, mandrakes.
"He brought them to his mother, Leah." Remember who's Reuben?
Leah's firstborn, and therefore the firstborn of Yaaqov.
"So Rakhel said to Leah, 'Oh wow, your son found some duda'im?
Give me some of those.' Leah said to Rakhel, 'You think it's nothing that you took my husband? Now you're gonna take my son's duda'im?' And Rakhel said, 'All right then, I've got an idea, you can have sex with Yaaqov tonight in exchange for those duda'im.' So Yaaqov came in from the field that evening and Leah comes out to meet him. And she said, 'You have to go into me. I paid for it, a wage. I paid a wage for it with my son's duda'im.' And so he laid with her that night."
One failure narrative, escalated failure narrative, even weirder failure narrative.
so we, in exchange for food, sibling rivalry in exchange for food, I can find my way to the, to fruitfulness.
In exchange for food. And this is the younger Rakhel trying to use this food to get an angle but then Leah works the angle over her and you're like, "I've been here before, haven't I?"
So we're replaying that weird story about the stew and the firstborn who has the right of the firstborn. And who's out in the field and finds these in the first place? Reuben, the firstborn.
So it's all, it's so weird.It's like a hall of mirrors at this point, and every story is echoing every other story.
Do you remember when Esau comes in from the field hungry and he says, "I'm gonna die, I'm so hungry." And then what he says is, he sees a bowl of stew.
Do you remember what he said? Give me that edom edom. Give me that red red. Give me some edom edom. And then the edom edom is how Yaaqov tricks his brother into getting the firstborn right.
So the red red, edom edom is spelled with the same letters in a different order as the word "mandrakes," duda'im. "Give me the edom edom," and now here it's the duda'im.
And both are wordplays on the three letters at the center of the word 'adam.
Who is, 'adam, being male and female, who are the first people who exchange their firstborn right for the fruit in the garden.
So we're echoing the deceptive stew to steal the birthright, now we're doing that here. Esau came in from the field, Reuben found them in the field, Yaaqov comes in from the field. The duda'im and then being cheated out of wages, "Give me the wage." That was the whole thing between Yaaqov and Laban.
“Hebrew dudaʾim has long been identified with the Mandragora, officinarum, which grows wild in the fields. Its small, yellow, tomato-like fruit ripens during March and April. Chemical analysis shows it to contain emetic, purgative, and narcotic substances, which explains its widespread medicinal use in ancient times. Because the fruit exudes a distinctive and heady fragrance, and its sturdy, forked or intertwined root has torso-like features, the mandrake appears as a widely diffused folkloristic motif associated with aphrodisiac powers. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sex, was given the epithet 'hē mandragoriti,' 'Lady of the Mandrake.' The Hebrew term dudaʾim is close in sound to dodim, 'love.' Indeed, the two are associated in the Song of Songs: 'There I will give my love (dodai) to you. / The mandrakes (dudaʾim) yield their fragrance ... my beloved (dodi)' (7:13–14).”
Sarna, Nahum M. (2001). Genesis. JPS. 209.
So there's more trails that the hyperlinks could go, but let's just, we had one failure narrative, second failure narrative, and here's the third one. And all of them are in different ways mirroring the language of the failure at the Eden tree, but also mirroring Jacob's hiring or buying with the edom edom of the firstborn right, and now Leah buying the right of the firstborn.
Even though she is the firstborn, she's not treated like the firstborn. So she has to buy with the duda'im.
That were found by the firstborn.
Leah’s 2 Sons plus a Daughter
Leah’s 2 Sons plus a Daughter
17 God listened to Le’ah, and she conceived and bore Ya‘akov a fifth son. 18 Le’ah said, “God has given me my hire, because I gave my slave-girl to my husband.” So she called him Yissakhar [hire, reward].
19 Le’ah conceived again and bore a sixth son to Ya‘akov. 20 Le’ah said, “God has given me a wonderful gift. Now at last my husband will live with me, since I have borne him six sons.” And she called him Z’vulun [living together].
21 After this, she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah [controversy over rights].
And despite the messed up motives of all of these people, "Yahweh listened to Leah and she became pregnant and gave birth to a fifth son.
And Leah said, 'Yahweh has given me my sekari, my wage, in that I gave my female slave to my husband.' So she named him Yissakar," after my sekari.
"She became pregnant again and gave birth to a sixth son for Yaaqov. And she said, 'Yahweh has gifted me, zevadani, with a good gift, zeved. This time my husband will exalt me, yizbeleni, for I've given birth to six sons.' So she named him," excuse me, "Zevulun, for he will zevalani.
And she gave birth to her seventh child." The seventh is a daughter. "And she called her name Judgment, Dinah. Only Daughter mentioned. Is there no others? or is she mentioned here because she will be important for a story to come? I Don’t know.
God Remembers Rachel
God Remembers Rachel
22 Then God took note of Rachel, heeded her prayer and made her fertile. 23 She conceived, had a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.” 24 She called him Yosef [may he add], saying, “May Adonai add to me another son.”
Then Elohim remembered Rakhel, and Elohim listened to her. He opened her womb, she conceived and gave birth to a son. And she said, 'God has gathered away my humiliation, God has 'asaphed my humiliation.' So she named him Yoseph.
And she also said, 'May Yahweh yoseph, add to me, another son.'"
And that's the end of the story. The center of the center of the center.
So there's a note that echoes Yahweh's compassion on Leah, but now after this whole rivalry, Rakhel finds herself in the status of the loved one but unfruitful. And so Yahweh is generous to her too. And while she's grateful that my humiliation of being barren has been removed, what she really wants is more.
she names Yoseph after "I want another one." And that's the end of the story.
Up to this point in the Genesis scroll, God has only remembered two other people: Noah and those with him, sitting in the ark waiting for the dry land to appear, and Abraham, who interceded on behalf of Lot sitting in Sodom.
In all three stories, the characters are in situations where they are not able save or create life on their own initiative. But in each case, the chosen one becomes the object of Yahweh’s mercy, and their plight gains his attention.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14rsAlYNVimjdtq-r1PaZpyeNV2PuylXGoBVkdyUQWAQ/edit?usp=sharing
Jacob Deceives His Deceiver
Jacob Deceives His Deceiver
Bibliography
Bibliography
https://bibleproject.com/classroom/jacob
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https://hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Parashah/Summaries/Vayetzei/Leah_s_Eyes/leah_s_eyes.html
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John D. Currid, A Study Commentary on Genesis: Genesis 25:19–50:26, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2003), 97–98.
Abraham Kuruvilla, Genesis: A Theological Commentary for Preachers (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2014), 374.
Scott Noegel's “Sex, Sticks, and Tricksters in Genesis 30:31-43: A New Look at an Old Crux” in Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society, vol. 25 (1997), p. 7-17.
