Genesis 30.22-24-The Lord Remembers Rachel and She Gives Birth to Joseph
Tuesday July 11, 2006
Genesis: Genesis 30:22-24-The Lord Remembers Rachel and She Gives Birth to Joseph
Lesson # 176
Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 30:22.
This evening we will study Genesis 30:22-24, which completes the section of the book of Genesis containing the record of the birth of Jacob’s children, and which section began in Genesis 29:31.
Genesis 29:31-30-24 is basically a study of love, sex, marriage and children and sounds like a “soap opera,” with Jacob hopping from bedroom to bedroom and his wives competing with each other for his love and affection.
Unlike today’s modern soap operas on television, the soap opera found in Genesis 29:31-30:24 is not designed to entertain us or encourage us to sin but rather, quite the opposite, it is designed encourage us to live righteously before the Lord.
In Genesis 29:31-35, we saw Leah bearing Jacob four sons whose names are Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah.
In Genesis 30:1-8, we saw Rachel’s maid Bilhah bearing Jacob two more sons, Dan and Naphtali.
In Genesis 30:9-13, we noted Leah’s maid Zilpah bearing two more children for Jacob, namely, Gad and Asher.
On Sunday, we studied Genesis 30:14-21, which contains the record of Leah bearing Jacob two more sons, namely, Issachar and Zebulun.
This evening we will note Genesis 30:22-24, in which we will see the Lord remembering Rachel and enabling her to finally bear Jacob a boy who they named Joseph.
Genesis 30:22, “Then God remembered Rachel, and God gave heed to her and opened her womb.”
When Genesis 30:22 says that “God remembered Rachel” it does “not” mean that He had forgotten her but rather it signifies that God according to His timetable is about to act on Rachel’s behalf by giving her the capacity to get pregnant.
The framework of the story of Jacob’s children implies that Rachel had to wait at least seven years after marrying Jacob to bear her first child and fourteen years since their betrothal (See Genesis 29:18, 27).
The statement “God remembered Rachel” expresses the Lord’s compassion towards Rachel and that He acted decisively on her behalf by giving her a child.
God’s love is “compassionate” meaning that God intensely desires and will act to alleviate the pain and suffering of another or remove its cause (1 John 3:16-17).
Exodus 33:18, “Then Moses said, ‘I pray You, show me Your glory!’
Exodus 33:19, “And He said, ‘I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.’”
Psalm 116:5, “Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; Yes, our God is compassionate.”
The statement “God gave heed to her (Rachel)” implies that Rachel prayed to God to enable her to get pregnant and expresses her faith in God.
At this point in her life, Rachel stopped trusting in the pagan superstition that mandrakes could get her pregnant and instead trusted in God who honored her faith in Him by answering her prayer for a child of her own.
After all of Rachel’s devices and schemes have been exhausted, God grants her the desire of her heart.
Psalm 37:4-5, “Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He will do it.”
Rachel’s prayer for a child was successful because she offered it in faith.
Faith is bringing our fears and weaknesses to God and believing that somehow God will transform our pain into a moment of grace.
The fulfillment of one’s prayer requests demands faith (Mt. 17:20; Jam. 5:15).
Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
The faith of Rachel in praying for a child demonstrates the spiritual principle that you appropriate the omnipotence of God by operating in faith.
Matthew 17:20, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.’”
The fact that Rachel was barren gave the Lord an opportunity to demonstrate His power in her life.
Jeremiah 32:27, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?”
The fact that Rachel’s prayer for a child was answered and solved her problem of infertility teaches that prayer solves problems (Kgs. 17:1; cf. 18:36-46; Acts 12:1-17; Phlp. 4:6).
Genesis 30:23, “So she conceived and bore a son and said, ‘God has taken away my reproach.’”
Rachel’s statement that “God has taken away my reproach” reveals that in her day it was calamitous for a woman to be childless and marked her as an ignominious failure in the eyes of others.
Genesis 30:24, “She named him Joseph, saying, ‘May the LORD give me another son.’”
The name “Joseph” ([s@w)y) (yoseph) literally means, “He adds,” which is a play on the verb yasaph ([s^y*), “to add” and is also a prayer for another child, foreshadowing the birth of Benjamin.
Rachel refers to God with the personal covenant name of God Yahweh (hw *hy+), “Lord,” which emphasizes the “immanency” of God who intervened in the life of Rachel providing her with a child in order to fulfill His covenant promises to Jacob.
Up to this point in Genesis 30, the term Elohim, “God” has been used exclusively and not the covenant name of God Yahweh, “Lord” in order to emphasize the omnipotence of God which enabled Rachel and Leah to conceive and bear children for Jacob in fulfillment of His covenant promise to Jacob to give him numerous progeny.
The fact that Rachel refers to God with the covenant name of God, Yahweh indicates that she is a believer.
1 Corinthians 12:3b, “No one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.”
The jealousy, bickering, superstition, and weak faith demonstrated by Jacob and his wives Rachel and Leah stand out in Genesis 29:31-30:24.
God's gift of children was gracious since He gave them in spite of, rather than because of, the behavior of the parents, which Rachel acknowledged finally as did Jacob.
This account of the origin of the twelve tribes of Israel must have proved to be most humbling to the nation of Israel who first read the book of Genesis since it was hardly a story which would have inspired national pride.
This story would serve to remind them that their “roots” were no basis for pride whatsoever.
They must never trust in their heritage, as the Jews of Jesus’ day did (cf. John 8:33, 39), but in the God of their heritage.
This is why God instructed them to recite their origins at the presentation of the first fruits:
Deuteronomy 26:5, “You shall answer and say before the LORD your God, ‘My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; but there he became a great, mighty and populous nation.’”
Now I’d like to extrapolate several principles from Genesis 29:31-30:24, which pertain to love, sex, marriage, and children.
(1) The propaganda of Satan’s cosmic system has promoted the lie that wealth, good environment, sex, marriage, having children, approbation from men will produce true enduring happiness, contentment and fulfillment in life.
Satan’s propaganda machine promotes the lie that good circumstances and people are the basis for happiness, but God’s Word states that true happiness is based upon a relationship and fellowship with God for the purpose of doing the Father’s will.
True enduring happiness and contentment and fulfillment in life is produced in our lives by the Holy Spirit when we obey the Father’s will and appropriate by faith the teaching of the Spirit in the Word of God that we have been crucified, died, buried, raised and seated with Christ (See Romans 6; Ephesians 2:1-10).
Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
Money, good environment, sex, marriage, having children, approbation from men can never produce true enduring happiness, contentment and fulfillment in life because all of these things are temporal and are passing away but he who does the will of God lives forever.
1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
1 John 2:16, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”
1 John 2:17, “The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.”
(2) Sex, love, marriage, and family can never be fully satisfying unless enjoyed within the confines of the will of God and the Word of God.
Love, sex, marriage, and family are all gifts from a good and loving God, but their enjoyment cannot be complete apart from fellowship with Him.
Now, when I speak of love here I’m referring to a personal love and affection between a man and a woman, which the Greek’s referred to with the verb phileo.
In fact, the Greeks and even the New Testament writers used different words to denote the concept, which is called “love” in our day and age.
The Greek’s used four different verbs to denote the concept of “love”: (1) Erao (e)ravw) (verb), “to love passionately, to desire, to yearn” (2) Stergo (stergwv) (verb), “to affectionately love parents or children” (3) Phileo (filevw) (verb), “to personally love friends or family members” (4) Agapao (a)gapavw) (verb), “to be satisfied with, to honor, to receive, to greet, to prefer.”
The verb erao (e)ravw) and the noun eros denote a “possessive” love between a man and a woman, which involves longing, craving, and sexual desire.
Stergo means, “to feel affection” and is used especially of the mutual love of parents and children and can also be used of the love of a people for their ruler, the love of tutelary god for the people and even of dogs for their master.
The verb phileo denotes the affection and attraction of people towards one another who are close together both inside and outside the family and it includes concern, care and hospitality, also love for things in the sense of being fond of.
There are many usages of phileo in the Greek New Testament.
Matthew 10:37, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”
1 Corinthians 16:22, “If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. Maranatha.”
The verb agapao is often used in the classical Greek to denote friendship between equals, or sometimes sympathy.
Sometimes agapao took on the meaning of “to prefer, to set one good or aim above another, to prioritize, to esteem one person more highly than another.”
The noun eros was a general love of the world seeking to satisfy itself wherever it can thus making no distinctions, whereas agape made distinctions, choosing and keeping its object.
Eros is determined by a more or less indefinite impulsion towards its object, whereas agape is a free and decisive act determined by its subject.
Eros was a self-serving love, whereas agape was a giving love for the benefit of another.
In the Greek New Testament the noun agape was used of a love that originates in the essence of God and is thus divine in character.
1 John 4:7-8, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
The verb phileo must have an attractive object to love whereas agapao does not need an attractive object to love since it is based upon the integrity of the subject rather than the attractiveness of the object.
John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
The world was obnoxious and an unattractive to God because of sin and rebellion against Him, but God was able to love the world from His own integrity.
The verb phileo denoted a personal selfish love and affection for someone, whereas the verb agapao on the other hand denoted a selfless love that was loyal to the point of self-sacrifice for another.
Jacob was an individual who not only had a phileo love for Rachel but an eros love as well, which is normal between married people.
However, Jacob chose Rachel as his wife strictly based upon an eros love and in fact, his marriage was driven by this and for marriage to endure and the marriage partners to grow in their relationship with each other there must be more than eros love.
In Christian marriage, there must not only be a phileo love and of course an eros love but there also must be an agape love as the foundation of the marriage for it to flourish because agape love is directly related to the Christian’s love for God and for the Christian loving others as God loves them.
(3) While phileo love without sex may be frustrating, sex without phileo love is folly.
This is a lesson which we learn from Jacob.
Surely those years with Rachel where sex was not possible or permissible were frustrating (cf. Genesis 29:21), but sex without phileo love is just as bad.
Jacob engaged in sex with his wife Leah, but there was no fulfillment in it but in fact, it degenerated to mere prostitution where Leah had to purchase his presence.
I feel that I must digress for a moment here on the relationship between sex and love, for this is not at all understood, even by Bible believing Chris¬tians.
It is said by some that “whoever” created men and women and sex must have been a very poor engineer but we must remember men respond very quickly to physical stimuli and women do not.
Men reach the peak of their sexual desire earlier in life but women, later.
Secular thinking would suppose that this is poor design and that man and woman should precisely correspond in these and other areas but I disagree.
These differences are by design since God made man and woman distinctly different so that the ultimate in physical pleasure can only be obtained by a deliberate and con¬scious love which makes sacrifices of itself for the pleasure of the other.
With¬out sacrifice, love making deteriorates into mere self seeking gratification at the expense of the other partner; therefore, love and sex must go together.
(4) Neither sex nor children can manufacture phileo love.
Leah would be quick to tell us that she learned no amount of sex could ever earn the love of her husband and even after six boys she was still not loved exclusively by Jacob.
Phileo love cannot be manufactured through sex since sex can only produce children, but it will never produce phileo love.
Many a couple with very serious marital prob¬lems have decided to have children in order to hold their marriage together, which does not work either since producing children, does not produce love.
(5) The one who places sex on an extremely high level of priority be¬comes its slave.
Jacob’s love for Rachel was largely based upon an eros love, i.e. her physical attractiveness.
Our society informs men and boys that their masculinity is largely indi¬cated by the number of conquests they can make among women and so they think that the more women they bed, the more of a man they are.
Jacob did rather well by these standards since he circu¬lated among his four wives frequently enough to produce a growing family, but look at what happened to him in the process.
Jacob was not the master of his harem, but he was mastered by his harem since he was pushed from bed to bed by his wives and he was purchased for the night.
The passivity of Jacob in these verses is an in¬dictment of his lack of leadership since he was a slave of sex and marriage, not its sovereign.
(6) Marriage cannot run for long on the fuel of eros love, i.e. physical attraction.
The love of Jacob for Rachel was primarily based on physical attraction.
In the humdrum and pressures of married life, physical attraction is not suf-ficient to carry the relationship along for long.
Jacob does not seem to have worked at deepening and broadening his love but instead it appears that his love was largely in the sphere of physical attraction.
No wonder Rachel should look with jealous eyes at Leah and no wonder she seemed so threatened and desperate since she felt unloved, just as Leah did.
Love needs to be meticulously maintained and vigorously strengthened.
(7) Physical attraction must never be the foundation of Christian marriage since it will fade with age.
(8) Personal love and affection must never be the foundation of Christian marriage since it can vacillate when the object of your personal love and affection becomes obnoxious to you or fails you in some way.
(9) The foundation of all Christian marriages must be the common eternal relationship with the Trinity through faith alone in Christ alone that exists between the two marriage partners and the love of God.
(10) Maturation, and sustaining and prospering as an individual and as a team in Christian marriage is based upon both partners experiencing fellowship with God on a habitual basis, which is accomplished by obeying the Spirit who speaks through the teaching of the Word of God.