The Sons of Jacob

Genesis 29:31 is full of grace: “When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb.” Nobody else saw Leah. God did. Names that tell a story. Each time Leah has a son, she names him with words about her heart. Reuben: “The LORD has surely looked on my affliction. Now therefore, my husband will love me” (29:32). Simeon: “the LORD has heard that I am unloved” (29:33). Levi: “Now this time my husband will become attached to me” (29:34). Three times she hopes a baby will make Jacob love her. The turn. Then the fourth son is born, and Leah says, “Now I will praise the LORD.” She calls him Judah (29:35). This time Leah does not mention Jacob at all. Her hope has moved from her husband to her God. A son who mattered. Leah did not know it, but Judah would become the tribe of King David, and centuries later, of Jesus. The unloved wife became the mother of the royal line.

29:31-35 begins the story of Jacob's twelve sons with God, before anyone else does anything. God sees. “When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved (senu'ah), He opened her womb” (29:31). God saw Hagar in the same way (16:13). The God who chose the younger son also cares for the overlooked wife. Names that confess. Leah gives each son a name that sounds like the words she spoke at his birth. Re'uven sounds like ra'ah, “saw,” and be'onyi, “my affliction”; Shim'on like shama, “heard”; Levi like lavah, “to be joined.” Each name shows how much Leah longed for her husband's love. The turn at Judah. “This time I will praise (odeh) the LORD” (29:35). The name Yehudah (say: yeh-hoo-DAH), Judah, comes from that word for praise. With her first three sons, Leah spoke about Jacob. With the fourth, she spoke only about God. The line of promise. Genesis 49:10 will say “The scepter shall not depart from Judah.” Hebrews 7:14 states that “our Lord arose from Judah,” and Matthew 1:2-3 traces Christ's line through him. The royal and messianic line runs through the unloved wife.

Leah felt unloved. But God saw her. God gave Leah a baby boy, and she named him Reuben. She said, “Now my husband will love me.” But Jacob still loved Rachel more. She had another son, and another. Each time she hoped Jacob would love her. Then she had a fourth son. This time Leah said something new. “Now I will praise the Lord.” She stopped looking to Jacob to make her happy. She looked to God instead. Leah's sadness did not all go away. But she knew God saw her and cared for her. That was enough to praise Him.

God saw that Leah was very sad. He gave her four baby boys. At last she said, “Now I will praise the Lord!”

Rachel had her own sorrow. “When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister” (30:1). Each wants what the other has. Rachel has Jacob's love but no children. Leah has children but not Jacob's love. Envy grows in exactly that kind of soil. “Give me children, or else I die!” Rachel says (30:1). Jacob's answer. “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” (30:2). He is angry, but he is right about one thing: only God gives life. The old plan again. Rachel gives Jacob her maid Bilhah “as wife” (30:3-4). It is the same plan Sarai tried with Hagar (16:2), and it brings the same trouble. Bilhah has two sons, and Rachel names the second Naphtali: “With great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister” (30:8). Then Leah gives Jacob her maid Zilpah, who has Gad and Asher (30:9-13). Nobody asked the maids. Bilhah and Zilpah were servants. They had no choice. The Bible records this honestly, but it is not God's design for a family. The sisters were using people to win against each other.

30:1-13 shows rivalry turning the birth of children into a race. Envy. Vatteqanne Rachel ba'achotah, “Rachel envied her sister” (30:1). Her demand, “Give me children, or else I die,” is sad to read, because she will later die in childbirth (35:18). Jacob's answer, “Am I in the place of God?” (30:2), uses tachat, “instead of.” He rightly says that only God gives children, but his anger shows no compassion. Surrogacy. “She will bear a child on my knees” (30:3) was a way of saying the child would count as Rachel's. Other peoples of that time did the same, and it repeats Sarai's plan with Hagar (16:2), with the same fruit of rivalry. No one asked the maids what they wanted. They were servants, and they had no choice. Names as weapons. Rachel named Dan (“God has judged my case,” 30:6) and Naphtali (“With great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and indeed I have prevailed,” 30:8; literally “wrestlings of God”). Leah answered with Gad (“A troop comes!” or “good fortune,” 30:11) and Asher (“happy,” 30:13). The names that once showed longing now keep score. The word “wrestled.” Naphtali's name looks ahead to Jacob's own wrestling at the Jabbok (32:24-28). The whole family is struggling, and the deepest struggle is with God.

Rachel was loved, but she had no children. Leah had children, but she was not loved. Each sister wanted what the other one had. Rachel was so jealous. “Give me children, or I will die!” she said to Jacob. Jacob got angry. “Can I do what only God can do?” he said. So Rachel made her own plan. She gave her servant Bilhah to Jacob as a wife. Then Leah did the same with her servant Zilpah. Four more sons were born. But the jealousy did not stop. Bilhah and Zilpah did not get to choose. The sisters used them to win against each other. That was not God's good plan for a family.

Rachel had no babies yet. She was jealous of her big sister. Jacob said, “Only God can give babies.”

The rivalry reaches its low point over a plant. The mandrakes. Reuben finds mandrakes in the field and brings them to his mother (30:14). People in those days believed mandrakes could help a woman have children. Rachel asks for them, and Leah's reply shows how deep the hurt goes: “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband?” (30:15). The sisters strike a bargain over which wife Jacob will be with that night (30:15-16). It is a sad picture of a family where love has become a trade. But God listened. It was God who gave the children. “God listened to Leah” (30:17), and she has Issachar and Zebulun, and later a daughter, Dinah (30:17-21). Rachel got the mandrakes, but still no baby. The plants did nothing. God did. God remembered Rachel. “Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb” (30:22). In the Bible, “God remembered” means God acted on His promise and His care. He remembered Noah in the ark (8:1) and Israel in Egypt (Exodus 2:24). Rachel bears a son and says, “God has taken away my reproach,” and names him Joseph, “The LORD shall add to me another son” (30:23-24).

30:14-24 shows the rivalry at its lowest, and then shows that only God could give what the sisters wanted. Mandrakes. Duda'im (30:14) were plants people believed could help a woman have children. Leah's bitter question, “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband?” (30:15), shows how deep the hurt had gone. In the bargain that follows (30:15-16), the sisters treat marriage like a trade. God gives the children. Rachel got the mandrakes but stayed barren; Leah gave them up and conceived. Genesis says plainly that God did it: “God listened (vayyishma) to Leah” (30:17). Leah names Issachar from sakar, “wages” (30:18), and Zebulun from zaval, “to honor” or “dwell” (30:20). Dinah is mentioned (30:21), and we will meet her again in chapter 34. “God remembered Rachel.” The verb is zakar (say: zah-KAR), to remember (30:22). It is covenant language, used of Noah (8:1), Abraham (19:29) and Israel in Egypt (Exodus 2:24). It does not mean God had forgotten. It means God acted faithfully for her. Joseph. The name is linked both with asaf, “God has taken away my reproach,” and with yasaf, “The LORD shall add” (30:23-24). The son of the long-awaited answer will become the savior of the whole family (50:20).

One day the sisters argued about some plants called mandrakes. They were still jealous of each other. But God listened to Leah. She had two more sons, Issachar and Zebulun. Then she had a daughter, Dinah. And Rachel still waited. Then the Bible says something wonderful. “God remembered Rachel.” God had not forgotten her at all. He answered her prayer. Rachel had a son and named him Joseph. Joseph would become very important in God's plan. Rachel learned that plants could not give her a baby. Only God could do that.

God listened to Leah and to Rachel. At last God remembered Rachel. She had a baby boy named Joseph.

Several years later, the family is traveling back from Bethel (35:16). Rachel's death. Near Ephrath, Rachel goes into hard labor. The midwife says, “Do not fear; you will have this son also” (35:17). But “as her soul was departing (for she died), she called his name Ben-Oni; but his father called him Benjamin” (35:18). Ben-Oni means “son of my sorrow.” Benjamin means “son of the right hand,” a name of honor and strength. Rachel had once said, “Give me children, or else I die.” Now she dies giving birth. Bethlehem. Rachel was buried “on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem)” (35:19), and Jacob set up a pillar there. Bethlehem would become the town of David, and of Jesus. Reuben's sin. 35:22 records that Reuben slept with his father's concubine Bilhah. It is a shameful act, and it cost Reuben his place as firstborn (49:3-4). Twelve sons. Genesis 35:23-26 lists them: six sons of Leah, two of Rachel, two of Bilhah, two of Zilpah. This messy, jealous, hurting family is the family God would make into the people of Israel.

35:16-26 ends the story of Jacob's sons with grief and a list of the twelve. Ben-Oni and Benjamin. Rachel names her son Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow” (or possibly “son of my strength”); Jacob renames him Binyamin, “son of the right hand,” the side of favor and power. The father's new name turns lament into hope. Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem. Genesis 35:19 tells us that Ephrath is Bethlehem, which links Rachel's tomb with the town that Micah 5:2 will name as the birthplace of Israel's Ruler. Jeremiah 31:15 later pictures “Rachel weeping for her children” at the exile, and Matthew 2:18 applies that lament to the massacre at Bethlehem around Jesus' birth. Reuben. 35:22 says that Reuben “lay with Bilhah his father's concubine; and Israel heard about it.” The act was a claim on his father's authority as well as a sexual sin; Jacob's verdict comes in 49:3-4, where Reuben loses the pre-eminence of the firstborn. The list (35:22b-26). “Now the sons of Jacob were twelve” introduces a list grouped by mother. The number is simply the count of sons who became the tribes. What matters is that God's people come from a family marked by rivalry, favoritism and sin, and are chosen anyway.

Years later, Jacob's family was traveling. Near Bethlehem, Rachel had another baby. It was very hard, and Rachel died. Before she died, she named the baby Ben-Oni. That means “son of my sorrow.” But Jacob called him Benjamin. That name means “son of my right hand.” Jacob put a stone on Rachel's grave. Later, Reuben did something very wrong that hurt his father. Now Jacob had twelve sons. Their families became the twelve tribes of Israel. And from Judah's family, Jesus would one day be born.

Rachel had one more baby, Benjamin. But Rachel died. Jacob was very sad. Now he had twelve sons.