Genesis 30:1-24
1 Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister, and said to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die!”
2 And Jacob’s anger was aroused against Rachel, and he said, ”Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?”
3 So she said, “Here is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, and she will bear a child on my knees, that I also may have children by her.” 4 Then she gave him Bilhah her maid as wife, and Jacob went in to her. 5 And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. 6 Then Rachel said, “God has judged my case; and He has also heard my voice and given me a son.” Therefore she called his name Dan.
7 And Rachel’s maid Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. 8 Then Rachel said, “With great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and indeed I have prevailed.” So she called his name Naphtali.
9 When Leah saw that she had stopped bearing, she took Zilpah her maid and gave her to Jacob as wife. 10 And Leah’s maid Zilpah bore Jacob a son. 11 Then Leah said, “A troop comes!” So she called his name Gad. 12 And Leah’s maid Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. 13 Then Leah said, “I am happy, for the daughters will call me blessed.” So she called his name Asher.
14 Now Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest 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.”
15 But she said to her, ”Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?”
And Rachel said, “Therefore he will lie with you tonight for your son’s mandrakes.”
16 When Jacob came out of the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must come in to me, for I have surely hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” And he lay with her that night.
17 And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. 18 Leah said, “God has given me my wages, because I have given my maid to my husband.” So she called his name Issachar. 19 Then Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. 20 And Leah said, “God has endowed me with a good endowment; now my husband will dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons.” So she called his name Zebulun. 21 Afterward she bore a daughter, and called her name Dinah.
22 Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. 23 And she conceived and bore a son, and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” 24 So she called his name Joseph, and said, “The LORD shall add to me another son.”
The history of the twelve sons of Jacob, the tribes of Israel, came partly by his two wives but also by their maids when they wanted more children and could not bear them themselves. Rachel demanded a child from Jacob, who answered that he was not God to open or close her womb to bear the fruit of heirs. She gave him her maid to bring children by proxy to him, Dan and Naphtali. These wives even seemed to compete with one another for the most offspring as Rachel had no children of her own and Leah, who was jealous of Jacob’s love for her rival, also gave her maid to her husband to have more. The feud of competition and hard feelings erupted when Leah’s son Reuben brought mandrakes to her and Rachel asked for some; Leah vented her feelings of being unloved by accusing her of taking her husband’s love as well as the mandrakes from her. Rachel offered Jacob’s bed to Leah in exchange for the fruit and she even told him she hired him with them for the night in her spite. After hearing two more sons and a daughter, Leah thought Jacob’s heart was now completely hers. Then God “remembered” Rachel and gave her a child, Joseph, with the hope of another son. This son of promise would one day lead his brothers (Acts 7:8-9) out of famine and to sojourn in Egypt for four hundred years after they jealously had sold him into slavery there to make their father Jacob love them more than he would Joseph, unwittingly enabling God to turn it into good to save them (Genesis 50:20) and their descendants. There were children of proxy but also of promise, the promise to and through Abraham of a nation to come as a channel of salvation to deliver all God’s children people by faith out of all nations one day (Romans 4:13, 16-17, Galatians 3:28-29) through the descendant of the flesh, Jesus the Messiah according to the promise begun in Genesis 3:15 to Eve. We then are reborn as true children of faith like Abraham and all those gone before us, and are not offspring by proxy of man’s will in a forced attempt to save ourselves. We are born by the will of God (John 1:12-13) by faith that receives His Son and not our own efforts to bring new life into our souls. Our deliverance and inheritance is therefore not “of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” We are direct offspring of Him and not of the slave woman (John 8:35-36, Galatians 4:28-29, 30-31) of our own efforts of our ineffective work or futile efforts of our will to be saved that always (Romans 3:23) fall short. We are sons and daughters of promise by grace, not by the proxy of works. We are delivered to the inheritance of grace and faith in God’s work and promise, not earned by our own efforts that are mere proxies of our own ineffectual efforts.
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