The Fruit of the Wombs

Sanctification in Jacob’s Household

Well, this morning we're completing chapter 29, beginning chapter 30, and we're continuing this theme in some ways of sanctification in Jacob's life. Now the matters we'll address this morning are more about Jacob's household, the fruitfulness of the four women within his household, and we'll spend some time walking through those verses, but we want to keep in mind this larger issue, this larger theme of God untwisting the twister Jacob.

Remember Jacob came out as the heel grasper, the twister, a play on his name, and God is doing his work of sanctification in Jacob's life. He is untwisting the twisted ways of Jacob, as he does faithfully in all of his people's lives.

He brings about both blessing and trial in order to make his people holy, in other words, in order to sanctify them, to cleanse them not only from the guilt of sin, not even from the power of sin, but also from the consequences of sin.

And certainly Jacob is walking toward the blessing of God. It is necessary for him to be sanctified, relieved of the consequences of his sinfulness, in order for him to receive the blessing of God. But as we'll see, Jacob's household is imploding between chapters 29 and 30, even as it's burgeoning.

It's both growing and corroding. In terms of the relationships, there's sin at almost every level and almost in every interaction. And yet there's fruitfulness, there's a sign of God blessing and building up the house of Jacob, even as he had promised.

So last week we considered the two seven-year stints that Jacob served under Laban. And as we take up verses 31 and following, we see the struggle now between his two brides, between Leah and Rachel.

And as we see the growth of his household, we recognize their struggle within it. And we recognize their struggle even with the Lord, specifically Rachel. And we think, of course, of Jacob being set up for his struggle with the Lord.

And all of this struggle within the house, within his life, all of this struggle is being used by God to shape Jacob into the man who would be the father of the nation of Israel. A .W. Pink, great, great exposition of Genesis, gleanings from Genesis.

He says this. It is shown again and again in the inspired narrative how Jacob has reaped what he has sown. Yet it must be borne in mind that in dealing retributively with Jacob, God is not acting in wrath, but rather in love, holy love.

It is true, for divine love is never exercised at the expense of holiness. Thus, in what appears to be the retribution of God, we find God speaking to the patriarch's conscience and heart. So what we're reading about as we make our way through chapter 29, and especially next week, we're going to see God speaking to the conscience and the heart of Jacob.

Well, we come into verse 31 and following off the heels of two weddings, two weddings within one week. You know how exhausting wedding prep is. Can you imagine how exhausting those two weeks would have been?

And of course, it completely disrupted what God intended for marriage to be. We can only imagine how devastated Rachel felt when she was marched in front of Jacob, arranged and contracted like cattle under Laban, and this week-long festivity that she had spent seven years daydreaming about now became this rather forced interaction, and they're trying to smile and salvage something out of this ceremony through the bitterness and the tears, and Leah, of course, off to the side, her heart aching knowing that she's been wed to a man that does not love her, that does not care for her.

She practically is a servant within the household of Jacob. It's a cold, dull, lifeless marriage, and yet it's been the dark cloud in the marriage of Rachel and Jacob, and so we see Laban introducing division and heartache into everyone else's lives, a good application we didn't get to last week.

I was thinking about it this week. It's like, here's a really good application for last week's sermon. Don't be a Laban in someone else's life. Do your best to not be a Laban to other people, introducing division, sowing heartbreak, introducing grief, being a means of grief to other people.

Laban sold his daughters with no thought of their affections, their feelings, their long-term or future happiness. He threw away this relationship, not only with his nephew, but with his daughters. From here on out, they will identify themselves as the wives of Jacob.

They will not connect themselves intellectually to their father. He treated them like property, and so, like property, they will have nothing to do with him now that they've been, quote-unquote, sold.

And of course, we understand why later in Leviticus 18, God forbids his people to marry two sisters within each other's lifetime. This is the outflow of chapters 29 through 30. Keep in mind the larger cycle of Jacob and this sort of meta-theme of sibling rivalry.

The Jacob cycle will come all the way to the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau. So the Jacob cycle begins with sibling rivalry, and it ends with sibling reconciliation. And that situates chapters 29 and 30 within this larger framework.

But the shape of this rivalry takes place in the midst of childbearing, and that takes us to verse 31. When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. This is the description of the next paragraph and the first paragraph of the chapter to come.

When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, a more literal translation, she was hated. Hated, arguably, can mean loved or loved in a different way, loved less, akin to Jesus teaching that his disciples must hate even their parents compared to their love of God.

So we can use this as comparative love. Compared to the way that Jacob loved Rachel, he practically hated or unloved Leah. Either way, we see this sense of coldness, distance. We'll see it not only here, we'll see it in the way that Leah names the first three children that she bears.

We'll see it later in the way she has to negotiate with Rachel in the field. So here's the first statement, summary statement, Leah was unloved by Jacob. But God is seeing this, we're reminded of Beerlehai Roy, where God saw another unloved woman, heavy with child, Hagar.

God sees Leah, and so he blesses her. He opens her womb. Rachel is barren. It does not say that God closed her womb. He opened and he closed, he just says Rachel was barren. This was the state for Rachel.

She was barren. So Leah conceived and bore a son. She called his name Reuben. She said this, the Lord assuredly looked on my affliction. So we have the divine commentary, the Lord saw, and then we have the experience of that.

The Lord looked. The Lord looked and he saw my affliction. Now therefore, here's where we get to sort of the heartache, my husband will love me. See, it's not enough that the Lord saw and that will satiate me.

Maybe now I can have what I really want, which isn't even necessarily this son, Reuben. It's actually what this son could bring about, my husband's affection. Maybe now I can get what I really want, my husband to love me.

We'll see the polar opposite with Rachel, who has her husband's affection and what she really wants is a son. And so these two sisters have a rivalry. They each have what the other wants. Then she conceived again, Leah, and bore a son and said, because the Lord has heard that I am unloved.

Again, divine commentary, saw that Leah was unloved and the experience. The Lord has heard I'm unloved. He's therefore given me this son also. And she called his name Simeon. She conceived and bore again and said, now this time my husband will become attached to me because I've borne him three sons.

You see, you think of three, roughly nine month cycles, the time for nursing in between. This is years going by and she's still clinging to this desperate hope for her husband to love her. Maybe this will be the time.

Maybe this will be the son. How many more children must I bear before Jacob looks at me just a little bit differently? Before he wants to spend the night with me rather than with my sister. Therefore his name was called Levi and she conceived again and she bore a son.

And with this, perhaps there's a change in tone. Now she says, now I will praise the Lord. And there's no mention of her husband or her husband's affection. In fact, at this point when she bears Judah, there seems to be a contentedness within her life.

Now she will praise the Lord. Now perhaps she's so busy, torn around, cleaning up applesauce and spilled milk and scrubbing goldfish crumbs out of the minivan. Now that she's doing all that, she's too busy to be concerned about Jacob, that lump who always sits on the couch.

I've got enough to deal with. Now I will praise the Lord. We can see the pain of Leah in the first three sons' names. It's clear that she's been haunted by this lack of affection. She's married to a man that does not love her.

There's coldness within her marriage and yet she experiences vicariously what it could be like whenever he sees the way that Jacob looks at Rachel. Whenever he sees the way that they dwell together, they laugh together, they spend time together.

Everything that her heart longs for, she sees in her sister's life. And everything that her sister longs for, she sees in Leah's life. She has these boys. She has the carrier and maybe the dual backpack and she's pushing the stroller around and Rachel has to sometimes turn aside to weep.

Sometimes unexpectedly, for unknown reasons, it's hard to control the pain of being barren and seeing burgeoning life in her sister's tent. Tension festers, jealousy floods the relationship between these siblings.

Leah has boys, Rachel has love, and neither are content. Now what is written between the lines here in this little description of the sons that are born to Leah? Well written between the lines here, and we'll see it again, is Jacob's neglect.

Jacob didn't want this marriage, but he took this marriage. And we see this cold charity toward Leah. I love that phrase, cold charity. It's not that he was intending to be cruel, but he couldn't hide, he couldn't keep that coldness, that coolness, that distance out of his interactions with Leah.

It was all too detectable. I take that phrase from Calvin. Calvin said, sort of applying this, he said, many think they fulfill their duty, that is the duty to love neighbor, if they don't break out into mortal hatred.

Of course I'm loving my neighbor, I'm not actively hating them. So I'm very loving, I've got nothing against them. He says, see here in the Holy Scriptures, that those as hated, we see those as hated who are not sufficiently loved.

And we know that men were created for this end, that they should love one another. Therefore, no one will be counted guiltless of the crime of hatred before God, but he who embraces his neighbor with love, not only will a secret displeasure be accounted as hatred, but even a neglect and that cold charity which is reigning in the world.

That's a marvelous application. We have not loved our neighbor when we've done our best to repress our secret displeasure. We haven't done it until we've actually embraced our neighbor in love. He says, even neglect is accounted by the Spirit of God as hatred, and it's a cold charity.

I've got nothing against them. I wish them well. Calvin says that's a cold charity.

That's a cold charity.

That's not love. Leah felt unloved, and yet she was loved of God. We almost want to take her by her shoulders and look into her weak eyes, whatever that saying meant, and say, don't you see that you're loved of God?

Look at how He's blessed you. Look what He's brought into your life. You know, your husband's going to grow old and he's going to pass, but your sons are going to live on, and they're going to bear your name, and you have influence upon them.

Look at how God has blessed you. We see God's love for Leah, don't we, though she is an unloved wife. She bears Levi, who have that distinction in Israel's corporate identity of being the very priesthood of God, those being of the Levites, and then when she finally praises the Lord and is contented to know that the Lord has blessed her, she does so with Judah, and it's from the line of Judah that the seed promised to Eve will descend.

It's the line of Judah who will conquer the kingdom of the serpent when he's stretched upon the cross, and so the Lord loves this unloved Leah. And so that really is the first section, the fruit of Leah's womb.

The Fruit of Bilhah’s Womb

Secondly, we see the fruit of Bilhah's womb. We read, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 30, when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and she said to Jacob, give me children or else I die.

And so we're struck again with this familiar theme of barrenness. All of the patriarch's wives experienced, meaning wives in the sense of the intended well-loved wives, all of them experienced barrenness initially, Sarah, Rebekah, and now Rachel.

There's no natural way for Rachel to have children, she's barren. Just as Sarah, just as Rebekah before her, so she's crying out of desperation. She's also crying out, not only out of a sort of self-pity, but out of a jealous rage.

Please notice, Rachel envied her sister and therefore she said to Jacob, give me children or else I die. We've seen this kind of outburst before, in the midst of sibling rivalry, in a desire for a blessing.

It was when Esau cried out, give me soup or else I die, essentially. It's an irrational kind of outburst. Here Rachel has this irrational grief fueled by jealous rage against her sister and she says, if I don't have a son, I'm going to die.

If I can't somehow have this blessing that I'm craving for, I'm going to die. Which as we move forward in the narrative has sort of a tragic echo to it because when she does bear Benjamin, she will die.

When God gives her that son, she'll die. But we see the sin of jealousy now spilling over into her marriage and we can't imagine as we begin verse two that this was the first exchange along these lines.

I don't automatically assume that Jacob was a complete oath and just had no idea how to sympathize with his wife. I can actually picture times and ways over those years where Jacob would have said, Rachel, am I not worth ten sons to you?

You know how much I love you. Let's wait upon the Lord. But as he saw that envy, that rage, that spite, the irrationality behind it, he must have gotten frustrated, sinfully frustrated. And we have this sort of snapping, biting exchange.

Verse two, Jacob's anger was roused against Rachel. He said, am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? We saw Jacob being cold to Leah between the lines, but here we have him being very cold toward Rachel and it's stated plainly.

He was angry with his wife. Despite her sins and her jealousy and her issues, he should have known something of what she was experiencing in terms of sibling rivalry and jealousy. And I hope it felt like daggers when he said, you know, what's wrong with you?

Why can't you see the Lord's hand in this? Why aren't you trusting God? I hope that would have pierced him through his conscience. Why couldn't I have trusted God? Why couldn't I have been content with the station of God's providence?

Why shouldn't I have waited on him to bless me in his way, in his time, according to his promise? Why did I take things into my own hands? Why was I fueled by a jealous rage against my brother? And it's tragic because we start to see the effects of sin within the marital relationship,.

Don't we?

The only other time we've seen Jacob and Rachel interact, we've seen them together in the events of the wedding, but the only time we've seen them interact is back in chapter 29 and it's like right out of a Hallmark movie.

It's a rom-com, you know, pulling stones and there's, you know, canned laughter and it's just a very sweetheart experience. But look at this now. There's this distance. Now they're not in unison at all, there's this coldness.

Rachel's not even concerned about Jacob at all, she's consumed by her desire to compete with her sister, to have what she wants, which Jacob is really not part of that equation. And Jacob, perhaps feeling that, am I God, what do you want me to, there's nothing I can do.

And so that sense of loss has now made them angry with each other. Now Jacob exclaims a truth, this is a biblical truth, isn't it? God gives and God withholds the fruit of the womb. Blessed be the name of the Lord, he gives and he takes.

He gives and he withholds, this is the domain of the Lord. We may have more sophisticated ways to think about this, to identify and categorize it, but the medical realities do not take away the theological reality underneath at all.

The Lord gives, the Lord takes. The Lord opens, the Lord closes. Jacob knows, and he's right, that it's God alone who opens the womb. Jacob knows that he is not God and that they're walking in the midst of the providence of God, but Jacob does not trust God either.

We can see he's reacting out of anger. We don't see him dropping to his knees like his father Isaac and praying that God would move and then watching as God answered that plea and that prayer in the life of his wife.

We saw the same thing with Sarah when he pleaded with God. We don't read that here. Jacob has a biblical truth, but he's communicating it in an unbiblical way. Rather than coming alongside his wife, sympathizing with her struggle, we see him reacting angrily against her, even as she's reacting angrily against her sister.

So he rebukes her.

It's a cold rebuke. It's a cold rebuke.

And she said, verse 3, here's my maid Bilhah, go into her. She will bear a child on my knees that I may have children by her. And she gave him, Bilhah, her maid as a wife, and Jacob went into her. This is just deja vu in the worst way.

This is Sarah passing off Hagar so that through Hagar she could somehow claim credit of progeny. The words are echoed, lifted right out of Genesis 16, that she may bear children on my behalf. That's the idiom, bear children on my knees.

The equivalent today would be surrogate parents, surrogacy. Of course, they didn't have any technologically advanced way to do surrogacy in the ancient world. You actually had to cohabitate with the maid.

And just like Sarah, Rachel is pressed into her plight with a distrust of God. It is her lapse of faith in God that causes her to introduce the maid, to be embraced by Jacob. And Jacob's lack of faith, like Abraham, is to passively go along with this.

He had just been calling her out on the providence of God, am I God? And she says, well, then go into my maid. Where's that sense of God's providence now? Jacob says, oh, if you insist. He adds sin to sin.

Despite her husband's rebuke, Rachel decided to take matters into her own hands just like.

Sarah.

Even though Rachel surely knew about Sarah and about Hagar and about the legacy that that created between the offspring of Ishmael and the offspring of her husband. She tosses all of that aside. She's consumed by jealousy and desire.

She would rather put her husband in the arms of another woman than trust God. Boy, jealousy is a powerful thing. And Bilhah conceived, bore Jacob a son. Rachel sees this as a positive development. God has judged my case, she pronounces.

He's heard my voice. He's given me a son. If only she knew Sarah's story a little better. She called his name Dan. And Rachel's maid Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, with great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister.

Yeah, that's the issue. I'm not wrestling with God in the midst of my apparent barrenness. Wrestling by faith, year by year, month by month as there's just a single blue line. As I'm taking pictures and, you know, making it, you know, do you see a shadow there?

Is that a shadow?

She's not wrestling with God about this because that's not the issue. She's wrestling with her sister. This child's all about her sister. It's all about the perceived blessing of God upon her sister. And she says so arrogantly, I've prevailed.

I've prevailed. I've given my husband over to Bilhah. I've introduced this whole dilemma in my marriage. We have no idea if there was the kind of cruelty and disdain that we read of with Hagar and Sarah.

Maybe Bilhah, like Hagar, began to arrogantly walk her way around the house. Now she had born children to Jacob. She called his name Naphtali. What a sad view of life. What a sad view of children. Weapons in my quiver to be used against my sibling.

See, I am more successful. See, I am blessed. See, I did find a way after all. Rachel saw everything in terms of this rivalry with Leah. And that's how blinding jealousy can be. Sinful ambition in life blinds you.

A root of bitterness in your walk with the Lord will blind you. You'll do the most foolish, consequential, damaging things in your life as a result of that. And so beware lest a root of bitterness spring up within.

It defiles many. Not only do we have this pronouncement of her wrestling against her sister, but we also have this sort of narrative set up of where Jacob's going to wrestle with God. You see again this power of jealousy.

The Apostle James, he says, where do wars and fights come from? The King James, you've got to say it like that. We'll read New King, but whence come wars, fightings from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure, that war in your members?

You lust and you do not have. You murder and you covet and you cannot obtain. There's a summary statement of Rachel's life. She hates her sister. She wrestles against her. She murders her sister, according to Matthew 6.

She covets, but she cannot obtain. She fights and she wars. She has, but she does not ask. She has, but she's spending it on her flesh. Which begs the question, brothers and sisters, what are our ambitions driving us to do in a similarly foolish and consequential way?

We can all name things that we want and we do not have. The things that we covet and cannot obtain. And it could be a relationship. It could literally be right off the page to have children. It could be to be in a different relationship, to have a different career path, to have a different setup or provision.

Whatever it can be, do we recognize the hand of God's providence? Are we willing to submit and walk in God's blessing according to God's time? Are we going to take matters into our own hands and watch as the households are imploding?

The Fruit of Zilpah’s Womb

So we have the fruit of Leah's womb, the fruit of Bilhah's womb, and now the fruit of Zilpah's womb. Genesis 30, beginning in verse 9. When Leah saw that she had stopped bearing, she took Zilpah, her maid, and gave her to Jacob as a wife.

She's mirroring her sister's sin. Oh, well, you're going to do that? Well, I'm going to do this. And Leah's maid, Zilpah, bore Jacob a son, and Leah said, A troop comes. This is just boasting. You know, I've got an army I'm building over here.

She called his name Gad. And Leah's maid, Zilpah, bore Jacob a second son, and Leah said, I'm happy. My daughters are going to call me blessed. And she called his name Asher. That statement, happy, is to me one of the most artificial statements in this whole exchange.

I'm really happy now. I'm so happy that I've given my maid over to Jacob's embrace. I've introduced now that same disorder and potential destruction into my own marriage. And so this rivalry has become a sinful mirror, the same distrust of God, the same forceful surrogacy.

I mean, there's abuse at unimaginable levels involved in this. And then she just claims, I'm so happy now. I'm happy. Daughters will call me blessed. In the context of misery, she says, I'm so happy. She's made her life a train wreck, and she's so happy.

Isn't she happy? Clearly she's happy. Back to the old ways. Where was that contentment she felt when Judah came along and she says, now I praise the Lord? When she saw Bilhah giving offspring in her sister's name, all of a sudden she said, no, no, I can't be content anymore.

I've got to keep my sister back. Pretty soon she'll have the same amount of sons that I do through Bilhah. Zilpah, you're going to have to help me out. Where was that contentment she felt when she said, now I praise the Lord?

It's gone. Blinded by jealousy. Fourth, we see the fruit of Leah's womb again. And here we have this interesting exchange that takes place in the field. This is taking place over a seven-year span. If you can picture this commotion.

We read, beginning in verse 14, Now Reuben went in the days of the wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field. That would be a rare plant to find. And so this was quite an event. Brought them to his mother, Leah.

And Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes. And Leah said to Rachel, is it a small matter that you've 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.

Do you see what's going on here before we get to mandrakes? Here's mandrakes. And we're going to explain the significance of that in a moment. And Leah's son says, you know, mom, mom, look what I found.

And she's thinking, well, this is this is excellent. Rachel, right, who has not have children of her own yet. She's saying, please, please, I need some of those. Please, please share those with me. And Leah says, you know, what what kind of gall do you have?

You've taken my husband away. You've taken Jacob away from me. And now you're going to take even my son's mandrakes. And so Rachel then makes this offer. She says, he will lie with you tonight for your son's mandrakes.

So here's the second bit of evidence that Leah was unloved. Jacob spent every night with Rachel, the woman that he loved. Leah was in her tent with all these pack and plays and soothing machines going.

All sorts of crying. And there's Rachel and Jacob in their little honeymoon suite. And so here's the barter. I'll make sure that Jacob goes in with you. Just give me those mandrakes. This is all that Leah wanted, right?

Jacob's affection.

And so that's the trade. Mandrakes for a night with her husband. The Warring Sisters have this negotiation. And that leads to the significance of the mandrakes. Literally, they're love fruits. That would be actually a gloss on the word mandrake.

It's a plant that has these bluish flowers in the winter. And then in the summer, it grows sort of this plum-sized fruit, this yellowish fruit. And it was known throughout the ancient world as an aphrodisiac.

So something that would put you in the mood, so to speak. Romans had plenty of aphrodisiacs, whether they were true or not. But this one seems to have been widespread. Not only at this period in ancient history, but even for millennia to come.

And we see this in the Song of the Shulamites. Song of Solomon 7, 11, and 12. Come, my beloved. Let us go forth to the field. Let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards. Let us see if the vine has budded.

Whether the grape blossoms are open, the pomegranates are in bloom. If you know Song of Solomon, he's not actually talking about agriculture. There I will give you my love. The mandrakes give off a fragrance.

At our gate are pleasant fruits. All men are new and old. I've laid them up for you, my beloved. So here you get that sense of this mandrake being the sort of entree to intimacy. And the idea is, if it had that kind of effect, as far as marital intimacy, it could also have, perhaps, an impact on fertility.

And so you would use an aphrodisiac in the ancient world in the hopes of gaining fertility. And that seems to be on Rachel's mind. If I can get a hold of these mandrakes, maybe somehow this will actually lead to me bearing a son.

Maybe this is the fertility drug I need. It's interesting that she has the mandrakes and she goes on for many more years without a child. It was not what she needed. What she needed was to trust in the Lord.

We're not surprised to find Rachel having, perhaps, superstitious attachments. She's not going to CVS and saying, I have a prescription for mandrakes, right? There seems to be some, perhaps, ritual significance to the mandrakes here.

We see that in Chapter 31. Rachel has an attachment to the household gods. There's still something of pagan superstition clinging to her. She's learned of the Lord, learned how to beseech the Lord, but there still seems to be some area of compromise in her life, especially when it comes to this hope of fertility, which rings true for almost all of Israelite history.

They know of the Lord, they walk with the Lord, they beseech the Lord, but when it comes to the need for fertility, whether in the field or in the tent, they tend to build bales and ashtoreths. They tend to turn to pagan superstition, pagan means.

The goddess Aphrodite, we get the word aphrodisiac from. She was known as the Lady of the Mandrake for a reason. When Jacob came out in the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him. This is verse 16.

And she said, you must come in to me. I've surely hired you with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night. So now Jacob is the one being traded like cattle. Laban traded his daughters like cattle in these wedding contracts to try to secure more labor from Jacob, and now Jacob is being sold between these sisters as ammunition in their rivalry.

Well, you take him. No, it's my turn. No, you get him now. Well, let's trade for him. Where is that sense of love that Leah had? It seems that no longer is she even that interested in Jacob. It seems like she's more interested in spiting Rachel.

They're buying and selling. This is not what marriage is intended to be. This is not what marital intimacy is intended to be. This is not what progeny from marital intimacy is intended to be. What is meant to be mysterious, deeply enigmatic, some of the most profound experiences in human life become something very cheap.

Sell it for fruit. Your turn, my turn. And that's what happens with sin, isn't it? Human life is devalued. Human experience is cheapened. Things that are mysterious and imbued with a sense of the divine become something marginal, something vulgar.

And we see that even in the marriage bed of Jacob with Rachel and Leah. So the dehumanizing effect of sin. We're surrounded in our world today with the dehumanizing effects of sin. Is there anything sacred?

You read Habbanid and you go, is there nothing sacred? Is there nothing sacred? We send our children off to schools, you know, atheist training centers to say, you're nothing but highly evolved protoplasm.

You're very sophisticated pieces of meat. And then we're amazed that there's nothing sacred about human relationships or human intimacy. God listens to Leah, verse 17. That perhaps is the most shocking thing.

In the midst of this sinful, jealous rivalry, God is still blessing and giving children. Children are not the automatic sign of God's blessing being upon the holy. God is listening to Leah and he's blessing Leah.

She conceives and she bears Jacob a fifth son. Leah said, God has given me my wages. What a completely twisted way to think of this whole situation. I somehow earned this. I negotiated, I made it work, and now I've earned this son.

I've given my maid to my husband. Isn't this great? She called his name Issachar. And Leah conceived again and she bore Jacob a sixth son. And Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment. You know, I am made abundant by God.

Now my husband will dwell with me. I've born him six sons. And she called his name Zebulun. So what's still driving Leah? Now he'll be mine. Now I'll be able to gloat over Rachel.

All for a bowl of soup.

All for mandrakes in the field. We have the mirror image of the sibling rivalry. Then afterward, verse 21, she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah. We have a setup here for chapter 34. We're introduced early on to this tragic character, Dinah.

The Fruit of Rachel’s Womb

Fifth and last, as we come to the end of our passage, beginning in verse 9, we have the fruit of Rachel's womb. So we began with the fruit of Leah's womb and then through Bilhah and Zilpah. And then Leah again with the fifth and sixth sons.

And now finally, at last, we come to the fruit of Rachel's womb. We read, verse 22, Then God remembered Rachel. And that verb remembered is so significant. It's not seeing. It's not hearing. It doesn't belong to Hagar.

It doesn't belong to Bilhah. It belongs to Rachel. God remembered her. This is a covenantal action. A covenantal activity. In the way that God had remembered his promise to Abraham and made Sarah fruitful.

In the way that God remembered his promise to Eve and rolled back the floodwaters from the earth when he remembered Noah. God remembers Rachel. He listened to her. He opened her womb. And she conceived and she bore a son.

And she said, God has taken away my reproach. She's thinking clearly. She's thinking rightly. She called his name Joseph. And then she said, The Lord will add to me another son. She sort of prophesied with this son.

Not only has he taken away my reproach, I will be fruitful again. He's undone that barrenness. Now I will be like a field. This will repeat. And so we come at the very end of our passage, the birth of the long-awaited son.

We of course see God filling up the household of Jacob, setting up the progeny that would become the nation of Israel according to its tribes. And yet, there's also this dynamic of waiting by faith, like Abraham, with Rachel, to bring that long-awaited seed.

That long-awaited seed of promise. Now we know that the seed of promise is not Joseph, but it's setting up the fact that the last, almost half of Genesis, will be the Joseph cycle. And with the birth of Joseph, it's almost like, you know, you want the confetti cannons to blast off.