Genesis #19 Ch. 29:31 - Ch. 31:14 the Sons of Israel — Chuck Missler

Welcome to the 19th study in the book of Genesis conducted by Chuck Missler, the subject of this tape, Genesis chapter 29, verse 31 through chapter 31, verse 14. Before we do get started, I have to share one thing.

We had an opportunity yesterday afternoon to go up to Beverly Hills and home of some friends and receive Malcolm Toon, who is the ambassador to the Soviet Union, or was. Any guy that was declared persona non grata by Brezhnev can't be all bad, but Carter left him there and he's now retiring from government service.

He previously was the ambassador to the nation Israel, so it was an interesting afternoon to shoot questions and so forth, and no great insights particularly relevant to this, other than the more you hear from these guys, the more you're convinced that they don't really understand the Middle East because they don't understand its roots.

Problems in the Middle East did not start in 1948 or in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration or what have you. It started in the book of Genesis, right about where we are, and of course it's always interesting among a group of Jewish dignitaries receiving someone like that to be a goyim in the midst of them and raising questions relative to the Genesis roots of the issue as opposed to the other things.

But anyway, it is interesting how we live in a world where these very issues that we're studying here are coming to a crisis. Yes? Goyim? Thank you. I'm a goyim. All right. I've been called worse things.

We'll open with a word of prayer, but I figured that just get the circulation going and so forth, and I'll give any other latecomers a chance to sneak in quietly. Father, we just praise you for this evening.

The Promise of God's Unfailing Presence

We thank you, Father, for your presence here. We thank you, Father, for your promise that you've given us that you would never leave us or forsake us, and we thank you, Father, for your abiding presence in our lives and in our hearts and with us tonight.

We ask you for your Holy Spirit and the authority of Jesus Christ that he might instruct us and show forth those great and mighty things that you've done on our behalf. And, Father, we would above all these things see Jesus Christ in all that we behold here.

We ask you, Father, to just open our hearts and minds and thoughts, put all else aside, and help us this hour to be drawn more closely to you and Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Okay. We have been shifting gears a little, you may have noticed, contrary to my usual style of digging in with thousands of irrelevant details.

We've started moving along, letting the narrative just carry us along. But in so doing, in going over my notes, there's a number of points that I think I either didn't make or may need emphasizing again.

We've carried ourselves through chapter 28, where Jacob was at Bethel, and verse 15 of chapter 8 meant a lot to me lately, where the Lord, in contrast to the blessings that occurred in the earlier chapter, the Lord himself blesses Jacob far more than Israel, his father, did.

And verse 15 says, For I will not leave thee. And that is probably the most precious promise that you can get out of the Scripture. And that was the promise given to Jacob. It was also the promise given to Moses for all the people before they crossed the Jordan, under the leadership of Joshua in Deuteronomy 31.

That was the promise that was given to Joshua himself as he assumed the leadership and faced the battle in Joshua chapter 1, verses 5 and 8. It was the promise given to Solomon when he rebuilt the temple.

I should say rebuilt, when he built the temple. It was also the promise given to the disciples before the ascension. I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. Interestingly enough, that's one reason I wanted to mention it this evening in the prayer that we opened up with.

If you turn to Hebrews chapter 13, verse 5, we can claim that ourselves in a very special way. So let your manner of life be without covetousness and be content with such things as ye have. For he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.

There are some people that will run around and try to teach you otherwise. I commend to you to mark vividly in blue, green, or whatever you're carrying with yourself. Verse 5, he said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.

Boy, am I glad that that abiding is on his faithfulness, not mine. Why does he do that? Verse 6, so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Gee, we could spend all evening on this.

But I do suggest your response to that promise in Hebrews chapter 13, verses 5 and 6 not be the same response that Jacob had when he got the promise that I will never leave thee. He immediately made a vow.

Vows, God's Sovereignty, and Testing Teaching by Scripture

I think we touched on vows, but in listening to the tape and going over my notes, I felt that I should maybe reinforce something. I don't know personally of any vow that's useful in the scripture. That's probably a wrong statement, but as I've warned you many times, I throw those out just to see if you're doing your homework.

But I'm going to suggest the proposition that a vow has two problems. One is it is a usurpation of the sovereignty of God because it assumes that you have the capacity to fulfill the vow and you don't.

Nothing you can do, nothing you ever can avoid the footnote as the Lord wills. And for you to make a vow is a usurpation of that idea. Secondly, a vow will hinder your spiritual growth. And so I just submit those two ideas reminding you of our premise and on which this whole gathering is based.

And that's Acts 17 .11, right? These are more noble than those in Thessalonica. Speaking of the Greens also, or rather Luke says in the book of Acts. In that they receive the word with all readiness of mind, but search the scriptures daily to prove whether those things be so.

Not if I'm right. I'm just laying that out on you in terms of this vow thing. Jacob makes a vow. I don't know of anyone in the scripture of the Lord, of course, that makes a vow and survives it constructively.

I don't think you need to make vows in the Christian era. You can talk all you like about the Old Testament time, and I'm not going to quarrel with that. I am going to suggest that you and I have no need for making vows.

We seek but one thing, Christ's abiding. A vow is an attempt to take on yourself a responsibility that God probably didn't intend. So anyway, that's Jacob's approach to grace is to put himself under the law.

But I'll leave that with you. He also goes into the tenth. I think we did talk about tithes and tenths and all that. Malachi, Old Testament, says that the tenth is the Lord's. We know better than that, don't we?

Ten-tenths is the Lord's. Fair? Thirty-four of Moses' laws were in operation by this point in Genesis. So those laws that are dignified or ceremonialized or instituted in the laws of Moses were already operative even prior to Moses, incidentally.

And the tithe is one of them. Here's evidence of it. But, again, I don't think all we know for sure from Malachi is that less than the tenth means you're stealing. Right? We did that last time before, I guess, so move on.

But I just thought I'd remind you of that. Unless you felt comfortable and smug and comfortable tonight, I thought I'd leave you something to bother you on the way home. Okay, then we shifted from chapter 28 to chapter 29.

Jacob's Years with Laban and the Birth of Leah's Sons

Chapter 29, which we started, we jumped into last time, but I want to pick up tonight, is that period of time that Jacob, I imagine it was his dearest time in his life. I say that because he never forgot this period.

He spoke of it even on his deathbed. We'll see that when we get to chapter 48, verse 3, which you don't have to turn to now because we'll do that in, you know, 18 or 20 months from now. But, anyway, he never forgot this period.

And he never forgot it. If nothing else, he found out what his Uncle Laban was all about. But even Moses himself sang of this period in Deuteronomy 32, verses 9 through 13. Maybe we'll turn to that one.

Deuteronomy 32 is known as the Song of Moses. And verses 9 through 13, Moses makes reference to Jacob. The Lord's portion, verse 9, is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land and in the waste, howling wilderness.

He led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, flutterth over a young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings. So the Lord alone did lead him.

There was no strange God with him. We're going to find a little incident about strange God shortly, but not with Jacob. That was with Rachel when she lifts the tariff from her uncle. That's a whole other thing we'll get into tonight.

There was no strange God with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, and he might eat of the increase of the fields. And he made him to suck honey out of a rock, and oil out of a flinty rock, and so forth.

Do you notice where it says, where he fluttereth over the young? What does that remind you of? Hey, very good. Genesis, verse 1. Verse, verse, right. Spirit of God, darkness is upon the face of the deep.

Right? The Spirit of God brooded, fluttered, vibrated, if you want to be a physicist, over it. And I told you about the three guys that were arguing about the oldest profession, didn't I? Didn't I? Did I share that with you?

I have a story from the book of Genesis. Believe it or not, I got it on a sales trip. There was a doctor, an engineer, and an attorney that were arguing about who was a member of the oldest profession.

And the doctor said, well, of course, medicine is the oldest profession. It goes all the way back to Genesis, chapter 2, where Eve is taken out of the sight of Adam. It's an operation. Not only an operation, it's with a deep anesthesia.

And that proves that medicine is the oldest profession. And not to be, kept getting caught up in the spirit of the discussion, the engineer not to be out of it. And it says, nonsense, Adam came along late.

That was the sixth day. You know, what actually happened was the greatest creative act was the universe. All the planets and galaxies. That was the greatest engineering feat that has never been equaled.

So engineering is actually the oldest profession. The lawyer stepped up and said, you didn't read this text carefully. All of this was created out of chaos, which proves the attorneys were there first.

So I just entered. Okay, onward. We got through this beautiful period of Genesis 29 where Jacob falls in love with Rachel and arranges with Laban to work for Rachel. And Laban, out of his connivery, but probably in the will of the Lord in terms of God's desire in Jacob's life, gives Jacob a lesson in the rights of the firstborn.

Because Leah, the one with the bad eyes, tender eyes is the polite term, but the Hebrew implies there were weak eyes, is substituted. And so Jacob is cheated. And we're very reminiscent of the way Jacob cheated his brother before their father in the rights of the firstborn.

And we find Jacob himself disenfranchised of his desire having to honor the rights of the firstborn. We have that whole incident that we talked about last time. But he loved Rachel so much that he worked another seven years.

So this poor guy has put in 14 years for these two gals. And I'm going to show great self-control tonight by not getting into this whole issue of polygamy and sufficient unto the day, et cetera. So we'll just pass on that one and see what Jacob reaped by having two gals under the same roof.

We got into this last time, but I'm going to pick up tonight's discussion at verse 31 of chapter 29. Because this is where we start to get into, well, I might start a verse earlier, that each one of the two gals gets a handmaid, Bilhah and Zilah.

And, of course, Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, so he served another 30 years. Now, you can imagine, just put your imagination on it. It's my presumption that Rachel was probably insufferable. Can you imagine Jacob, who has shown so much preference for the sister as to work seven years and then be cheated and work another seven for her?

That's got to be a tough environment. If you were Leah, you could visualize being in a pretty tough predicament, where Rachel is obviously the favored one. Verse 31, when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

Now, that may, we're jumping to conclusions, but that may speak volumes. In any case, Leah conceived and bore a son called his name Reuben. For, she said, surely the Lord hath looked upon my affliction.

Now, therefore, my husband will love me. Now, what we're going to do tonight is we're going to go through these births. And for each birth, you might make note of two things. What the name means, or our best guess as to what it means.

And secondly, the incident or attitude or exclamation that gives rise to the name. Now, Reuben means see a son. Very natural. Here's Leah competing with her, the other wife. And she has the first, you know, that's a big deal, to bear a son at all, let alone the first one, Reuben.

Reuben means see a son. For, Leah says, quote, surely the Lord hath looked upon my affliction. Looked upon my affliction. Now, therefore, my husband will love me. That's her thought that the Holy Spirit records incident to Reuben.

Now, we're going to go through the narrative to feel what exactly happened, but then we're going to go back and see what else the Holy Spirit may be doing here. That's the first one, Reuben. And she conceived again and bore a son and said, because the Lord hath heard that I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also.

And she called his name Simeon, which means hearing. Hearing. See, in other words, because the Lord heard, the word heard you might underline, because the Lord heard that I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also and called his name hearing.

Okay? Simeon means hearing. Okay. She conceived again and bore a son and said, now this time will my husband become attached or joined unto me because I have borne him three sons. Therefore, his name is called Levi, which means joined or attached.

Do you know that's what Levi meant? Joined or attached. Okay. She conceived again and bore a son and she said, now will I praise the Lord. Underline the word praise. Now will I praise the Lord. Therefore, she called his name praise, Judah.

And then she ceased bearing. Now, she has four sons and then she ceased bearing. She's going to have a couple more later. But she had these four. These four each include the covenant name of Jehovah in the name.

So they speak of a spiritual strength probably in Leah's demeanor, background, expression. She's later going to have Gad, which is a Babylonian deity, the god of fate. So the later names don't necessarily have the dignity, if you will, that these first four do.

These first four are named after, in a sense, named after God in some way. They include in the Hebrew construction a reference to the covenant name of Jehovah. So that's interesting. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah.

The first four born of Leah. Well, before we amplify it too much, let's continue on. Let's go through the whole, let's go through 11 of them. We won't go through 11 because the 12th takes a couple chapters to arrive.

Well, maybe we should do that too. Let's go through the 12 tribes and then take a look at the several different ways. So let's just continue with chapter 30, verse 1. And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children.

Rachel's Jealousy and the Births of the Remaining Tribes

Can you imagine what Rachel's going through? Here's Leah, who's the despised one. And I'm jumping to a lot of conclusions. I've always sort of visualized Rachel as being extremely attractive but spoiled rotten.

But here she is, not having any children. Leah, the older sister, having four. She's getting a little unglued. Rachel envied her sister and said unto Jacob, give me children or else I die. Would you say she's a nag?

Can you nag in the will of God? I've bothered the fellows with a couple of cracks tonight. I'll let you girls think about that on the way home. Can you nag in the will of God? I'm going to suggest that you cannot nag in the will of God.

God never nags. Did you know that? Women who nag cannot be in the will of God. Who is the nagger? Revelation 12 .10. Satan. So I'll lay that on you just to have a little fun. And this may be wrong. You know, a checkmister is all screwed up.

What can an engineer know? There was a guy by the name of Hammurabi who is recorded in Genesis chapter 14 verse 1, briefly mentioned as Amraphel. But we know him in secular literature as Hammurabi. He lived about 800 years before Moses and he developed a code of laws and ethics that became the standard from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea and from Persia all the way to the Mediterranean.

The code of Hammurabi. And you'll find many references to him if you're studying ancient history. But in the code of Hammurabi, it was normal for a woman, a wife, who was barren, to put in her place a surrogate wife, namely her handmaid, to raise up children to the husband.

She was in effect, biologically speaking or physiologically speaking, a stand-in. A pinch hitter, if you will. And it was... I hope that's not an offensive way of expressing it. But that was not my intention.

But the point is, this was commonly done. We read about it here and several places in the scripture. And it strikes us as quaint or bizarre or weird, what have you. You need to understand that in this part of the world, at that time, that was commonly done.

And that's exactly what Rachel finally resorts to. She says to Jacob, Give me children or else I die. Verse 2,. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel. And he says, Am I in God's stead? You've got to give Jacob some credit here.

During the entire sojourn in Paddan Aram, there is no evidence that Jacob was in fellowship particularly. He builds no altar. There's no prayers recorded, etc. However, there are a couple of places, and this is one of them, where it may be more than just a figure of speech.

Jacob attributes Rachel's barrenness to God's sovereignty. And how well we might all do that too. Where there's a circumstance, favorable or unfavorable. To recognize it's entirely God's sovereignty. But in any case, Am I in God's stead?

Who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah going unto her, and she shall bear upon my knees, so that I may also have children by her. So she gave him Bilhah her handmaid as his wife, and Jacob went in unto her.

Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Rachel said, Notice what Rachel says upon the birth here. The Holy Spirit thought this was important enough to record this particular quote. All the way through by each son, there is a quote by the wife.

Rachel said, God hath judged me. Underline the word judged. God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son. Therefore, called she his name, judging. Dan. Now Dan was really born out of a jealous act.

Rachel is trying to compete with Leah. Pride, envy, nagging, conniving jealousy is the background of Dan. We're going to study the twelve tribes in great detail before we're through Genesis. Primarily because of our insatiable interest in the book of Revelation.

The tribe of Dan does not get listed in the twelve tribes that are sealed in chapter seven of the book of Revelation. In fact, Dan gets the back of the hand of the Holy Spirit, so to speak, all the way through the scripture.

When we go through the genealogies, you'll see the genealogy given of each of the twelve sons of Jacob. Until you get to Dan. Dan and others. You'll notice it lists all the sons of each one. When it gets to Dan, if you don't have a good translation, it will confuse you.

There's two words after that, but they're not names of sons. It's really a way of saying and others. And all the way through, Dan is in bad shape. And it's as if the Holy Spirit could foresee that it was through the tribe of Dan that idolatry would enter the land.

And we'll study that in great length. I won't get into it now because we'll build a whole study on the twelve sons of Jacob, the twelve tribes of Israel, when we get to chapter 49 and Jacob himself, leaning on his staff, prophesies over each of the twelve tribes.

And those prophecies come through the scripture and the impact or understanding of the book of Revelation. We'll take that up in great detail then. But you just might make a note that Dan is in trouble from the beginning.

Okay. And Bilhah, Rachel's maid, conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, with great wrestlings, with great wrestlings, have I wrestled with my sister. Who's Rachel's problem with?

Leah. This whole thing is a big race. A big competition. Rachel says, with great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister and I have prevailed. Two key words. Wrestling and prevailed. She called his name wrestling.

Naphtali. Leah saw. She saw a good thing going here. She saw Rachel yield a couple by this surrogate wife idea. So Leah saw that she had ceased bearing. She took Zilpah, her maid, and gave her to Jacob as his wife.

Jacob is getting a full house. He's now got four gals on his hands. Zilpah, Leah's maid, bore Jacob a son and Leah said, notice there's always a quote by Rachel or Leah. Leah says, good fortune. And called his name, it actually translates a troop or a company.

A military group. But it also was the name of a Babylonian god. The god of good fortune. The god of fate. It's like calling him lucky. Or calling him, you know, good fortune. Gad is the term. Tribe of Gad.

Comes out of him. And Zilpah, Leah's maid, bore Jacob a second son. And Leah said, happy am I for the daughter shall call me blessed and called his name Asher, meaning happy. Reuben went in the days of the wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field.

Mandrakes, incidentally, are a root that had the superstition surrounding them that they were an aphrodisiac. I think more modern texts refute that, any biological basis in that idea, but that is the concept that mandrakes are ascribed to be an aphrodisiac and that's what's coming up here.

Reuben went in the days of the wheat harvest found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother, Leah. Then Rachel said unto Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes. And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband?

Wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to-night for thy son's mandrakes. And Jacob came out of the field in the evening and Leah went out to meet him and said, Thou must come in unto me, for surely I have hired thee with my son's mandrakes.

And he lay with her all that night. So the two gals are bartering him. I don't think it requires any comment. I'll just forego that. And God hearkened unto Leah and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.

Leah has naturally herself two more. She had four originally, two by her handmaid and then now two more by her own. She bore a fifth son. Leah said, God hath given me my hire. I'm learning the word hire.

Because I have given my maiden to my husband and she called his name Issachar. Which means hire or wage, wages. And the reason they go into this mandrakes thing, you wouldn't understand why she called him Issachar except because she in effect felt she had hired or paid for the privilege which caused her to conceive.

Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. Leah said, God hath endued me with a good dowry. A good dowry. Now will my husband dwell with me because I have borne him six sons and she called his name Zebulun.

Which means dwelling. Tied to the dowry. And afterwards she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah and Dinah is going to feature heavily in a later episode. God remembered Rachel. Now we had four with Leah, two with Rachel's handmaid, two with Leah's handmaid, two naturally again with Leah.

Right? Now we get around to number, if I'm counting right, eleven. God remembered Rachel, God hearkened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son and said God hath taken away my reproach.

She called his name Joseph. Which can mean adding to. And said the Lord shall add to me another son. That turns out to be a prophecy. And just to make our tour here complete, we have to skip all the way over to chapter 35 to pick up the 12th son.

Benjamin and the Twelve Sons of Jacob

Chapter 35 verse 16. A lot happens in the meantime. You know they leave. There's a lot of things that will happen in the meantime. But now we're getting several chapters later and we're in chapter 35 verse 16.

And it says and they journeyed from Bethel and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath. And we're going to discover in verse 19 that this is Bethlehem. Ephrathah is the general locality. Bethlehem is a specific city.

And it's the Bethlehem that obviously is the Bethlehem we all know as the birthplace of Christ. There are two Bethlehems. One you don't read about much but there really was another Bethlehem to avoid confusion.

This is the Bethlehem we're talking about. Came to Ephrath and Rachel travailed and she had hard labor. And it came to pass when she was in hard labor that the midwife said unto her, fear not thou shalt have this son also.

And it came to pass as her soul was in departing for she died. She died in that childbirth. But as her soul was departing that she called his name Ben Oni. Ben Oni. Which means the son of my sorrow. Okay.

But his father called him Benjamin. Benjamin. Which means the son of my right hand. And Rachel died and was buried in the way to Ephrath which is Bethlehem. And if you go to Bethlehem today, one of the places that you can stop and I recommend you do is at Rachel's tomb.

Very, very beloved spot to the Jewish people. And their tomb is there just outside Bethlehem. Yeah. Jacob set a pillar upon her grave and that is the pillar of Rachel's grave until this day and so on.

Now, very, very interesting. We have twelve tribes. Twelve sons of Jacob. These twelve tribes each name has a translation. Each name is associated with a quotation of the mother. And it's very interesting and I'm just going to tease you with a few observations with the idea that you'll take it upon yourself to take these home, make little charts, list the twelve sons, and except you have a little problem.

The twelve sons are listed in the scripture over a dozen times. What's interesting is each time they're listed in the scripture, they're listed in a different order. Almost. Sometimes they're the same order but there's several basic orders they're listed in.

One order is the order we have them here, the order of their birth. Right? Another order is to put all Leah's sons first. Then Rachel's sons. Then the sons of the handmaidens, respectively. In some kind of natural hierarchy, if you will.

The concept being that Leah was the first wife, the natural sons of Leah having precedence. That gives rise to another order in the genealogies. And so on and so forth. We're going to discover that Joseph has two sons, both of which are adopted by Jacob as his own sons.

Joseph, we're going to discover, has two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. And Joseph will end up getting the rights of the firstborn and thus has a double portion. You say, well gee, that's Reuben. He's the firstborn.

Yes, but he forfeits it through some heinous crimes. And Simeon, and it gets down to Judah. And Judah has the right of kingship. We're going to discover that Joseph has two sons. Both the two sons are adopted by Jacob.

Ephraim and Manasseh. Now that actually gives us thirteen tribes to choose from. And all through the scripture, it turns out, you'd like to have twelve tribes except you sometimes don't want to count Levi.

And sometimes you do. Because Levi does not go to war. So he's not counted in the army. The tribe of Levi was commissioned to take care of the tabernacle. So how do you get twelve tribes if you don't count Levi?

Very simple. You count Joseph as two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. So you've actually got thirteen. You can take one away and still have your twelve tribes of Israel. Terrific. There's other times when you want to have everybody there and you want to have twelve tribes.

Fine. Then you have the tribe of Joseph. You double them up. You can play a shell game here, depending on how you want to list the twelve tribes. And we'll study that. I think we'll get into most of that when we're in chapter 49.

Because there's some very, very interesting observations. But the first thing you can do is take each place they're listed. You're in Genesis several times, in Exodus in Numbers 1, Numbers 10, and so on.

And certainly in Revelation chapter 7. Also in Ezekiel 48 when they inherit the land. And you discover some interesting things. Each time they're in a different order and each time the order of their listing gives you a sentence.

And the sentence can carry a meaning. Whether it's significant or not, you'll have to judge. One example is what we have here in the natural order. Some scholars have seen in the meaning of the names of the twelve tribes, the gospel.

The Names of the Tribes as a Pattern of the Gospel

Reuben's first. See a son. This calls to mind John 1, 9, Behold the Lamb of God. That's where we start. Faith cometh by hearing. Simeon, the second son, is by hearing. And faith cometh by hearing we are joined or have union with him, the tribe of Levi.

Reuben, Simeon, Levi. Which leads to what? Judah. Praise. Our sins are thus judged. In terms of Dan. There's wrestling in terms of the walk with Naphtali. There is a troop or company or the concept of fellowship in the name of Gad.

There's happy in the concept in the name of Asher. There is the concept of hiring or service in the name of Issachar. Zebulun is dwelling. Joseph is adding or the concept of reward being added to. That brings us to Benjamin.

Which brings us full circle. The son of my right hand. And that can either appeal to you or not. I'm not here to sell it. I'm here just to call it to your attention because you can make a big thing of that.

Some of the authors will write pages and pages to amplify that basic idea. There are some other ideas that I think are a little more obscure. The more obscure the idea is, the more I'm attracted to it, of course.

You may recall, this is a review time now. Remember when we were in chapter 28 with Jacob. I suggested to you that the man of Jacob is a type. He's a type of the believer. Just like Esau is a man of the flesh, of the field, the world.

Jacob is a man of faith. Surprisingly enough. Justified by faith. He's also a type of something else. What's his new name going to be when we get there? Israel. Just to refresh your mind, a couple of things.

He was the object of God's election. He was loved before he was born. He lacked natural attractiveness. He was one from whom the twelve tribes sprang, after whom the Jewish race was most frequently called after Jacob.