With Jacob, Leah had given birth to four sons while
Rachel had none. Every birth of a son by Leah must have brought great agony of
soul to Rachel. Envy must have got the better of her. To add to her misery, Leah
must have sneered at her infertility. And that must have frustrated and brought
about fear of losing Jacob’s affection toward her. The name of each of Leah’s
son brought about a sense of false feeling that she could be losing grip of Jacob.
As long as she remained barren, she would feel less than a useful partner to
Jacob. For after all, didn’t God promise to bless Jacob with plenty of
descendants and through them to bless the world?
However, barrenness or fertility can be traced to
the hand of God. He is the source and
giver of life. It is He who opens up or closes wombs. But God was furthest from
her mind at this point. So coming to Jacob, she vexed and nagged him saying, “Give
me children, or else I die.” What she did was inviting a rebuke by Jacob. So he told her
angrily “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from
you the fruit of the womb?” Indeed, children are a blessing from God as
Psalm 127:3 so rightly says, “Behold, children
are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb
is a reward.”
Despite his rebuke Rachel took matters into her
own hand. She decided to use her maid Bilhah to be a surrogate for her. In so
doing, Rachel tossed aside all ideals and up the game of birth. In hoping to
catch up with Leah through Bilhah, she had entirely forgotten the Sarah-Hagar debacle.
Rachel’s strategy was a fabulous success. In quick succession, Bilhah bore her
two sons – Dan and Naphtali. She felt vindicated for that is the meaning of Dan,
and even attributed the birth of this first child by Bilhah to God. She was
certain God was setting things aright for her. The second son Bilhah gave birth
to was named Naphtali meaning “wrestlings”. Rachel felt that she had wrestled
with Leah and prevailed.
Leah, refusing to back down, put up a fight. In a
tick-for-tack fashion, she used Zilpah her maid as a surrogate as well. And she
gave birth to two sons with Jacob namely, Gad, meaning good fortune, and Asher,
meaning happy. With these two sons it was 6 to 2. She was still winning that’s
why she named one, good fortune, and she was more than happy to call the second,
Asher, for she had once again triumph in the game of birth. Ever wonder why Jacob
allowed himself to be manipulated by his two wives? We will never know the
answer, but we know that through it God’s plan of increasing his descendants was
slowly but surely being fulfilled.
In a very real sense, Jacob’s family was in a
mess. Envy, jealousy, pride and spite were all present. From their lives, we should
be put on alert to what heinous sin of man’s fallen nature can get us into. Know it or not, one sin will always trigger others.
Can we eliminate it completely? The answer is no! Can we reduce its frequency? The
answer is yes! And we do so by making God the top priority of our life and not
self-interest. We must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and
all things we need in life will be put in place!
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