In the Beginning: A Study in Genesis 27-36Sample

Why Should We Sleep With or Marry More Than One Person?

At this point in the story, Jacob is now an old man (perhaps in his 80s) with two wives who are sisters. Jacob, who was duped into marrying Leah, despises her while he adores Rachel. The promise of many sons has not yet occurred until this chapter, where we witness at least seven years of family drama and the birth of sons and a daughter, born to four mothers who are often simultaneously pregnant.

This scene of Genesis shows God’s blessing to Jacob through children despite the sin in his family. Because Jacob loved his wife Rachel but did not love his other wife, Leah, God chose to close Rachel’s womb and open the womb of Leah. In this, we see the loved wife childless and barren like Sarah and Rebekah before her in the covenant family line.

With sad words, Leah articulates her heart’s desire that by bearing a son for Jacob, he would love her. So God gave Leah three more sons—Simeon, Levi, and Judah. Leah’s sister Rachel responded to the births with jealousy and anger, much like Esau had responded to the blessing of his brother Jacob. Rachel demanded that her husband give her children, or she would die, and these words later proved both prophetic and tragic in Genesis 35:16-19. And, in a sign of Jacob’s growing faith, he correctly stated that God ultimately controlled her womb.

Rather than trusting God, as his father Isaac had in waiting 20 years for him to be born, or turning to God in prayer, the couple copied the sin of Sarah, who gave her husband Abraham to sleep with her maidservant Hagar. Like Eve, Sarah, and Rebekah before her, Rachel decided to handle things on her own rather than relying on God in faith, and Jacob supported her sin by having Dan and Naphtali with Rachel’s maidservant as a result. Rachel appears very godless in all of this, as she is pushing her husband to have sex with another woman, and she attributes the children born to that woman as God enabling her to beat her sister Leah, whom she is very jealous of.

Not to be outshoned, Leah pushes her husband Jacob to sleep with her maidservant. Leah named the son Gad, which means “luck,” and she failed to see that human life comes from God’s hand. Leah’s maidservant slept again with Jacob and had another son, whom Leah named Asher (meaning “happy”) because it made her happy.

The hillbilly soap opera gets even weirder when Jacob’s firstborn son Reuben finds some mandrakes that he gives to his mother Leah. Rachel trades sex with their husband Jacob for Leah’s mandrakes, which may have been considered an ancient aphrodisiac. Happy to oblige, Jacob had sex with Leah that night and conceived yet another son, Issachar. With bizarre reasoning, Leah attributes the birth of this son to God blessing her for allowing her husband to have sex with her servant, which is a simple way of saying God was so happy about the adultery and bigamy that He blessed her. Leah went on to have another son and eventually a daughter.

During all of this drama, Rachel prayed to God, who answered her prayer and gave her a son named Joseph, the youngest of the twelve, until Rachel conceived Benjamin in Genesis 35:18. His unloved wife, Leah, and the maidservants of Rachel and Leah gave birth to the other ten sons and one daughter. Laban’s daughters appear to be similar to their deceitful father.

Through it all, God would preserve His covenant through Jacob’s sons, who would become the 12 tribes of Israel through whom Jesus would be born to deal with human sin that was so evident in Jacob’s family. The theme of this section, as with the rest of Genesis and the Bible, is that God is the hero that rescues self-destructive sinners from themselves by His grace and mercy alone.

Question:

How does this story demonstrate the terrible consequences of polygamy and adultery?