Genesis 30--Jacob's Children and Prosperity

READ:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+29%3A31-30%3A43&version=ESV

LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.29.31-Gen.30.43


Jacob's Children
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29:31 When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. 32 And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, “Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.” 33 She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon. 34 Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi. 35 And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.

​30:1 When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!” 2 Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” 3 Then she said, “Here is my servant Bilhah; go in to her, so that she may give birth on my behalf, that even I may have children through her.” 4 So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob went in to her. 5 And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. 6 Then Rachel said, “God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son.” Therefore she called his name Dan. 7 Rachel's servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. 8 Then Rachel said, “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed.” So she called his name Naphtali.

9 When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. 10 Then Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. 11 And Leah said, “Good fortune has come!” so she called his name Gad. 12 Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. 13 And Leah said, “Happy am I! For women have called me happy.” So she called his name Asher.

14 In the days of wheat harvest Reuben went 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?” Rachel said, “Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes.” 16 When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must come in to me, for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes.” So 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 gave my servant to my husband.” So she called his name Issachar.

19 And Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son. 20 Then Leah said, “God has endowed me with a good endowment; now my husband will honor 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 She conceived and bore a son and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” 24 And she called his name Joseph, saying, “May the Lord add to me another son!”

Jacob's Prosperity

25 As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. 26 Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” 27 But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. 28 Name your wages, and I will give it.” 29 Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. 30 For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?” 31 He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it: 32 let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. 33 So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.” 34 Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.” 35 But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in the charge of his sons. 36 And he set a distance of three days' journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban's flock.

​37 Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. 38 He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, 39 the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted. 40 And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban. He put his own droves apart and did not put them with Laban's flock. 41 Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the sticks, 42 but for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's. 43 Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

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We pick up right we left off last time.  We were just talking about the marriage of Jacob to Leah and then also to Rachel and how Jacob favored Rachel because she was younger and prettier than her older sister Leah, and when the Lord saw how Jacob hated Leah, he opened her womb so that she could have children (a great blessing and sign of favor from the Lord) but closed the womb of Rachel (a sign of not only being disfavored by God but it was thought that women that were barren were that way because of some sin that God had cursed them and it made other men and that belief caused other men and women around them to curse them as well).  Remember from the very beginning it appears that God had procreation in mind when he told all of creation, but specifically Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply," (Genesis 1:22, 28, 8:17, 9:1, 9:7)  and when Adam said to Eve, "for this reason shall a man leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24)  While it's describing a lot more than that, that definitely sounds like what happens when a man and a woman have a baby together--"the two become one flesh."  Rachel felt like she was incapable of fulfilling this most basic role that God had created woman for as Adam gave Eve her name because "she was the mother of all the living." (Genesis 3:20).  Bearing children was also an important part of the Abrahamic covenant as God would make Abraham fruitful and he and his descendants would multiply and be as numerous as the grains of sand or the stars in sky or the dust of the earth.  But how could one accomplish this if they could not have any children?  The simple answer is that you can't, and the answer that we know now is that the covenant was not meant for Jacob and Rachel, but for Jacob and Leah.

There's a list of children given for Leah, Leah's servant Zilpah (these children would also be considered Leah's children, though we know from the accounts of Abram and Sarai this didn't always turn out well) as well as the children of Rachel's servant Bilhah (again, these would be considered to be Rachel's children) and we read finally that God remembers Rachel and hears her cries and opens her womb and she bears a son named Joseph.  It seems clear that this is what Jacob wanted all along because he stops trying to have more children after this and treats Joseph with much favoritism.  Like his father, he has already decide which of the children is going to be blessed by God and which one he thinks deserves to bear the covenant, possibly even seeing a patter in God's work and assuming that it is always the youngest that God chooses, but once again, "8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.  9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9).

Also of note is the one daughter that we see mentioned here, Dinah.  It is unusual for a daughter to be listed in a genealogy like this unless that woman is going to come up again later in the narrative and the author is pointing this out to us now so that we will have context of who this woman is and recognize that she is important.  Most of the time women are mentioned in their conjunction with having children, but in this case, Dinah  appears to be the youngest of the children of Leah and is going to get into some trouble and her big brothers are going to take vengeance against those who abducted and attacked her.  It is not a happy story at all, but understanding where she belongs in the family tree will help us understand why her older brothers responded the way they did.  Let me give a brief summary of the male children listed above as they will become the 12 tribes of Israel along with the brother Benjamin who will be born much later.

Sons of Leah:  Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.  Later she also bore Issachar, Zebulun and her daughter Dinah
Sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant:  Dan and Naphtali
Sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant:  Gad and Asher
Sons of Rachel:  Joseph and later (not mentioned yet) Benjamin

The last part of this chapter sets the stage for the conflict that is going to arise between Jacob and Laban, Jacob's uncle, that is going to lead to Jacob and Laban parting ways and God using that incident to get Jacob back to the Promised Land.  Much like we've read about with Abraham and Isaac, when they settle too long in one place, God blesses them to the point where their children and sheep and cattle become a drain on the resources of the area and the locals believe that having them live among them is unsustainable--it even happened with Abram and Lot as their God blessed both men for the sake of Abram but they could no longer find water and pasture for both men's flocks and herds without there being conflict between their herdsmen, and God used these situations of conflict to move His people long and cause them to separate from those who would be an issue for them.  We see much the same thing going on here.

​Jacob seems satisfied with his family after the birth of Joseph, but desires to go home and be with his people in his homeland again.  Laban understands (though through pagan customs known here as divination) that it is because of Jacob that Laban's household has been blessed.  Laban then seems to want to buy God off by offering Jacob a bribe (he calls it wages, but he is looking to buy God's continued favor if Jacob leaves), but at the same time tries to make it so that Jacob has worked for free for all these years as Laban was a dirty, rotten cheat.  Jacob names his price as all of the spotted and speckled goats and all of the black sheep.  These are recessive traits, so Jacob is intentionally taking the smaller portion of the flock and leaving Laban with the majority, but Laban intentionally hides all of the speckled and spotted goats and black sheep from Jacob by moving them a 3-day journey away from him.

I honestly don't understand the part about the fresh stick of poplar and almond and plane trees.  This is clearly a miracle of the Lord to change the probabilities of genetics in favor of Jacob.  Jacob also seemed to understand something about pedigree as he only put the branches in front of the strongest of the flock, but did not do so with the weakest of the flock and they seemed to obey the regular rules of probability and most of those sheep and goats come out with the dominant traits and were given to Laban.

God is manipulating the odds here and giving Jacob the blessing that God wants Jacob to have despite Laban's attempts to say one thing with his mouth and do something else with his actions.  He had no intention of letting Jacob leave with anything more than he came with (with the exception of his daughters which I assume he was happy to get rid of because he had two less mouths to feed).  We'll see later that Laban will continue to keep trying to change Jacob's wages and each time God knows the trickery that Laban is trying to pull and continues to bless Jacob, not because Jacob is good, but because God is good.