Genesis 35:16-29--​The Deaths of Rachel and Isaac

READ:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+35%3A16-29&version=ESV
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.35.16-Gen.35.29

​The Deaths of Rachel and Isaac
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16 Then they journeyed from Bethel. When they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor. 17 And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, “Do not fear, for you have another son.” 18 And as her soul was departing (for she was dying), she called his name Ben-oni; but his father called him Benjamin. 19 So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem), 20 and Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel's tomb, which is there to this day. 21 Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder.

22 While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine. And Israel heard of it.

Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. 23 The sons of Leah: Reuben (Jacob's firstborn), Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. 24 The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. 25 The sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant: Dan and Naphtali. 26 The sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant: Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan-aram.

27 And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. 28 Now the days of Isaac were 180 years. 29 And Isaac breathed his last, and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

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We now see the death of two very important figures--Rachel, the younger wife of Israel, and Israel's father Isaac.  While we haven't been focused on Isaac for a while since chapter 27 where he blessed Jacob and was sure he was going to die there, Isaac lived many more years and saw the Jacob, his wives and their children, and probably even some of their grandchildren.

Rachel died in childbirth while the family was moving from Bethel the Ephrath (that is Bethlehem).  She named her son Ben-oni meaining "Son of my Sorrows" because she was dying, but this name would also come to mean "Son of my Strength" and "Son Out of Egypt" later.  We'll better understand the "Son out of Egypt" part after God calls Israel His firstborn and the Exodus is compared to their birth as a new nation.

Jacob would call this last son of his "Benjamin," meaning "Son of my right hand" (the most favored position) and will also come to mean "Son of the South" because the tribe of Benjamin will be one of two tribes to form the southern kingdom of Judah much later in the divided kingdom.  We are missing some context at this point for why Jacob seems to be playing favorites here, so let me give you a little insight--this again has to do with not getting everything in chronological order in Genesis since we're focusing on different main characters.

At this point in time, Joseph has already been sold into slavery by his brothers to a group of Midianites/Ishmawlite (sane people-group with two different names in the Bible) slave-traders.  We know this because Joseph is unaware of the existence of his brother Benjamin when he is prime minister of Egypt and he covertly asks them about their family and they let him know that there were 12 brothers, but they believe one has died (thinking Joseph was dead) and the youngest was at home with their father.  Joseph gets excited about the news of his brother and insists on meeting him and will eventually insist on bringing the whole family down toe Egypt.

Jacob believes that his most favored son, Joseph, was killed by wild beasts in the field as that is what the other sons had told him, so when Rachel bore him another son that could "take the place of" Joseph in his mind, and he could spoil him the same way that he had spoiled Joseph, he gave him the name to match this so that all the other children would understand that this is going to be the way that it was--he fully intended for Benjamin to receive the blessing and birthright if he had anything to say about it--and maybe part of this was because he had some experience with God choosing the youngest and not the oldest.  We'll even see a shift in how the other brothers treat Benjamin as opposed to how they treated Joseph.  With Joseph they were jealous imagining that if they killed him or got rid of him that somehow Jacob would love them more, but the loss of Joseph only made Jacob's bitter and sad.  They knew that their old father could not handle this kind of loss again and they were extremely protective of Benjamin (one of the reasons he was left behind on their trip to Egypt), and Jacob in his dramatic fashion said that  he would die if Benjamin also died and he made Reuben swear with the lives of his own children that he would protect Benjamin on that journey.  Since the story is split here and we won't get to this part of Joseph's story for a while, keep this all in mind as we start to transition from the story of Jacob towards the story of Joseph.

We do see something interesting here though that I pointed out to you in the past.  Rachel, although she was definitely Jacob's favorite wife in the beginning and he spoiled her children does not get treated with the same honor in death as Leah would.  She is simply buried in a tomb near Bethlehem and marked it with a pillar so that he could find it easily (perhaps because he wanted to keep her close to home and God had told Jacob that Bethlehem would be his new home), but she was not buried along with Abraham, Sarah, and Rebekah at Hebron.

We aren't really sure why we hear about what Reuben did right now, but it's there, probably to indicate to us that this act was enough for God and Jacob to not give the firstborn's birthright to Reuben.  Most likely, one or more of Reuben's children that I referred to just a little bit ago would actually be from this affair.

We then have a nice summary of Jacob's twelve sons which I listed for you a couple blogs ago, but I think it's important to see this once again:
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Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. 23 The sons of Leah: Reuben (Jacob's firstborn), Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. 24 The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. 25 The sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant: Dan and Naphtali. 26 The sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant: Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan-aram. (Genesis 35:22b-26).

The chapter here ends with the death of Jacob's father, Isaac.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, God had blessed him with many more years of life after the incident where he imagined he was about to die and called to give the blessing to his son Esau and was tricked into giving it to his son Jacob.  In fact the text tells us that he lived to be 180 years old.

Isaac was buried alongside his father and mother and alongside his wife, Rebekah, in the tomb of the patriarch in Hebron.  We will see that Jacob and Leah will also be buried here and that by faith Joseph will give instructions for his bones to be taken out of Egypt when the people leave so that he too may be buried here with the patriarchs.

We're going to wrap up this part of the anthology next time with the descendants of Esau--remember that genealogies bring the end to one biography and open another in Genesis.  We've just seen the genealogy of Jacob and we'll be clear that we're not going to be following the story of his brother Esau by closing out his portion of Genesis with a genealogy before moving on to the story of Joseph, who will be our main character from chapter 37 all the way through chapter 50.  For many, these upcoming chapters are their favorite part of the entire Bible and Joseph is a favorite Bible character of many people.  As I've hinted at before, he's one of the "types" of Christ that we see in the Old Testament, and I will point out some similarities as we go along that you may miss during a casual reading.