Genesis 30:1 - Meaning and Application

We see here the bad results of Jacob’s unusual marriage to two sisters. First comes an unhappy conflict between Jacob and Rachel (Genesis 30:1, 30:2). The trouble came not so much from Rachel’s barrenness as from Leah’s fruitfulness. Rebekah, Isaac’s only wife, was childless for a long time, yet there is no sign of unrest between her and Isaac. But here, because Leah is having children, Rachel cannot live peacefully with Jacob.

Rachel becomes bitter. She envies her sister (Genesis 30:1). Envy is sorrow over another person’s good, and no sin is more offensive to God or more harmful to other people and ourselves. Rachel did not think about the fact that God made the difference. Even if her sister was favored in this one thing, Rachel still had advantages in other ways. We should carefully guard against every rising of this sin in our hearts. Let us not look with an evil eye on fellow servants because our Master is good.

But that was not all. She said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I will die.” We are very quick to go wrong in our desires for earthly gifts, as Rachel did here. One child would not satisfy her. Because Leah had more than one, she had to have more too: “Give me children.” Her heart was set on this in such an unhealthy way that, if she did not get what she wanted, she thought life itself was hardly worth living. “Give them to me, or I die” means, “I will fret myself to death if I do not get this.” Some think she was even threatening to harm herself if she could not get this mercy.

She did not go to God in prayer, but to Jacob only, forgetting that children are a gift from the Lord (Psalm 127:3). We wrong both God and ourselves when we look more to people, who are only tools in our troubles and blessings, than to God, who gives them. Notice the difference between Rachel’s request and Hannah’s in 1 Samuel 1:10 and following. Rachel envied; Hannah wept. Rachel must have children, and she later died giving birth to a second. Hannah prayed for one son, and God gave her four more. Rachel was demanding and pushy; Hannah was humble and devout. “If you give me a child, I will give him to the Lord.” Let us follow Hannah, not Rachel, and let reason and faith control our desires.

Jacob rebuked her, and rightly so. He loved Rachel, so he corrected her when she spoke wrongly (Genesis 30:2). Faithful rebuke is a sign of true love (Psalm 141:5; Proverbs 27:5, 27:6). Job rebuked his wife when she spoke like a foolish woman (Job 2:10). See also 1 Corinthians 7:16. Jacob was angry, not with Rachel herself, but with her sin, and he showed that clearly in his words. Sometimes a rebuke must be given warmly, like medicine. It should not be so hot that it burns, but not so cold that it does no good.

Jacob’s reply to Rachel’s bitter demand was serious and godly: “Am I in God’s place?” The Aramaic paraphrase puts it well, “Do you ask sons of me? Should you not ask them from the Lord?” The Arabic reads, “Am I above God? Can I give you what God denies you?” Jacob spoke plainly. He admitted, first, that God had a hand in the trouble they shared: “He has kept me from having children.” Whatever we lack, it is God who withholds it. He is a sovereign Lord, wise, holy, and just. He can do as he wills with what belongs to him, and he owes no one anything. He never has done wrong to any creature, and never will. God holds the keys of the clouds, the heart, the grave, and the womb.

Second, Jacob admitted his own inability to change what God had decided: “Am I in God’s place?” In other words, “Do you make a god of me?” No creature can take God’s place for us. God can be to us what no creature can be, just as the sun can stand in for the moon and stars. But no moon or star can stand in for the sun. No human wisdom, power, or love can take the place of God’s.

So it is sin and foolishness to put any creature in God’s place, or to trust anyone the way we should trust God alone.

Second, there was also an unhappy arrangement between Jacob and the two handmaids. At Rachel’s urging, Jacob took Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, as a wife, so that in that custom of the time, Bilhah’s children could be counted as Rachel’s children (Genesis 30:3, and following). Rachel would rather have children in name than none at all. She wanted children she could call her own, even if they were not truly hers. One might think Leah’s own children were closer to her than her maid’s children. Yet, such is our natural love of power, Rachel preferred children she had the right to rule over, rather than children she had better reason to love.

As an early sign of her control over the children born in her house, she gave them names that showed only rivalry with her sister. It was as if she wanted to say she had beaten Leah. She calls the first son of her maid Dan, which means “judgment,” saying, “God has judged me” (Genesis 30:6), meaning, “He has ruled in my favor.” She calls the next son Naphtali, which means “wrestlings,” saying, “I have wrestled with my sister and have won” (Genesis 30:8). It is as though all Jacob’s sons were to be born into conflict. See how envy and strife take root, and how much harm they do among relatives.

At Leah’s urging, Jacob also took Zilpah, her maid, as a wife (Genesis 30:9). Rachel had already done that foolish and out-of-place thing, giving her maid to her husband out of rivalry with Leah. Now Leah does the same, because she has a gap in her childbearing year, and wants to keep pace with Rachel, or even stay ahead of her. See how powerful jealousy and competition can be. We should also admire God’s wise design, which joins one man and one woman only. God has called us to peace and purity (1 Corinthians 7:15).

Zilpah bore Jacob two sons, and Leah counted them as her own. In keeping with that, she named one Gad (Genesis 30:11), meaning a troop or good fortune, because she hoped for a little company of children. Children are the strength of a household, filling the quiver like arrows (Psalm 127:4, 127:5). She named the other Asher, meaning “happy,” because she thought herself blessed in him and hoped others would think so too: “The daughters will call me blessed” (Genesis 30:13). This shows the emptiness of the world and the foolishness in our hearts. Many people value themselves, and even guide their lives, more by what others think than by reason or faith. They think they are blessed if people simply say so.

There was much wrong in the rivalry and competition between these two sisters. Yet God brought good out of this evil. The time had come when the descendants of Abraham needed to begin to grow and multiply. In this way, Jacob’s family was filled out with twelve sons, who became the heads of the thousands of Israel. From them came the well-known twelve tribes, and each tribe took its name from one of these sons.