Chapter 30

Rachel tells Jacob to give her a child or she shall die.  This angers Jacob.  Perhaps because it is obvious that Jacob is not the problem.  Also, like Leah who's main goal seemed to have been winning Jacob's love away from Rachel, Rachel is looking to Jacob and not God to "answer her prayers".  This is likely to go poorly.  Rachel gives him Bilhah to have children on her behalf.   The phrasing, the words here, are the same ones used of Sarai when she gave Hagar to Abraham to bear her children to him.  This would indicate that as a custom, it came from over in Haran or all the way back to Ur and was brought along by this family as they traveled and spread out.  It also says, as it did of Hagar, that Bilhah is given as a wife.  So she is not a concubine with offspring to be sent away, but her sons will inherit from their father, just as Ishmael did...though clearly he was secondary.  In any case, Bilhah has Dan and Naphtali.  This was apparently custom still, because this is the same thing that Sarah had done with Hagar.  Things are different here though.  In Hagar's case, Ishmael was not the son of promise, and was in fact sent away from Abraham.  Perhaps there is something different in the way it was done here that makes the sons of the servants equal inheritors with the sons of the wives themselves.  This verse though:

8 Then Rachel said, "With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed." So she called his name Naphtali. [Gen 30:8 ESV]

The home life could not have been good.  Both Rachel and Leah consider it a competition for Jacob's attention and believe that the sons they bear - the works they perform - will be the tally that counts most in the competition.

Leah recognizes that the four sons she's had appear to be all the children that she can have.  So further escalating the competition between herself and Rachel, she gives her servant Zilpah for Jacob to marry and have more sons.  Zilpah has Dan and Asher.  MSB says the rivalry between the sisters indicts the system, not the sisters.  Polygamy is not according to God's plan, and was at the root of all the problems.

Rachel consents to Jacob sleeping with Leah in exchange for some mandrakes that Reuben finds and brings to Leah.  These were believed to enhance fertility.  Leah gives birth to Issachar.  Then Leah has a sixth son Zebulon, and a daughter Dinah.  Rachel is still barren.  Leah still feels neglected, is still being treated as the "second wife", though she has given Jacob 6 sons and a daughter.  Hers is a hard and lonely life, though she is among family the whole time.

Finally, Rachel has Joseph.

2024 - So here are the sons of each mother:

Leah has Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah.  Later Issachar and Zebulon, daughter Dinah.

Bilhah, Rachel's maid, has Dan, Naphtali

Zilpah, Rachel's maid, has Gad, then Asher

Rachel, Joseph, Benjamin.

Jacob wants to leave Laban and return home.  They make a deal about spotted lambs, but Laban tries to cheat.  Jacob does a little manipulating also, and is successful.

2021 - There is a lot to this story, but it is all about Laban's treachery to keep Jacob with him as almost an indentured servant.  Laban is not about God, and uses divination to discover that all the good happening to him is because Jacob is there.  It is really Jacob being blessed, not Laban.  So in his greed, Laban plots and plans to keep Jacob there no matter what.  At this time at least, Jacob seems to be acting in an honest manner.  None of what he does to increase the newborn sheep and goats attributable to his flocks is treachery, nor is it hidden.  It is something he "knows" how to do, and likely stems from the superior knowledge of husbandry in the west.  Jacob's flocks multiply greatly.  Laban's do not.  But at least Jacob is still there.  Jacob has all sorts of tension within his household, with four women bearing him children, two of them in outright warfare over him.  Now, his employer is cheating him and manipulating him to prevent him from doing as he thinks he should.   Jacob is in a bad place, and seems now to be trying to do the right thing, despite all that is going on around him.  But remember the reason he came here in the first place.  Esau was planning to kill him for not one, but two acts of treachery.  Jacob's tension filled life,  his lack of peace, may well be the consequence of his own previous actions.  God has not forgotten all that, any more than he forgot David's sin with Bathsheba.  David suffered a long time over that.  He lost children over that.  Mistakes have consequences, even while we are on this earth.

What a good FB post!