Most folks, who read the account of the Patriarchs in the Book of Genesis, naturally assume that everyone who speaks of the Lord believes as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did about him. However, this isn’t so. Laban, who was a descendant of Nahor (Abraham’s brother; Genesis 11:27) did, in fact, worship the Lord. However, the Lord was simply one of many gods. He was not God, as Abraham understood him to be. So, when we come to Laban (Genesis 24:29-31), we are able to understand that he did have knowledge of the Lord, and he understood that the Lord was Abraham’s God, and perhaps Laban knew the Lord was Abraham’s only God. Nevertheless, Laban did not have Abraham’s understanding of God, because God revealed himself to Abraham, as he walked with him.
If the above is true, and Laban never really walked with the God of Abraham, then he worshiped the Lord among many other gods (cp. Genesis 31:26, 29-30). Therefore, if this is how Laban thought and believed, why should we think his daughters believed otherwise? Jacob had embraced the Lord as his only God (Genesis 28:20-21), but nothing in the text demands that either Leah or Rachel understood God as THE God, the only God. With each son that Leah bore Jacob, she recognized the work of Jacob’s God in her suffering (Genesis 29:31-35). Possibly, the birth of Judah brought her the realization that the Lord was the only God, because she praised the Lord without looking for Jacob to respond (Genesis 29:35). Nevertheless, this is just a guess.
Understanding that it is the Lord who ultimately gives children, vis-à-vis he gives us the ability to have children is acquired knowledge. For example, Abraham thought it was up to him to produce a child, before the Lord could bless him (Genesis 15:2-3), but God took the responsibility upon himself (Genesis 15:4-6).[1] In other words, God takes the responsibility, when our bodies are unable to give birth or have great difficulty in doing so. For folks like Sarah and Rachel the Lord had to directly intervene in order for their bodies to give birth. They were barren by nature, but the Lord took the responsibility for their barrenness. Rachel didn’t understand this, which is proof that she didn’t have the knowledge of God that Jacob had.[2] Jacob knew more about the God of Abraham, because Abraham and Isaac both walked with the Lord, and he, also, had begun to follow their example. Therefore, he not only knew about the Lord from them, but he also knew about him from personal experience, beginning with his dream (Genesis 28:10-22).
Thus, when Leah had begun to bare children to Jacob, Rachel became jealous, and as the situation worsened, she blamed Jacob for the fact that her sister bore children but she did not (Genesis 30:1). We, who have understanding of the Lord, often blame the ignorant for their own ignorance, which is like blaming the blind for their lack of sight. So, true to form, Jacob became angry with Rachel, saying “Am I God?” (Genesis 30:2).[3] Taken at face value, this was Rachel’s Bible study, like the fundamentalist preacher who delivers his sermon out of anger. If Rachel had no prior knowledge of the Lord’s responsibility for her condition, she did now, and she seems to accept Jacob’s statement/preaching.
How long afterward it was that Rachel offered Jacob her maid as his concubine, isn’t clear in the text. However, Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, became Jacob’s concubine in order that she would bear children to Jacob in Rachel’s name, and this was successful (Genesis 30:3-5). There is a possibility that Jacob and Rachel discussed her doing this, because it appears that Abraham and Sarah had done so in the matter of Hagar and Ishmael. There, because Sarah seems to blame Abraham for betraying her after Hagar had conceived, seems to tell us that Abraham had input in the matter before Sarah agreed.[4] Thus, the same may to true of Jacob and Rachel.
So, Bilhah bore a son to Jacob, and Rachel names him Dan (meaning judge), for she said that God had judged her and heard her ‘voice’, which seems to indicate that Rachel prayed to the Lord to give Bilhah a child in Rachel’s name (Genesis 30:6). Thus, it appears that Rachel’s knowledge of God is increasing, as she begins to look to him for her help. Moreover, Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son in Rachel’s name. Rachel called the second child, Naphtali (meaning wrestling), which points to the competition between Rachel and her sister, Leah, for their husband’s love. Rachel was jealous of Leah (Genesis 30:1), but now seems to believe that, because the Lord had answered her prayers, she has the upper hand in their marriage to Jacob (Genesis 30:7-8).
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[1] See my earlier study: Abram Believed God.
[2] Rachel didn’t even have the knowledge of God that her sister, Leah, had.
[3] Neither did Jacob have a clear knowledge of Rachel’s condition, for he probably believed God was active in both the process of withholding children and giving them. Paul, on the other hand, seems to understand that Sarah (and, therefore, Rachel) had a natural inability to have children, and it took God’s intervention to allow her to give birth (Hebrews 11:11). One may understand this to point only to Sarah’s age, but it is also possible that Paul understood that Sarah was never able to bare children, but the Lord waited for her to grow old to emphasize his hand in giving Isaac.
[4] See my earlier study: Sarai and Hagar.
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