Worship Blessed Be Your Name youtube/watch?v=du0il6d-DAk God of Wonders youtube/watch?v=YmHfl15G8eY He Reigns youtube/watch?v=aKTqwBetI1I Hired Help Genesis 29:1–30:24 We find great encouragement in hearing about God’s mighty acts in the past—the ways in which He intervened, delivered, and provided for His people. But at the same time, reading of His vivid presence in the past can lead us to wonder, “Where is God now? What’s He done for us today?” Understanding how God works in and through His people requires balance—remembering what He did throughout history and recognizing what He’s doing now. Jacob had long heard about the mighty God of his ancestors, but to Jacob, God remained just that—the God of his ancestors. Jacob wanted God to prove Himself, to fulfill His end of their bargain in Gen 28:20–22. Although God had appeared to Jacob in a dream and promised to bless him, Jacob remained blinded by his own self-centeredness and personal ambitions. 1. Tricked into Serving (Genesis 29:1–30) A. Not Seeking God - The opening events of the story of Jacob’s exile in Haran echo the earlier story of Abraham’s servant finding a wife for Isaac. Like Abraham’s servant before him, Jacob arrived at the well, where he encountered a woman related to Laban, Abraham’s relative. Like Abraham’s servant, Jacob was then greeted by Laban and welcomed into his home. Yet there are some striking differences between the two accounts. Abraham’s servant had arrived with a caravan of gifts in tow; Jacob was penniless and alone. Abraham’s servant took Rebekah away from the house of her brother, Laban; Jacob will become part of Laban’s household. But perhaps most significantly, Abraham’s servant implored God to help him; Jacob, despite his vulnerable position, didn’t seem to give God a second thought. B. The Deceiver Deceived – After Jacob had stayed and worked with Laban for a month—during which Laban observed his nephew’s infatuation with Rachel—Laban seized an opportunity to exploit Jacob’s situation. His offer of a job sounds innocent enough to us, but Laban effectively demoted his own “flesh and bone” to a hireling in his house. Although Isaac had blessed Jacob and said others would serve him, Jacob will instead serve another man—his own uncle—for 20 years. This story drives home the irony of Jacob’s situation by using the word serve (abad) seven times. At the end of his seven years of service, Jacob insisted that Laban give him Rachel, the wife he has earned. We don’t know exactly how Laban managed to trick Jacob into sleeping with the wrong woman, but it was dark, Leah was likely veiled, and Jacob was quite possibly drunk. Sober in the morning, Jacob was horrified to discover what Laban had done. But when he accused Laban of deception, he also indicted himself for his own deception years earlier. Jacob had met his match. 2. Passive through Family Strife (Genesis 29:31–30:24) A. Shifting Blame – Family strife seemed to accompany Jacob wherever he went. Estranged from his own brother, Jacob introduced tension into the lives of the sisters he married, Leah and Rachel. Just as Jacob’s own parents showed blatant favoritism, Jacob couldn’t conceal his preference for Rachel. A battle for Jacob’s affection ensued between the sisters. For Jacob’s wives, rivalry took the form of providing Jacob with the most offspring. The unloved Leah attracted the attention of Yahweh, who opened her womb. Leah gave her first three sons names that expressed her despair. Despondent after watching Leah bear son after son, Rachel lashed out at Jacob and demanded children. In his retort, Jacob shifted the blame away from himself: “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” B. Unhappy Wives – Jacob’s response wasn’t good enough for Rachel, who, in an act reminiscent of Sarah (Jacob’s grandmother), instructed Jacob to sleep with Bilhah, her servant. Bilhah then bore two sons for Rachel to claim as her own. With the birth of Naphtali, Rachel thought she had gained the upper hand over her fertile sister. Not to be outdone, Leah gave her own servant, Zilpah, to Jacob, and Zilpah also had two sons, Gad and Asher. But neither woman was happy. Each still desperately wanted what the other had: Leah wanted Jacob’s love, and Rachel wanted to bear his children. In their battle for children, Jacob’s wives employed mandrakes. In the ancient world, plants that resembled the human body were believed to have magical powers to heal those body parts. Since the mandrake is a plant with forked roots resembling a human figure, it had a reputation for aiding human fertility. But the story of Leah and Rachel dismisses any notion that the mandrakes had power. Leah gave up the fertility plants and then conceived two sons in succession, while Rachel, who used the mandrakes, remained infertile. Through these women’s lives, God displays that He alone will grant children and that He is the power on which His people should rely. C. Passive Throughout – Things go from bad to worse for the unloved Leah, who, in spite of having given Jacob six sons, had to bargain with Rachel to sleep with her own husband. Rachel struck a bargain with Leah: a night with Jacob in exchange for some mandrakes. Leah readily agreed to the deal and conceived during her night with Jacob. She then bore a son, and later she gave birth to another son and a daughter. And despite the mandrakes, Rachel remained barren. Finally “God remembered Rachel and listened to her, and God opened her womb” (Gen 30:22). At the birth of Joseph, the long-awaited child, Rachel declared that God had taken away her disgrace. Throughout his wives’ bitter rivalry, Jacob stood by silently, unwilling to intervene. He was a passive husband, and he would also be a passive father, doing little during the later incident at Shechem in Gen 34 and ignoring the animosity between his favorite son, Joseph, and the rest of his sons in Gen 37. His failure to act brought great strife to his family. 3. Barrenness and Jacob’s Tentative Faith A. Barren Women throughout the Bible – Rachel is one of six women in the Bible whose barrenness God overcomes. The stories of these women and their miracle sons weave a story of God’s redemptive power to bring life from death. Fertility for both land and people was God’s design for His creation. Yet when Adam and Eve sinned, their action brought God’s curse on human fertility and the fruitfulness of the land they cared for. Only with great effort would people coax the land to produce, and only in great pain and even danger would women birth children. The fruitful blessedness of creation gave way to the desolate consequences of sin. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were God’s final provision for the human condition of spiritual barrenness. Jesus broke the hold of sin and death and the barrenness of human existence. He offers the fullness of life that God intended for His creation from the beginning. The story of the Bible ends with the image of a flourishing, fruitful city and a beautiful bride (the Church, being God’s people) prepared for her husband (Jesus). Barrenness will be gone forever. B. Jacob’s Complacency – Jacob’s tentative faith was apparent to early biblical interpreters, who noted a fundamental difference between the barrenness of Sarah and Rebekah and that of Rachel. In Genesis 30:1, Rachel pleaded with Jacob to give her children, but Jacob angrily turned the focus to God, blaming Him for “with[holding] from you [Rachel] the fruit of the womb.” On the surface, this excuse aligns with what Genesis says elsewhere about barrenness. The church father Ephrem emphasizes how Isaac had prayed for Rebekah and attributes the same care to Abraham. Ephrem’s suggestion provides a relevant context for Rachel’s contentious confrontation with Jacob. She was motivated by piety, not just envy over her sister’s success. Maybe she was upset because Jacob hadn’t interceded on her behalf before God. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t have helped. C. God’s Special Care – Where Rachel saw injustice, it seems that the narrator of Genesis sees divinely appointed justice. Since Leah was hated while Rachel was loved, God opened the womb of the unloved wife to compensate for her loveless marriage. This was certainly Leah’s own view of events based on her response when each of her four sons was born. Unfortunately, Leah’s greatest desire was to gain her husband’s love, yet even her success at bearing children for him was not enough to draw him close. The church father John Chrysostom (ca. AD 347–407) explained God’s intervention as a sort of balance of power between Leah and Rachel. Unlike with Rebekah and Sarah, Rachel’s barrenness was not an obstacle to the continuation of the line of Abraham. Her fertility was a non-essential, so within Chrysostom’s view, God blessed Leah instead. Chrysostom’s view is favored by the descent of the two most prominent tribes in Israel’s history from Leah—Judah and Levi, the tribes of kings and priests. Nonetheless, it’s certain that Jacob’s overall attitude affected his family life and that his aloof attitude toward God may have kept him from understanding the real reason why Rachel remained barren. Being Confident in God’s Presence – Jacob’s flaws are hard to miss—skeptical, passive in conflict, and self-centered—but we’re often eager to overlook them because we see his faults mirrored in ourselves. We understand why Jacob struggled to believe God was for him—sometimes we do, too. The Bible tells us how God intervened, delivered, and provided for His people in the past. When we experience the pain of our broken world, we wonder why He doesn’t do the same for us. We crave tangible and obvious signs of His work in our lives. Yet Jesus reminds us that “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Even when God’s hand isn’t evident, we can be confident that He is at work in our lives, weaving our circumstances and talents into His greater design. Despite Jacob’s refusal to recognize God’s hand, God was at work, giving Jacob children and thus keeping the promises He made to Abraham. And through it all, God was preparing Jacob for a time when he would fully recognize His presence.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 19:57:44 +0000
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