Rebekah and Rachel: barren wives, mothers of significance.

Rebekah: Isaac's wife, the determined mother and the keeper of the covenant

Did Rebekah’s pregnancy experience make her sensitive to God and His promises to Abraham? In her pregnancy she carried non-identical twins, which jostled within her. That disturbed her. Isaac may not have been very helpful as regards her concerns. She turns to God, wanting to know why it is happening to her. And the Lord answered her. She asks. He listens. She seeks and He answers. This is a dialogue of prayer between a faithful believer and a faithful God. The Lord tells her that she is not just carrying two babies but two nations; two peoples who will not live in harmony with each other, but in separation. One will be stronger than the other. Esau, as we might expect of the first born. But though he is the first born he will serve the younger, Jacob. [c25 v22 - 23]

Their separation was evidenced in their appearance, their character, in the love of their parents, for Isaac loved Esau but Rebekah love Jacob. [c28 v29] and in their different attitude to God’s covenant with Abraham, and its blessings. Jacob lived by deferred gratification but Esau was a man of immediate satisfaction, acting now and never mind tomorrow. In that nature he did not value his birthright as much as his dinner. And after that covenant discourtesy we next hear of him further separating himself from the way of Abraham, by marrying two Hittite women, Judith and Basemath, who were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah. [c26 v 34-35] Yet despite this, his own life experience and his covenant keeping role Isaac, in old age weakness and love, intends to give Esau his first born blessing! [c27 v 1 -4].

Rebekah, surely with her covenant awareness reinforced by her strong desire as a mother to get the best for her beloved son sees Isaac’s intended blessing of Esau as wrong, as it properly belongs to Jacob, given God’s words to her and Esau’s own behaviour. So she plots with Jacob to foil Isaac’s intent, but her actions instructing Jacob into an act of deliberate deceit are hardly to be commended. Lies are the field work of the enemy of God [John c8 v 44b] Yet here is a truth that may challenge and comfort us. God works with people as they are, even when that is less than they should be, to achieve His purposes. Only once has He ever acted through the perfect person.

As we can see in the later episode of the household gods of Laban, stolen by Rachel when Jacob flees Laban to return to Canaan, Laban confronts Jacob, accusing him of stealing these idols. Jacob responds with the promise that ‘if you can find anyone who has your gods, he shall not live.’ Jacob does not know

that Rachel is the offender. But they are not found in her tent when Laban searches it because she lies, by word and action. Rachel does not have to face Jacob’s judgement, because of which she will live to bear her second son, Benjamin, the 12th son of Jacob and the progeniture of the 12th tribe of God’s nation.

After Jacob receives Isaac’s first-born blessing, Esau threatens to kill him. Driven by a desire to protect Jacob, Rebekah confronts Isaac with an emotion laden threat designed to force him to forbid Jacob marrying a Canaanite woman and to command Jacob to go to the house of his mother’s father Bethual to take a wife from there. [Gen c27 v46 – c28 v5] This has a further dividing effect on Esau who in a huff marries the daughter of Ishmael, in addition to his existing wives. [c28 v6-9]. But it protects the covenant. Rebekah in her fierce mothering love guards Abraham’s way more zealously than Isaac. [Gen c24 v3f] who seems to suffer with regard to Esau, Abraham’s ease in Ishmael [Gen c17 v15].

God works powerfully through Rebekah’s maternal love to protect Jacob’s blessing, his life, and his future. What would have become of him and God’s promises to Abraham otherwise?

Rachel the beautiful, the long barren, the mother of Joseph.

When Jacob arrives at Paddan Aram he comes across a group of shepherds waiting in their customary way for all the flocks to be gathered before together rolling away the well stone. Then Rachel appears. She is stunningly beautiful. It’s love at first sight for Jacob. Rachel has an older sister, Leah, whose appearance is completely overshadowed by Rachel’s in Jacob’s eyes. He is so smitten with Rachel that he offers to labour for Laban, her father, for seven years in return for then marrying Rachel. Those seven years ‘seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for’ Rachel. But when the seven years are up and he weds Laban’s daughter, he is tricked into marrying Leah! [c29 v18-25]

We will come to Leah in more detail below, let us stay with Rachel, who, unlike Leah is barren. We know already from Sarah, [Gen c21 v1-6] and from Jacob’s own mother, and will know in the future from the unnamed wife of Manoah [Judges 13] from Hannah [1 Sam 1] and from Elizabeth [Luke 1 v 1- 23 and 57-80] that God may open barren wombs to bring forth a special person for His purposes. But while that may be true, it does not solace the suffering of the barren, only children can do that.

When Rachel is continually barren her first response is to blame Jacob, ‘Give me children or I’ll die.’ Sadly Jacob does not respond to her distress as his father did to his mother. He does not pray for Rachel. Instead he blames God, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?’ [c30 v1-3] A response that helps us see that God’s renaming him Israel is more than a simple reference to their night-time wrestling bout. [Gen 32 v22-28]

Secondly Rachel follows Sarah’s example. She takes culturally approved action to remedy her plight, giving Jacob her servant Bilhah for him to sleep with. Bilhah gives Jacob two sons, Dan and Naphtali. Rachel claims both as her own. But this cultural success spurs Leah to give her maidservant Zilpah to Jacob as a wife. Zilpah also conceives two sons, Dan and Asher. And from that Leah herself bears Jacob further two sons, Issachar and Zebulun and a daughter, Dinah.

Yet do the two sons of Bilhah really resolve Rachel’s distress? The text suggests that Rachel prayed, for we are told that God remembered her and listened to her. Remembering does not mean that God had forgotten her. It’s a way of saying that God now took action on her behalf. He heard her prayers and He opened her womb. Now was the right time for her to give birth to Joseph. His name expresses Rachel’s prayer that the Lord would give her another son. And so He does, but not until they have returned to Canaan. A birth which is sadly fatal to her life. Did God defer her bearing children knowing that her form was delicate and fragile? But while Joseph is born in Paddan Aram the significant events in his life happen after the family move back to Canaan. In God remembering Rachel, the timing of Joseph’s birth was carefully planned.

The Lord God knows there will be a famine in Egypt. He knows that Jacob and his family will face starvation in Canaan. [Gen c42 v1-2] He raises up Joseph for this event. Joseph goes to Egypt against his will for he is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. But his going is God’s will. God was with Joseph in Egypt. He was powerfully blessed by God, not by God protecting him from troubles but by being with Him in his troubles. Through God’s sovereign grace Pharaoh appoints Joseph second only to himself to deal with the prophesied famine saying ‘Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?’. [c41 v38] From this appointment flows the rescue of Joseph’s family [c47 v1-11].

Later after Jacob has died, Joseph’s brothers became afraid that he might hold a grudge against them, and ill-treat them as they had ill-treated him. But Joseph assures them that he will not do so for he knows that while they had intended him harm, God intended it for good to accomplish the saving of many lives. [Gen c50 v 20]. Thus was Rachel’s motherhood vindicated in the salvation work of her son.