Rachel was beautiful alright and Jacob loved her dearly. Leah was rather plain and was basically unloved. God as much as said so and he chose to bless her specially with children whereas Rachel had none. Guzik is correct, he says, “Despite Rachel’s great beauty, she also was near despair. No doubt, Leah often said, ‘If I only had my sister’s beauty and the love of my husband, I would be happy.’ No doubt, Rachel often said, ‘If I only had sons like my sister.’ Beautiful or plain, we all have our problems.1 Even beautiful women have their problems. Rachel, beautiful but barren, struggled with her sister for the continued affection of Jacob. Leah gave birth to four sons in a row; Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. Her struggle with Leah becomes so severe that In Genesis 30:1 Rachel screams to Jacob “give me children or I die!” As if Jacob can control who conceives and who does not. Jacob reminds her that he’s not in God’s place thus telling her that her problem is not with him, it’s really with God.
Rachel tries to fulfill her desire for children by using her hand maiden, Bilhah, who gives Jacob two sons. Rachel asks Jacob for him to go into Bilhah so she might deliver me a son “on my knees.” Unfortunately most translations ignore that phrase. On my knees refers to the custom where the husband impregnated the surrogate while the surrogate reclined on the lap of the wife, and how she might even recline on the wife as she gave birth. The symbolism clearly showed the child was legally the child of the mother, not the surrogate, who was merely in the place of the wife in both conception and birth. The Handbook for translators doesn’t think the phrase should be taken literally. It says, “That she may bear upon my knees is the literal Hebrew figurative expression and refers to the practice of obtaining children through the service of another woman, or of recognizing the child that is born as legally one’s own. In 50:23 Joseph’s grandchildren were “born upon his knees,” a way of saying that he acknowledged them as legitimate. In this case Rachel proposes to make Bilhah’s offspring her own, and thus she is to become the adoptive mother.”2
Regardless, the text says that Rachel is the one who named them. She named the first one “Dan,” which means “vindicated.” She thinks that somehow the birth of this surrogate son gives her the edge in her struggle with her plain but productive sister Leah. Then she names Bilhah’s second son, Naphthali. This literally means “my struggle.” Boice observes, “Some commentators refer this to Bilhah’s struggle in childbirth, which Rachel claims as her own. But this is not it at all. Rachel is struggling with Leah, and the additional baby is only another weapon in her arsenal. She is really hitting Leah over the head with him.” Jacob had made it clear that Rachel’s struggle was truly with God. He determines the lot of us all. When you don’t like it, you rebel against God. I believe God was using Rachel’s barrenness to humble her. Beautiful women sometimes grow up getting whatever they want and sometimes need to be reminded of their place. It’s easy to see the beautiful women as less spiritual as others. But as Boice observes, “It would be good if some women who are less favored outwardly could see that God is also concerned about those who are beautiful. The plain girls envy the beautiful ones, but the beautiful ones have problems of their own, and God does not look down on them as you or I might do.”
1 David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 30:1–4.
2 William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 684.