Rachels Reproach

Rachel and Jacobs story starts in Genesis 29. Jacob was commanded by his father Isaac to not marry any of the women from the land of Canaan and he goes on a journey to find his wife from the family of Laban. On his journey, he meets Rachel at the well and this is what he did when he saw her, “And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept.” (Gen. 29:11).

I think it is sweet because it was love at first sight. Jacob was completely smitten with Rachel and was willing to work for Laban, Rachel’s father, for seven years to have the opportunity to marry her. When the seven years were over it was finally time for them to wed. Well Laban had other plans because he didn’t want his youngest daughter, Rachel, to get married before Leah his oldest daughter. So at the wedding Laban sent Leah to share his bed and since it was dark he didn’t know it was Leah until the morning.

So Jacob agreed to work another seven years if he also could marry Rachel. The problem occurred when Jacob showed that he loved Rachel more than Leah. “And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren.”

Rachel’s womb was closed and she was not able to bear children for Jacob and it started a feud between the two sisters. After Leah had conceived four time, Rachel had had enough. It was at that point that she has Jacob marry her handmaid Bilhah, so that she could have children through Bilhah.

As you can tell there is some similarity between Sarah and Rachel. They feel that they can be happy and feel fulfilled if they were to offer their handmaids to carry the children of their husbands. Unfortunately it never fully satisfies their desires to have children themselves. Now I’m not going to into detail about the feud that was between the two sisters but it really had to deal with the fact that they felt that the sister who gave Jacob the most sons, he would love the most.

Well after years of pain of not being able to bear children, the Lord, “…remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.” I love what Rachel says after she conceive and gives birth to a son, “God hath taken away my reproach.”

How many times have I wondered, or other women wondered, if the lord has forgotten us or why he has chosen to deny us the right to have children? But every time I even start to think that, I remember that I have not been forgotten and that it is quite the opposite! When the time comes to for me to be a mother, I will praise the lord because my reproach will and has made me a better, stronger, humbler, more faithful person and it is through this trial I am becoming the woman that the my father in heaven wants me to be.

Like Rachel, the day will come that if we continue to be faithful our desire to be mothers will be fulfilled either through the womb of another or through our own or maybe in ways we never thought possible

Jacob and Rachel, William Dyce