Why Bilhah Gave Birth on Rachel's Knees (Genesis 30:1–13)

Born on Rachel's knees

Rachel's words in Hebrew were that she may bear upon my knees, and they described a legal act: Bilhah's son would be counted as Rachel's own. The BSB gives the sense, "that she may bear children for me" (Genesis 30:3), and underneath it is the noun berek (H1290), knee. A child set on someone's knees was a child that person claimed. At the end of Genesis, "the sons of Machir son of Manasseh were brought up on Joseph's knees" (Genesis 50:23), and Job, cursing the day he was born, asked, "Why were there knees to receive me" (Job 3:12).

The arrangement was ordinary law in Rachel's world. A marriage contract found at Nuzi in northern Mesopotamia required a childless wife to give her husband a slave woman, and the Code of Hammurabi ruled on such slaves and their children.

Her verb was banah (H1129), to build: word for word, that I too may be built from her, and the Hebrew for son, ben, sounds like it. Sarai had used the same verb about Hagar (Genesis 16:2). A Hebrew ear heard two women trying to build a house out of sons. At Naphtali's birth Rachel said how she read the result.

Wrestlings of God

Naphtali means my wrestling, and Rachel's sentence at his birth holds two Hebrew words an English reader cannot see. The BSB reads, "In my great struggles, I have wrestled with my sister and won" (Genesis 30:8). The Hebrew is wrestlings of God I have wrestled. The noun is naphtul (H5319), from the verb pathal (H6617), to twist, and the word translated great is Elohim, God, used the way Hebrew marks something as the greatest of its kind. Naphtali (H5321) carries the twist in his name, and elsewhere the root describes what is crooked: in "a perverse and crooked generation" (Deuteronomy 32:5), crooked is pethaltol (H6618). Rachel's wrestling was a twisting, two sisters caught in a contest.

The last word of her sentence, translated won, is yakolti, from yakol (H3201), to be able, to prevail. Rachel said she had prevailed. Years later her husband wrestled all night beside the Jabbok, and the One he wrestled gave him a new name with that same verb: "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed" (Genesis 32:28). Jacob said, "I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared" (Genesis 32:30), and he limped away from that place. Rachel used God's name for a win over her sister. Jacob met God, and the word for prevailing came to him from the One he wrestled, with a blessing and a new name.

Fortune and blessing

Gad means fortune and Asher means happy or blessed, and neither name mentions God. "How fortunate!" in Genesis 30:11 is ba gad in Hebrew, fortune has come, from gad (H1409), luck, and Gad (H1410) became a tribe. In Canaan the same word named a god of luck, Gad (H1408); a Canaanite town under Hermon bore the name Baal-gad, lord of fortune (Joshua 11:17). Through Isaiah the LORD rebuked Israel by that god's name: "But you who forsake the LORD, who forget My holy mountain, who set a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny" (Isaiah 65:11). Fortune there is Gad.

Asher (H836) comes from ashar (H833), to call someone blessed, and Leah used the verb itself: "the women call me happy" (Genesis 30:13). The noun from that root, esher (H835), is the first word of the Psalms: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked" (Psalms 1:1). The next verse says why: "his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night" (Psalms 1:2).

Then Mary sang Leah's line. The Greek translation of Genesis that Luke's first readers knew renders Leah's words with the verb makarizo (G3106): the women will call me blessed. Mary used the same verb in the same form: "From now on all generations will call me blessed" (Luke 1:48). A reader who knew Genesis in Greek heard Leah in Mary's song, with the women widened to every generation and the reason Leah left out placed first: "For He has looked with favor on the humble state of His servant" (Luke 1:48).

Two sisters built one house

The first readers of Genesis heard the beginnings of their own tribes in this chapter, rivalry included, and they heard that God had built one people out of it. A man of Dan or Asher learned that his tribe began as a servant's son named in a contest between two sisters.

Dan comes from din (H1777), to judge or vindicate, and Rachel spoke as though God had ruled for her in a case against her sister. On his deathbed Jacob turned the name toward the whole people: "Dan shall provide justice for his people as one of the tribes of Israel" (Genesis 49:16). Dan (H1835), named for one sister's win, was given a calling to bring justice to all his brothers.

Generations later the elders at the gate of Bethlehem blessed Ruth with both sisters in one breath, and with Rachel's own verb: "May the LORD make the woman entering your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel" (Ruth 4:11). Built there is banah, the word Rachel spoke when she handed Bilhah to Jacob. By then the two women who had wrestled each other were remembered as builders of one house, and the elders asked the LORD to build it again.

Rachel and Leah kept a record in the names they called across the camp every day, and much of it was a contest. God heard them anyway and kept His promise to Jacob at Bethel. We keep a record too. Write down what you ask God, and the day He answers, in the Doxa app, with the words He gave you, so that when you read it back you see the God who heard you and kept His word, and you come to know Him by name.

This goes with today's Doxa Daily Lift: Rachel Cries 'Give Me Children, or I Will Die' (Genesis 30:1–13)