Rachel Trades a Night With Jacob for Mandrakes (Genesis 30:14–24)

Mandrakes from the wheat harvest

Mandrakes were a low plant with a forked root and small yellow fruit, and people in Rachel's world believed they helped a woman conceive. Reuben, Leah's eldest, found some in the field at the wheat harvest and carried them home to his mother. Rachel begged Leah, "Please give me some of your son's mandrakes" (Genesis 30:14).

Leah's answer had years of hurt in it: "Is it not enough that you have taken away my husband? Now you want to take my son's mandrakes as well?" (Genesis 30:15). So Rachel named a price. Jacob would sleep in Leah's tent that night.

Hired with mandrakes

Leah told Jacob she had hired him because she had paid for his night with Reuben's mandrakes. She went out to meet him as he came in from the field that evening: "You must come with me, for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes" (Genesis 30:16).

What followed came from God: "And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore a fifth son to Jacob" (Genesis 30:17). God listened to Leah, so she had been asking Him while the two sisters bargained. The woman who gave the mandrakes away conceived, and went on to bear Issachar, Zebulun and a daughter, Dinah. Rachel kept the plant and kept waiting.

God remembered Rachel

When God remembered Rachel, He acted for her, because in Scripture God's remembering is God moving to do good to the one He remembers. "Then God remembered Rachel. He listened to her and opened her womb" (Genesis 30:22). God is the subject of all three verbs, and the mandrakes are nowhere in the verse.

God remembered Noah in the same words at the end of the flood: "But God remembered Noah and all the animals and livestock that were with him in the ark" (Genesis 8:1). Centuries after Rachel a barren woman named Hannah prayed at Shiloh, and "the LORD remembered her" (1 Samuel 1:19). Rachel had pleaded with God before (Genesis 30:6). He heard every year of her asking, and on the day He chose, He answered.

Remember me

The God who remembered Rachel came in Jesus, and on the cross Jesus remembered a dying thief who asked Him for exactly that. The man said, "Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!" (Luke 23:42). Jesus answered him at once: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).

Rachel waited years for God to remember her. The thief was remembered the same day he asked, by the Son of God, who was dying beside him to open the way.

Add another son

Rachel named her son Joseph and made his name a prayer. "God has taken away my shame," she said (Genesis 30:23), and then, "May the LORD add to me another son" (Genesis 30:24). It was the first time she spoke God's covenant name, the LORD. Every time she said his name, she said her prayer again. God answered it on the road from Bethel, when the midwife told her, "Do not be afraid, for you are having another son" (Genesis 35:17).

Rachel kept asking, and she kept her prayer where she would hear it every day. We can hold what we have asked God for the same way, out loud and on record. Write down your prayer and the date in the Doxa app, and when He answers, write the answer beside it. Read it back on that day, and you will know Him better, the God who remembers His people by name.

We are the people who remember what God has said and done, because He remembered us first.

What have you asked God for that you will want to read back on the day He answers?

Deeper study today in the Doxa Deeper Dive: why Leah named her son Wages. Read it here.