Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #6 of Genesis, chapter 25, and we are going to read Genesis 25:19-23:

And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham begat Isaac: And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian. And Isaac intreated JEHOVAH for his wife, because she was barren: and JEHOVAH was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of JEHOVAH.  And JEHOVAH said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

I will stop reading there.  Now we are getting back to Isaac.  God is turning our attention back to Isaac after He told us of the death of Ishmael.  He tells us that Isaac was 40 years old when He took Rebekah to wife.  So we know of his mother’s death in Genesis 23, and then in Genesis 24 there was the mission trip that Abraham sent his servant to accomplish.  Sarah died in 2030 B. C., from everything we can understand in the Bible, at the age of 127.  She had given birth to Isaac when she was 90, so Isaac would be 37.  We could also calculate that from the fact that Abraham was 100 years old in 2067 B. C. when Isaac was born.  In 2030, 37 years later, the servant was sent to find Isaac a wife. 

I mentioned before that given the way the Lord uses “three and an half” in the Bible, I would think,  and this is speculation, that although the period of time from the death of Sarah to the point when Isaac was 40 and married Rebekah was three years, it could easily have been three and a half years.  But God did not specifically get into that, so we cannot make that a definite statement.  It just seems reasonable, given all the other information in the Bible.

Isaac was 40 and then he married Rebekah.  It says in Genesis 25:20-21:

And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian. And Isaac intreated JEHOVAH for his wife, because she was barren: and JEHOVAH was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.

You would not start entreating and beseeching the Lord in prayer because you wife is barren when you first got married.  Obviously, when you have marital relations, you would wait a period of time.  So the first year, there is no child, but, again, you would more than likely give it some more time. 

You know, God is in control of blessing a couple with children.  Sometimes there are couples that conceive and have many children as time passes.  They are trusting the Lord.  In time past, there was no other option, and they just left it in God’s hand.  After giving birth, they might wait a little bit so that the mother can recover strength, and then they, again, enjoy relations in the marital bed, and another child is conceived.  So over the course of 10 years, they could have six, seven or eight children, and God has blessed the family in this way.  But in some cases, there are no children that come forth, and that is all in the perfect will of God according to what He decrees regarding a couple and His plan for them. 

If a couple are His elect children, they look to Him, but after a while (we do not know how long it was), Isaac started to pray about it.  Maybe it was five years later or maybe 10 years later.  We are not sure.  We also know that he would have been very much aware of the fact that his own mother Sarah had been barren until she was 90 years old, and Abraham would not have Isaac as his son until he was 100.  So maybe Isaac started praying a little earlier, thinking that maybe this ran in his family.  So he was praying to the Lord that God would grant him a son because in order for God to fulfill the promise to Abraham concerning his seed being as the stars for multitude, it must come through Isaac, and he would have to bear a son. 

In all likelihood, from what we can gather in Genesis 24 concerning Rebekah being a young virgin that went to the well to draw water, she was very young.  Again, we do know precisely how old she was when she went with Eliezer the servant to return to marry Isaac.  It could be that she was 15 or 20 or 22, but she was a young girl.  So after a period of time, Isaac was praying to God that He would bless him with a son or child.  We know that after he prayed, the Lord was entreated of him and God answered his prayer and gave him a child.  Then twins were born, and it says in Genesis 25:26:

And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.

Isaac was now 60.  He got married at age 40, and now he was 60 when they were born.  It was 20 years later.  It would have been in the previous nine months that Rebekah conceived, but that is what we can see from these statements.  He was married at 40, and he became a father at 60, so Rebekah was barren for 20 years and, again, God does not tell us Rebekah’s age. 

You know, the revealing of Sarah’s death age at 127 was extremely rare in the Bible.  It was the only instance in the whole Bible when God gave the age of a woman when she died.  It was not His focus and, often, God does not reveal the age of a woman.  And that is according to His wisdom and design for things, but we are given a timeline for Rebekah’s barrenness, which was 20 years.  We know that when Isaac was 40, it would have been the year 2027 B. C. and then when he was age 60, it was 2007 B. C. when Jacob and Esau were born.  From 2027 to 2007, it could be said that Rebekah was barren, so that is the interesting thing that we want to look at because we have already seen it in an earlier study in the book of Genesis.  As I mentioned earlier, Isaac would have known that his mother Sarah was barren for a very long time until her old age, as we read in Genesis 11:30:

But Sarai was barren; she had no child.

She married Abraham, but she had no child.  We know that Abraham was 75 and Sarah was 65 when they entered into the land of Canaan, and then he lived 25 years in the land of Canaan without a child until he was 100 and Sarah was 90 years old.  Then she bare Isaac, which was a miraculous birth, as the Lord fulfilled His promise to Abraham of the promised seed.  Actually, the promised seed was the Lord Jesus Christ, but as far as a “type and figure,” Isaac was the one that would come forth. 

So we see that Sarah was born, and then gave birth to Isaac.  Now Rebekah had been barren for 20 years, and she would give birth to Jacob and Esau.  But it does not end with those two, as we see in Genesis 29:31:

And when JEHOVAH saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren.

Rachel was also barren, and she was barren for a number of years.  I did not try to look into the number of years Rachel was barren, but I think it may be possible to determine that, and I will try to look at that in the future.  But, again, Rachel was barren, and eventually she would give birth to Joseph, the son of Jacob in his old age.  I believe that Jacob was 91 when Joseph was born.  Again, we are not told how old Rachel was, but she was said to be barren while her sister was bearing multiple children.  Also, they got into a “contest” using their handmaids.  Rachel was jealous and she gave Jacob her handmaid, and there were two children born to her through that handmaid.  Then Leah gave her handmaid (to Jacob), and two children were born to the handmaid of Leah.  Finally, there were six sons of Leah and two additional sons by her handmaid, for a total of eight.  Rachel gave birth to a second son Benjamin and died in childbearing, plus two of her handmaid, for a total of four.  So there were eight and four, and we can see the one third/two thirds relationship of the children of the hated and the children of the loved.  That would identify with God’s salvation program, where “one third” is a figure the Bible uses to typify the elect, and “two thirds” typify the non-elect.

So this means that the patriarchs of Israel – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – each had wives that were said to be barren for a period of time: Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel.  And, yet, each one did give birth to break their barrenness and bring forth sons.  That is interesting, is it not?  It really makes us wonder.  If we search the Bible, we find that other very significant historical figures also came forth from barren women.  For example, in 1Samuel 2, we read of Hannah rejoicing as God blessed her with a son Samuel, in 1Samuel 2:5:

They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.

Remember, she also had been striving with another wife of Elkanah, her husband.  She was grieving and praying and Eli the priest saw her mouth moving and thought she was drunk, but then she made her prayer known to him, and God heard her prayer and answered her prayer, giving her a son.  So her period of barrenness also ended when she bare Samuel.

In addition, we read of a woman who was barren in Judges 13:1-2:

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of JEHOVAH; and JEHOVAH delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years. And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not.

Then it goes on to give the account where God told them they would have a son, and that son was Sampson, another very important figure and a judge over Israel.  We can read incredible things about him in the next few chapters.  He performed many tremendous, miraculous feats of strength.  He was the one who slew a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass.

So far, we see that Sarah was barren and gave birth to Isaac.  Rebekah was barren and gave birth to Jacob and Esau.  Rachel was barren and gave birth to Joseph.  Hannah was barren and gave birth to Samuel, and this woman in Judges was barren and gave birth to Sampson.  These are all the explicit accounts I can find in the Old Testament, but there is one more in the New Testament, if we go to the Gospel of Luke.  In Luke 1, we read of Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth.  It says in Luke 1:5-7:

There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.

She was now an old woman, and her husband was an old man, a similar situation to Sarah and Abraham, way back when.  We know that the Lord would bless her with a son who would be John the Baptist, born of a woman who had been barren for many years.  Again, we do not know exactly how long she was barren or how old she was, except to say she was well stricken in years, which is an indicator that she was old.

So, again, we have a very important Bible figure in the person of John the Baptist.  Each one of these men was extremely important to the true historical accounts in the Bible and central figures in God’s salvation program and His judgment program.  They are key figures in Biblical history, so it just makes us all the more interested in the reason for this (if we can find it).  I do not know if we will know exactly, but we can know some things.  (What I mean is that we can know some things about why it was that in all these cases the mothers or wives were barren for a period of time before giving birth.)  We read this of the Lord in Psalm 113:9:

He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye JEHOVAH.

And that is true, is it not?  He made all these women to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children.  Hannah rejoiced in her prayer, and we know that Sarah rejoiced.  And, certainly, all these women would have rejoiced that their time of being “without child” had come to an end, and now they were bearing fruit.  And the Lord does relate to the conception and birth of children as fruitfulness.  Remember, we read in Psalm 127:3-5:

Lo, children are an heritage of JEHOVAH: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

So the children of the womb or the fruit of the womb.  It is fruitful to bear children.

Of course, we live in a perverted time and an ugly period of time wherein the tremendous blessing of having children has been greatly diminished through birth control and abortion, the killing of innocent children in the womb.  We find people that want to plan their families: “When I have time, or when I finish my education, or when I have made a million dollars, then I will have children.”  It is just mankind destroying and ruining what God has given, which is good and healthy and wonderful, and a tremendous blessing.  Even unsaved people in times past rejoiced that they were given sons and daughters by God and that God had blessed them.  In times when they did not have children, then petitions were lifted up and prayers were raised, as we saw with Isaac.  They entreated the Lord and, certainly, Abraham and Sarah entreated the Lord that they would be blessed with a child, a son.  So we read in Psalm 113:9 that God made the barren woman to keep house and to be the joyful mother of children.  Praise ye JEHOVAH.  It is a wonderful thing in the physical sense, and it is a wonderful thing in the spiritual sense, as the bringing forth of children would relate to the fruitfulness of salvation.  Does God not use that very figure of “birth” to identify with those that become saved when He said, “Ye must be born again,”?  Let us take a look at that in John 3 where Jesus is speaking with a Pharisee, Nicodemus, who from all we can read in the Bible did become saved by the grace of God.  It says in John 3:3-8:

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

God creates the baby in the womb.  That is the only way anyone can be born.  God blesses the union of a man and his wife and creates the physical baby, and that baby is born, and it is a joyful affair.  God brings His Word (which is likened to a woman or a mother in the Bible) and the Word encounters a sinner that happens to be one of God’s elect, and it brings forth life in the soul and that person becomes born again.  They are born of the Spirit.  The Spirit is like the father and the Word is like the mother, and they are bringing forth this man or woman that was dead in trespasses and sins, but now has life. 

And that is the glorious picture, and it is why God speaks so well of having children, and it is why He relates it to being fruitful, because He relates His salvation program to bringing in fruit.  We also know that in God’s salvation program, there are periods of “rain” and periods of “famine.”  And during periods of famine, there is no fruit.  That makes us wonder: “Can the barrenness of a woman having no fruit in the womb be tied into spiritual famine?  Is that a reason God uses this figure so often in the Bible, and then comes forth a son, a picture of the fruit that comes after the rain?”

We will have to look at this and some other interesting things, especially relating to Elisabeth and her conception, when we get together in our next Bible study, Lord willing.