Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #19 of Genesis, chapter 29, and we are going to read Genesis 29:31-35:

And when JEHOVAH saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived, and bare a son, and she called his name Reuben: for she said, Surely JEHOVAH hath looked upon my affliction; now therefore my husband will love me. And she conceived again, and bare a son; and said, Because JEHOVAH hath heard that I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also: and she called his name Simeon. And she conceived again, and bare a son; and said, Now this time will my husband be joined unto me, because I have born him three sons: therefore was his name called Levi. And she conceived again, and bare a son: and she said, Now will I praise JEHOVAH: therefore she called his name Judah; and left bearing.

We are continuing in our study in Genesis 29, and we know that Jacob was deceived into marrying Leah. He married her after working a period of seven years, and that means that all these sons that Leah had would have begun after the first seven years. So the first son, Reuben, would probably have been born about the eighth year that Jacob was in the land of Haran in Syria. Because there is no indication otherwise, we would expect that Leah had natural births over the typical period of nine months. So after seven full years, there is the honeymoon and the marriage bed, and we could think that a child would soon develop, and that Reuben was born sometime in that eighth year. And, typically, there is a space of time in which a woman’s body recovers, and there would be a period of at least two or three months before she got pregnant again, and that would mean almost a full year before the next child would come, and then the process would, it seems, just repeat, from what we are reading here. It seems that Leah was having child after child – son after son. She had four. We could think that she had one son in one year, and she had another son the next year, and so forth. If that were the case, Rueben would have been born in the eighth year, Simeon in the ninth, Levi in the tenth, and Judah in the eleventh. 

Then it says she “left bearing.” It is curious that Leah quit bearing after she had these four sons, because she seemed to have been very fertile, and later on, she is going to have an exchange with her sister Rachel. We will get there soon enough, but just to set it up, R in chapter 30 Rachel almost immediately is upset that she has no children, and she went to her husband Jacob and she said, “Give me children, or else I die.” Then Jacob correctly said, “Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?” We see that the fact that Rachel is barren was beginning to disturb and trouble her, and it has compounded when she saw her sister who is not only bearing children, but bearing sons. At that time, sons were very much wanted by fathers; they could work the farm, and so forth. But Leah was bearing son, after son, after son, bearing four sons in a row. Then we read that Leah “left bearing,” and this is speculation on my part, but given what we see in the next chapter concerning Rachel’s mindset and how troubled she was, it would appear that she went to Jacob and said, “I do not want you to lay with my sister Leah any longer. Stop going to her bed.” But Leah was a legitimate wife.

You know, it just illustrates the mess that sin makes, and when God developed the institution of marriage, it was for one man and one woman: “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” But man always thinks he knows better. I understand that Jacob was deceived into marrying Leah, but, nonetheless, the attitude of Laban and the fact that they would even allow a man to have two wives…well, the kind of trouble that comes of it is very predictable. Of course, there would be envy, jealousy and bitterness that would start to form. And Rachel was troubled. She knew she was the one that Jacob loved, and they were the ones that were supposed to get married. But her sister ended up marrying him first, and her sister was having children with him, and Rachel cannot have children. What if Jacob did start to love her sister more? So she says, “Give me children, or else I die.” And then Jacob said it was in God’s hands and, of course, having children is in God’s hands.

But later on we will read something (and this is “jumping the gun” a little bit), but let us go to Genesis 30:14-17:

And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes. And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son's mandrakes. And Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me; for surely I have hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night. And God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived, and bare Jacob the fifth son.

From this account, it is obvious that Rachel had forbidden Jacob from having marital relations with her sister Leah, and that is more than likely the reason why Leah “left bearing.” We do not know exactly how long it was, but it was after she had Judah and after that natural “break” when the husband would allow the wife to recuperate after having a child for two or three months, Rachel said, “No more. Not until I have a child. You do not go into her.” Rachel could have thrown a fit. She had already demanded that he give her children, or she die. So Jacob, just wanting to have some semblance of peace in the house, agreed with her. Then later, Rachel basically rented Jacob out to her sister Leah for the mandrakes, and after one night, she conceived. So that fits, and it appears to be the natural explanation for why she “left bearing.” 

Of course, there would be a spiritual meaning that I am not sure of, but we find in these last few verses of Genesis 29 that JEHOVAH saw that Leah was hated, and He opened her womb, repeatedly, and she had four sons. And, yet, Rachel, who was loved, was barren, and that fits in with the whole idea we have been talking about, with Jacob being a type of Christ, and he is married to these two women, just as Christ is married to His eternal bride (all those He has saved, the elect) and to mankind. He is married to every human being because man is married to the Law of God, and it is only the elect that become “dead to the law” in order to marry another. The rest of mankind never become dead to the Law, and they are guilty of breaking the Law and committing spiritual adultery, and the Law condemns them. The Law says that an adulteress shall be stoned to death, and that is what happens over the course of Judgment Day, which we are presently in. The Law is getting its vengeance. It is like an angry husband that demands justice for all the acts of spiritual fornication and adultery committed against the marriage, and God is taking vengeance on the wicked of the earth.

But we wonder why it says that God saw Leah was hated and opened her womb, while Rachel, who was loved, but He did not open her womb. She was barren for a time. And one reason we can understand it is if we look at the corporate church. In the churches, there were the wheat and the tares, the saved and unsaved. The spiritual condition of the saved and the unsaved is as Jacob and Esau: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” Or, it is as Leah and Rachel – Rachel was loved, and Leah was hated. And within the corporate church, there were multitudes that were brought into the congregations through various types of works gospels and, yet, they were never truly born again. In that way, these natural mothers are like Hagar or Agar (in Galatians 4) that are a type and figure of the covenant of mount Sinai in Arabia, or the Law of God. Remember that God specifically told us that as He revealed the mystery behind the Scripture that we read in the book of Genesis concerning Abraham’s two wives, and God said in Galatians 4:22-26:

But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

So, here, we have two women who are wives. Agar was a wife, as she was given to her husband as a wife, just as Bilhah and another handmaid (belonging to Leah and Rachel) were given to Jacob. In that sense, Jacob had four wives – two main wives and two concubines. So Leah and Rachel were wives of Jacob, just as Sarah and Hagar were wives of Abraham, and the son that Hagar bore Abraham, Ishmael, and the sons that Sarah bore Abraham, Isaac, were the children of the covenants. The children of promise, in the case of Isaac; and the children of bondage, in the case of Ishmael, because Hagar relates to mount Sinai where the Law was given. So he was a child of the Law. And that is what we are saying, is it not? Leah is a figure of mankind that is married to the Law. They have a marriage relationship to the Law of God. Even if someone heard the Gospel, went into a (corporate) church, and calls himself a Christian, and is baptized and partakes of the Lord’s Table, and makes a decision for Christ, he may never have been born again. And this is true in millions and millions of cases, so they are still “married to the Law,” and they are not married to Christ. So we can see how the population in the churches grew and multiplied, and there were way more children that came as a result of the relationship to the Law of God, as Jacob typified the Lord Jesus who is the Word and the Law, and He has that spiritual marriage to mankind because man is a creature made in the image of God. So all these (unsaved) people that entered into the churches and congregations are as children of the Law. They are “natural” offspring. They are not offspring that comes as a result of having been truly born again. They are not children of the promise. They are children of the bondmaid and, therefore, children that are in bondage.

That is the figure we saw when we looked at the 12 sons of Jacob, and Leah is linked to eight of them. She bore six sons herself, and her handmaid bore two, for a total of eight. Regarding Rachel, she had two sons and two of her handmaid, for a total of four. So four out the twelve represents “one third,” and eight out of the twelve represents “two thirds,” and that is the spiritual picture.

As we look at this passage of Genesis 29 in these last few verses, we see that Leah’s firstborn son was Rueben, and we are interested in finding out what happened with Rueben. Why did Rueben not receive the blessing of the firstborn? And it is true that he did not. Actually, God warned of just this kind of situation that Jacob found himself in because he had two wives, one who was hated and one who was loved, in Deuteronomy 21:15-17:

If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.

This is very clear, and it addresses Jacob’s situation exactly with these two wives, Leah and Rachel. God made sure in Genesis 29 that the reader knows that Rachel was loved, in Genesis 29:18:

And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.

And it says in Genesis 29:30-31:

And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years. And when JEHOVAH saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren.

There were two wives, one loved and one hated. And the hated wife Leah bore the firstborn. She had Jacob’s first four sons. There is no question. Rueben is the firstborn son of Jacob, and according to Deuteronomy 21:15-17, Rueben should have received the blessing of the firstborn. It was not lawful for Jacob to say, “Well, he was the firstborn of the wife that is hated, and the wife I really love is Rachel.” Of course, at this point, it was not an issue because Rachel, at this point, had no sons, and it would be some time before Joseph was born. However, it does turn out (and we will look at this) that the blessing of the firstborn was not given to Rueben, but it was given to Joseph, the firstborn of Rachel. We cannot help but wonder if there is some kind of violation in the fact that this happened, and Jacob gave Joseph the blessing of the firstborn, and not Rueben.

So that is what we are going to look at, Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study. We are going to look at the reason the Bible gives for Rueben not receiving that blessing. Also, we are going to see how there is a deeper spiritual picture in view, regarding the fact that God took the blessing away from Rueben and gave it to Joseph. We will see that this also points to what God has done in judging the corporate church. There is a connection between the removal of the blessing of the firstborn, Rueben, and God’s removal of the corporate church from being His people. Since God removed the corporate church from being His people, that means He took blessing away from them. We will look at that connection. It is an interesting spiritual tie-in that we will find when we study the Scriptures regarding Rueben’s loss of firstborn status.