Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #5 of Genesis 30, and we are going to read Genesis 30:3-8:

And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her. And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan. And Bilhah Rachel's maid conceived again, and bare Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed: and she called his name Naphtali.

We have been looking at this account concerning the children that God gave to Jacob and his wives, and we have seen that God blessed Leah with four sons.  Rachel was envious and demanded of Jacob that she receive children, or she would die.  And Jacob correctly pointed out, “Am I God?  Do I have the power of God?  Who is it that has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?”

Rachel, in responding to this obvious truth that Jacob does not have that kind of power, came up with an idea, and her plan was to give her maid Bilhah as a wife so he could go in unto her and have children by Bilhah, but Rachel would count those children as her own, and would “bear them upon her knees.” 

If you have been following along, you will recall that we were looking at the bearing of children as the fruit of the Gospel, and the unsaved can multiply children because they have other kinds of gospels other than the true Gospel, because the true Gospel requires waiting upon the Lord for Him to determine whom He would save.  We have Leah as a picture of the corporate church, basically, the unsaved within the congregations.  She was the “hated wife.” 

And Rachel is a type of the elect because Jacob loved her.  He worked for her, not for Leah.  Also, Leah had eight children, including the children of her handmaid, and Rachel had four children, so there is the “one third” and “two thirds” ratio that we have seen elsewhere where God likens His people to “one third.” So for these reasons, we have understood Rachel to be a type of the elect.

But, here, it was Rachel who came up with a plot.  She devised a plan to have children, and we are going to look at the children that were born to her handmaid Bilhah, and we are going to see that it did not turn out well.  Actually, Bilhah’s name means “trouble” or “terror,” and it is important for us to notice what it says in Genesis 30:4:

And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her.

God did not give Bilhah to Jacob to wife.  Rachel did.  It was her solution to her problem, and her real problem was that she refused to wait upon God and to do things God’s way, and to be patient and trust in the Lord.  You know, that is the time when trust in God is necessary – when we do not have what we think we want or need.  Then we should look to God, as those that “look to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”  The elect people of God trust in God, and that trust is really seen through the fact that they will wait upon Him for Him to do the work. 

But Rachel was not waiting.  Historically,  the woman Rachel could have been unsaved.  We do not really read too many encouraging things about her as a person.  This is the same person who a little later in time will steal her father Laban’s “gods” when Jacob fled the house of Laban.  When Laban finally caught up to them, she hid the idols, lied, and was deceitful about it.  As far as we can tell in the Bible, Jacob never knew – it was a secret sin of Rachel.  And, you know, that was an awful sin because there is only one God, and God had said that there were not to be any images made, and Rachel did steal these images of false gods.  So there was a lot of sin and a lot of problems with Rachel.  And, again, historically, she could have been unsaved.  But it is also possible she was saved, as we are just given little glimpses of the things she did and said in her life.  (That is God’s business whether she was truly saved, or not.)  But she was representing the elect because she was loved by Jacob, a type of Christ, and she was the bride for whom Jacob served by tending sheep in order for her to be his wife.  In that, she is a clear picture of the elect.

Her two sons that she bore, Joseph and Benjamin, and the two sons of her handmaid Bilhah, Dan and Naphtali, are one (spiritual) portrait, types of the elect, because they are the “one third” out of the 12 sons.  However, keep this in mind, and I think Mr. Camping had a good explanation for this.  The Bible is like a portrait gallery, and you can see one portrait as you look at a verse, a passage, or a chapter.  You move on to the next verse or passage, and there is a different portrait or painting.  God could use some of the same people, things, or places, and, yet, be painting an entirely different picture.  And that is why we always have to be careful when we make conclusions and speak in generalities.  We would all like to say, “This person, thing, or place spiritually represents this one thing, and every time you see it, that is what it represents.”  But that is not the case, and that makes the Bible more difficult.   So it is better to look at each particular instance in the Bible to see the picture.

Here, Rachel is “going around” the faithful thing that God would have her to do, which would be to wait upon the Lord.  She has come up with her own idea, and she has the solution to having children and catching up with her sister.  There was this wicked competition between her and her sister, and their father carries a lot of the blame by deceiving Jacob and giving him Leah to wife.  If that was the typical thing for their people to give the eldest daughter in marriage first, he should have let Jacob know at the beginning, but he did not.  He hid it. 

But this is not anything new as far as a wife of a faithful man of God coming up with her own plan to have a child.  We saw it before with Sarah back to Genesis 16.  And from everything we can read, Sarah was a true, elect child of God, but she, too, had a weakness in this area.  It says in Genesis 16:1-4:

Now Sarai Abram's wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, JEHOVAH hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.

Trouble – immediate trouble.  Then Sarai took Hagar and dealt harshly with her and, yet, the trouble remained in the house.  You know, the Bible tells us that these are the two covenants, in Galatians 4.  The two sons born through these two women: 1) one through Hagar, which represents mount Sinai, or the Law; and 2) one through Sarai, the son of promise, who was Isaac.

So I do not know if we are getting that kind of picture here in Genesis 30, necessarily.  But it was definitely not “waiting upon the Lord,” so it would be another kind of a gospel, and there is no other true Gospel.  There is only one true Gospel of the Bible, and that Gospel is what God has said in His Word, the Bible, and that is that God does the saving – completely.  He is the one who chooses.  He is the one who does all the work of faith, and of bearing and paying for sin, and of applying His Word to the hearts of men to create the new heart.  He does everything, from the beginning to the conclusion of His salvation program, for all those He has saved.  The only role that man plays is to be the “dead corpse,” dead in soul, and activated upon by God and brought to life.  That was our lone contribution.  We contribute nothing else in God’s salvation program.

But, here, with Rachel, “time” applied to a problem always intensifies the problem, where people say early on, “Oh, I trust in the Lord.  God is in control.  And everything God does is good and right.  It is best just to wait on the Lord.”  But just add time to that.  Add three years, five years, or 10 years, like in Sarah’s case.  They were ten years in the land, and there was no son as yet.  And, yet, the promise was there.  Where is the promised son?  “Oh, I have a solution.  I  will have a child through Hagar.”

And maybe Rachel even heard this story through Jacob, and maybe it comes to her mind, “I will do what Sarah did long ago, and I will have a son through my handmaid.”  So she gave Bilhah to him to wife, and it was full of trouble.

We read that Bilhah conceived and bear Jacob a son, and then it says in Genesis 30:6:

And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan.

In these verses, just as in the previous chapter when Leah had sons, the name of the son was in the verse and provided an explanation, like Rueben’s name.  Leah said, “Surely JEHOVAH hath looked upon my affliction,” and Rueben means “to look.”   And “Judah” means “praise.”  So they would give an explanation, and then the word that had a lot of meaning would be used to name their sons.  And, here, Rachel named the son born to Bilhah and Jacob (and Rachel is claiming him as her own), and she said, “God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice…therefore called she his name Dan.”  Dan means “to judge,” so that is where the name Dan comes from.

And we should not think that Rachel thought that God had judged her negatively or in a harmful way.  She is looking to God as a judge who has heard her case and made a determination that she viewed as favorable because her handmaid did conceive and bare a son, which is what Rachel wanted.  That is why she said, “God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice.”  So that was in her mind those thousands of years ago when she named her son, but in these Scriptures, we are actually seeing the spiritual meaning of what happens when people do not wait on the Lord when it comes to the Gospel of salvation, and when they seek to circumvent the will and purpose of God, and they have their own plan to work things out so they get what they want.  And we saw through Bilhah’s name that what resulted was “trouble.”  And what we see through Dan’s name, which means “to judge,” is that God has judged her through the son born to trouble (Bilhah), so Dan is a figure of the trouble that comes upon those that fail to wait on the Lord. 

We can see this confirmed in Genesis 49, when Jacob was dying and had called all his sons before him, and it says in Genesis 49:1:

And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.

That is something for us to keep in mind, as we read what is said of each of the 12 sons or 12 tribes – it has to do with the last days.  And keep in mind that the 12 tribes of Israel are used as type and figure of the New Testament churches and congregations, and it can be used of the elect church or of the corporate church.  For example, in Revelation 7, 12,000 were sealed of each of the 12 tribes, or the 144,000, and they are the firstfruits unto God.  They picture those that were saved during the entirety of the church age. 

But when Jacob turned to Dan, he was moved to say in Genesis 49:16-18:

Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O JEHOVAH.

That is curious that verse 18 is in that context.  The first couple of verses appear to be sort of negative.  Well, maybe verse 16 could be understood in another way, but it says in verse 17: “Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.”  But then it is followed by the statement, “I have waited for thy salvation, O JEHOVAH.”  Keep in mind what we are discussing in Genesis 30 is Rachel’s failure to wait on the Lord for Him to give her a child and bless her union with her husband Jacob with the fruit of the womb, and that pictures waiting upon God for salvation.  So I do not think it is accidental that God made this statement concerning waiting, in Genesis 49.  In the verse before, He speaks of Dan as a “serpent by the way, an adder in the path,” and this is the same word “serpent” that is found 31 times in the Old Testament.  We could go all the way back to Genesis 3 where the “serpent” deceived Adam and Eve.  This word “serpent” is found there a few times, and that serpent is Satan, the Devil. 

So, here, Dan is called a “serpent by the way,” and the Lord Jesus said He is the way, the truth, and the life.  Christ is the “way” because He is the Word.  He is the way to heaven, and the way to eternal life is through the Word of God, the Bible, and the people of God follow the “way.”  It is a narrow way that leads to life.  Yet, Dan is a serpent by the way.  He is not on the way, but he is close to it, and he is there to bite the horse heels, so that those going in the way will fall backwards.  We do not have time to look at “falling backwards,” but it has to do with being under the judgment of God.  Eli, the high priest, fell over backwards and broke his neck, and it was showing what happens when someone is under the judgment of God.  Also, the phenomenon of the churches in our time of the end is one of “falling over backwards,” and it indicates that these people are under the wrath of God.  It is what happened when they came to the Garden to take the Lord Jesus Christ.  He said, “Whom seek ye?  I am He,” and then they all fell backwards.  It is an indicator that one is unsaved and under the judgment of God, and Dan is like a “serpent by the way, an adder in the path.”  And the “way” and the “path” would spiritually represent the same thing.  The Word of God, the Bible, is a lamp unto our path.  It lightens and shines the light on “the way” before us, and our next step.  That is how we travel in this world.  Step by step, we walk in God’s commandments that lighten our pathway, and we keep going step by step, and day by day, and, eventually, we will reach the Promised Land – either through our own death when our spirit goes to be with the Lord, or at the completion of all things for this world, as we happen to be that generation that will experience the end of the world and the lifting up of the elect out of this cursed place.  Then we will go to be with the Lord.

If we go to Psalm 58, I was surprised how many verses tie into this.  We read in Psalm 58:1-4:

Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;

Here, the wicked are likened to a serpent that has poison, and when the serpent bites, it injects the poison, and it can be lethal to the one who has been bitten.

Or, we can go to Psalm 140:1-3:

Deliver me, O JEHOVAH, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man; Which imagine mischiefs in their heart; continually are they gathered together for war. They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips. Selah.

Again, the tongue of man is like a serpent, and that would relate to false gospels which are proclaimed with man’s tongue.  He speaks them.  That is the “poison.”  It is spiritual poison for someone that may have started out in the good way, the way of Christ and the truth of the Bible, but then there was an individual like Dan who is a “serpent by the way.”  And here is someone who was believing what the Bible says and, apparently, trusting it, and then this serpent, just like the Serpent back in the Garden of Eden, comes along and says, “Hath God said?  Hath God said that doctrine you are believing that the church age is over, and hath God said that Christ was slain from the foundation of the world?”  And he tries to instill doubt because doubt is the ruination – it destroys trust in the Word of God.