Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #12 of Genesis 30, and we will be reading Genesis 30:14-18:

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. And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to my husband: and she called his name Issachar.

I will stop reading there.  We are continuing to look at this unusual account that happened thousands of years ago.  The Lord, in His wisdom, thought it wise to record it in the Bible, His holy Word, so that we could read it and consider what is happening.  Now I do not know if we will be able to understand all the spiritual meaning of what is taking place here, but we will try to do the best we can.

Let us begin with Genesis 30:14:

And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field…

Reuben was Jacob’s firstborn son of Leah, and Leah’s oldest (son) went out into the field in the time of wheat harvest, and he found mandrakes in the field.  After finding these mandrakes, he brought them to his mother Leah.  Rachel saw that Reuben had brought the fruit, so she said to Leah, “Give me…of thy son’s mandrakes.”  Then Leah used the request as an opportunity to point out that Rachel had refused to allow Jacob (who was also Leah’s legal husband) to lie with her, and she accused her of taking away her husband.   Then Leah said, “Will you also take away my son’s mandrakes?”  And Rachel responded, “Therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son's mandrakes.”  They struck a deal where Leah would give Rueben’s mandrakes to Rachel, and Rachel will in turn allow Jacob to lie with Leah. 

And that is exactly what happened when Jacob came in from the field in the evening.  Leah went out to meet him, and this must have surprised Jacob.  He had no idea about what had transpired, and Leah went out to meet him and said, “Thou must come un unto me; for surely I have hired thee with my son’s mandrakes.”  And Jacob, knowing the situation between these two sisters, his wives, was probably able to piece it all together.  At any rate, he was married to Leah.  Actually, as far as the Law of God is concerned, Jacob was married to Rachel and Leah, and, therefore, he could have marital relations with either one of them, according to the law of marriage.  There would be nothing wrong with it, except that God’s Law prohibited having more than one wife.  But when someone entered into that kind of relationship by marrying a second woman, as well as the two concubines that were given to be his wives, although it is sin, the marriages must continue on because the Bible says there is to be no divorce.

This is why in our day if someone marries and then divorces by the law of the land, and then marries a second woman, that is an adulterous relationship because in God’s sight he is still married to his first wife, but now he is married to a second woman.  According to the law of God, he should not leave the marriage to the second woman.  Sin makes a “mess,” but marriage is still marriage, and in this case, Jacob was married to Leah.  As a matter of fact, he married Leah first, before Rachel.  It was a result of Laban’s deceptiveness in lying to Jacob.  Nonetheless, it was a marriage.  So Leah was his first wife, and there was nothing wrong here.  It was not harlotry or anything like that.  It is not as though Rachel is selling her husband, and Leah is purchasing him.  They are already married, so that is not the issue.  But it definitely reveals “big trouble” in this family.  How anyone could read the historical accounts of the lives of men that had multiple wives and then desire to have multiple wives, I do not know.  I do not know how anyone could desire that when they see all the problems and troubles that Jacob experienced, as well as David and Solomon experienced.  It is so much simpler and better to have one man and one woman in a marriage, and not a man with a number of wives, because it just brings grief and heartache and trouble.

Going back to the account, let us just pause a second to remember that Jacob went into the land of Haran, and he worked seven years, and then he was given Leah to wife.  Then after pointing out that Laban had lied to him, Laban gave him Rachel at the same time.  Leah was first and then, quickly, Rachel became his wife, for whom he worked another seven years.  We are not given an exact timeline concerning the children; that is, God does not give us the dates that each one was born.  We can gather from the accounts in Genesis 29 and 30 that Leah had her children very quickly, and it would not be surprising if after that seventh year when he married both Leah and Rachel that nine months later Rueben was born.  And then maybe the next year the second son was born, followed by the third and fourth sons.  The births may, perhaps, have been yearly.  Then Leah left bearing for a time.  We have discussed this, and I do not doubt that this was the result of Rachel complaining and crying to Jacob that he would not go in unto Leah.  And we can see here that it was necessary for Rachel to make a deal and give her approval before Leah could go in unto Jacob, so it had to be that Rachel was the cause that Leah stopped bearing children.  At that time, Rachel was troubled because in these first few years of marriage she was not able to have a child, so she gave her handmaid Bilhah to Jacob, and she bore two sons.  So if we look at Leah and her first four sons, it may have taken four or five years.  Then Leah was forbidden to go in unto Jacob any longer, and Jacob agreed to that arrangement.  So maybe after five or six years of marriage, Rachel then determined to have children through her handmaid Bilhah, who had a son and then a second son, so it would be the seventh or eighth year, so this means that Reuben was seven or eight years old at the time that Rachel’s maid Bilhah had her second child. 

Then Leah saw that she had left bearing, and she saw another opportunity.  She thought, “If you gave your handmaid (to Jacob), then I am going to give my handmaid.”  So Leah gave her handmaid Zilpah to wife, and Zilpah had two sons, so that would be a couple more years.  So Rueben was 10 or 11, or perhaps 12, if the children were coming at a fairly fast rate, and there was no reason to think they were not. 

Then in verse 14, Rueben went in the days of wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field.  He was just a young boy, maybe a very young teenager.  We should not think that he was planting a field and he planted seeds or a vine that was under his care and control, but he went out into the field and found mandrakes.  So the fact that God says he found them can mean a couple of different things.

First, the Hebrew word that is translated as “found” is a word that is used over 400 times in the Bible, and very rarely does it have to do with plants or crops or anything like that.  Actually, the thing that comes closest is what we read in Hosea 9:10:

I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time…

This is God speaking: “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness.”  And that is about as close as we can get when we look up this word “found” or “find.” 

It is the same word used in Exodus 16:25:

And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a sabbath unto JEHVOAH: to day ye shall not find it in the field.

He was referring to the manna, which was not planted.  It came down from above, and they literally went out and found it and brought it back, and that was their food.  They happened upon it.  The Israelites did not do anything to cause it.  It was just there, sent by God.

Let us go to 1Samuel 10 where Samuel is speaking to Saul, who would become King Saul of Israel.  It says in 1Samuel 10:2:

When thou art departed from me to day, then thou shalt find two men by Rachel's sepulchre in the border of Benjamin at Zelzah; and they will say unto thee, The asses which thou wentest to seek are found: and, lo, thy father hath left the care of the asses, and sorroweth for you, saying, What shall I do for my son?

They found the asses that Saul and his friend were looking for.  And that is more the idea of this word.  It is also  used in the case of finding grace.  It is used in that way several times.  It is used in the case of finding favor: “If I have found favor in thy sight.”  It is used in that way.

It is also in Proverbs 25:16:

Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.

You are walking in the woods, and you found honey.  “Hast thou found honey?”  That is the idea of how the word is used concerning Rueben: “And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field…”  He was a young boy.  He went out in the field and he found mandrakes.  So the question is whether he found the fruit on a tree or a vine.  Is that what is meant?  Did he gather it in a basket?  That is possible, as the word “found” could relate to the idea of happening upon some wild vines (or something like that) that were just out in the field.  Then he gathered them together and brought them to his mother.

But remember that when we looked at the word “mandrakes,” this word is found seven times, and five times are in this passage.  A sixth time it is translated as “mandrakes” is in Song of Solomon 7:10-13:

I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me. Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves. The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.

Notice that it says, “The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.”  Verse 12 mentioned that the vine flourish, the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth.  So these were the “all manner of pleasant fruits,” and the mandrakes give a smell.  Now it could be that the mandrakes are referring to “all manner of pleasant fruits.”  Remember, we saw it used five times in Genesis 30, and then once here.  The seventh time is in Jeremiah 24:1-3:

JEHOVAH shewed me, and, behold, two baskets of figs were set before the temple of JEHOVAH, after that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the carpenters and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad. Then said the LORD unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.

Then a little further down the “good figs” are likened to the Jews of Judah that went into Babylonian captivity, so these are people.  And the “evil figs” are likened to the Jews of Judah that remained in the land, so these are also people.  So when we read in verse 1, “JEHOVAH shewed me, and, behold, two baskets of figs were set before the temple of JEHOVAH,” the word “baskets” is the same word that is translated as “mandrakes.”  So it would not make any sense to say, “two mandrakes of figs,” so that is the reason the translators translated it as “baskets.”  But, then again, maybe not, because a related word to “mandrake” is the word “basket” in verse 2: “One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs…”  If you remember, I mentioned in a previous study that the word “mandrakes” is the Hebrew word “dûday,” which I would pronounce as “doo-dah'-ee,” and it is #1736 in the concordance; and the related word translated as “basket” is #1731, and it is the word “dûd,” pronounced “dood,” and it just does not have the same ending, but it has the same consonants as the word for “mandrakes.”  So maybe the reason they translated this word as “baskets” was because it would have been impossible to translate it as “two mandrakes of figs.”  You would not have one fruit that carried another fruit.  Also, the word “basket” is a related word, so that is good evidence that this word can be properly translated as “baskets.”

And if that is the case, then our verse in Genesis 30 would read this way: “And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found baskets in the field, and brought them unto his mother Leah.”  Now that is possible that somebody else had been working in the field gathering some kind of fruit into baskets and went off for a break, or whatever, and Reuben found the baskets.  But I do not know if we can really determine which one is in view.  I think I lean more toward his having brought baskets with him and finding some fruit, which is being identified as mandrakes, and putting them in the baskets.  It is difficult to say.

Now many theologians of the past who have commented on this passage are in agreement that this is a fruit that is called a mandrake, and they believe it had aphrodisiac qualities, and that is the reason that Rachel, who was barren, desired it.  When she saw the type of fruit it was, and since it was always on her mind that she had not been able to have children up to this point, she thought that this might help promote conception.  So she desired to have the mandrakes for that reason.  That is speculation.  But we also know that if that was the reason, it did not work.  Rachel got the fruit, but Jacob had gone into Leah that night and Leah conceived, and not Rachel.  And from what we can read, Leah had that child, and then she conceived again.   Issachar was her fifth child, and then she conceived again and bear Jacob a sixth son who she called Zebulun.  So we are looking at, perhaps, two years later that Rachel conceived and had Joseph.  So there is no connection with the mandrakes because it was over two years later, so that whole idea is speculative,  But I can sympathize with the theologians on this point regarding what to do with this passage.  What is the purpose?  What is the meaning of this?  Of course, we are looking on the spiritual level, and that is very difficult too, and I am not sure I understand what it means.  But we will talk about this more when we get together for our next Bible study.