Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #13 of Genesis 30, and we are going to read Genesis 30:16-18:

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.

We are trying to understand as much as we can from this passage.  It is a very simple passage on a historical level, but it is a very difficult passage when looking for the deeper spiritual meaning.  The idea of the two wives striking a deal, and one wife, Rachel, is selling marital relations with her husband to her sister Leah, and it is over the “mandrakes,” or these baskets of fruit.  And it is very hard to see who represents what, as far as the two wives, the mandrakes, the baskets, and just about everything.  It is one of the hardest passages I have seen so far in our study in the book of Genesis in trying to understand the spiritual meaning.  Again, we will do the best we can, but we may not come to any kind of understanding as far as the deeper spiritual meaning.  We will try to learn what we can learn.

In verses 16 through 18, we see that Leah was waiting for Jacob as he came out of the field in the evening, and she told him she had hired him for the evening in exchange for her son’s mandrakes.  As a result, Jacob went with her and laid with her that night.  Let us look at the word “hired” in verse 16.  It is #7936 in Strong’s Concordance, and it is found 21 times in the Old Testament, including twice in this verse.  When she said, “surely I have hired thee,”  it literally reads, “hiring I have hired thee.”   We see this fairly often in the Old Testament.  For example, in the early chapters of Genesis when God warned Adam that in the day he would eat thereof, he would surely die, the translation in the English is “surely die,” but in the Hebrew it literally reads, “dying, you will die.”  It is a similar structure here when it says, “Hiring I have hired you.”  So of the 21 times this word is used, two of them are here and 19 are elsewhere in the Old Testament.  From what I could see of the 19 times, only one or two. times were set in a positive context, but every other time it seems to be set in a negative context. 

Let us look at a few of those places, and you will see what I mean.  Let us go to Deuteronomy 23:4:

Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee.

The same word for “hired” is also used of Balaam in Nehemiah 13:2:

Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, that he should curse them: howbeit our God turned the curse into a blessing.

So the deal to hire Balaam was definitely negative.  It was against the people of God.

We read in Judges 9 of Abimelech, the son of Jerubbaal, and we read in Judges 9:4:

And they gave him threescore and ten pieces of silver out of the house of Baalberith, wherewith Abimelech hired vain and light persons, which followed him.

And Abimelech was an evil man who slew all of his brothers, sons of Gideon.

Also, it says in Judges 18:4:

And he said unto them, Thus and thus dealeth Micah with me, and hath hired me, and I am his priest.

In this account, this is the house of Micah, and he hired a priest for his house of idols, so they were conducting their own religion.  It is another gospel in view, and this priest was hired to perform priestly duties, but it was not for the true Gospel, but for another gospel.

It says in 1Chronicles 19:6-7:

And when the children of Ammon saw that they had made themselves odious to David, Hanun and the children of Ammon sent a thousand talents of silver to hire them chariots and horsemen out of Mesopotamia, and out of Syriamaachah, and out of Zobah. So they hired thirty and two thousand chariots, and the king of Maachah and his people; who came and pitched before Medeba. And the children of Ammon gathered themselves together from their cities, and came to battle.

Here, the children of Ammon hired mercenaries to fight against David.  And, again, it was against the kingdom of God.  We could say that of all these cases.  With the hiring of Balaam, the hiring by Abimelech of vain and light person, the hiring of a priest, and the hiring of mercenaries to fight against Israel, it was working against the kingdom of God and His people.

It says in Nehemiah 6:12-13:

And, lo, I perceived that God had not sent him; but that he pronounced this prophecy against me: for Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. Therefore was he hired, that I should be afraid, and do so, and sin, and that they might have matter for an evil report, that they might reproach me.

Again, these were enemies of the people of God that hired someone to cause him to sin so they could bring an evil report against him.  So there was nothing good there.

It says in 2Chronicles 25:5-10:

Moreover Amaziah gathered Judah together, and made them captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, according to the houses of their fathers, throughout all Judah and Benjamin: and he numbered them from twenty years old and above, and found them three hundred thousand choice men, able to go forth to war, that could handle spear and shield. He hired also an hundred thousand mighty men of valour out of Israel for an hundred talents of silver. But there came a man of God to him, saying, O king, let not the army of Israel go with thee; for JEHOVAH is not with Israel, to wit, with all the children of Ephraim. But if thou wilt go, do it, be strong for the battle: God shall make thee fall before the enemy: for God hath power to help, and to cast down. And Amaziah said to the man of God, But what shall we do for the hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel? And the man of God answered, JEHOVAH is able to give thee much more than this. Then Amaziah separated them, to wit, the army that was come to him out of Ephraim, to go home again: wherefore their anger was greatly kindled against Judah, and they returned home in great anger.

Here, Amaziah hired 100,000 men out of Israel to be an ally to support his army, but a man of God (a true prophet) came and said, “O king, let not the army of Israel go with thee; for JEHOVAH is not with Israel, to wit, with all the children of Ephraim.”  He told him that if he would go with the men he had hired, he would fall before the enemy.  So, once again, “hiring” is set in a very negative way.

So when we look at this word, #7936, that is used twice by Leah in Genesis 30:16 when she said, “Surely I have hired thee with my mandrakes,”  what has Leah hired Jacob for?  Yes, Leah wanted the relations of the marriage bed because she wanted to be with her husband and love her husband, but we have also seen that she very much wanted to have children.  She wanted to conceive and bear children, and that seemed to be her purpose.  That would grow the number of children she had.  Deep down she had the idea that if she had many sons, she would finally be accepted by Jacob.  I am not sure how to look at this.  It is a sad thing that she had to hire her own husband.  It is really a terrible thing.  It was a very ugly situation in that house, and that is what happens through sin.  But “It is what it is,” as the saying goes.  And through hiring Jacob, she would have a fifth son, and it would actually sort of renew relations with him, once again, and later she would have a sixth son, and we do not read of Jacob being hired at that point.

So the only way I can see to look at this is that Leah’s six sons, plus the two of her handmaid, totals eight of the 12 sons of Jacob.  We have talked about this before.  Rachel would eventually have two sons of her own, plus two sons of her handmaid, for a total of four.  So there is a clear one-third/two thirds relationship with those numbers, and we know that the elect of God are likened to the “third part,” and the non-elect or unsaved are likened to “two thirds.”  So in building up her children or building Israel. in that sense, it would not be of any great spiritual benefit because her children are picturing those that would come into the churches that were not saved: “For many are called, but few are chosen.”  So of the many called, there are the few (that are truly saved), but that leaves many others who were called but not chosen, and they are the professed Christians or Christians in name only.  Or we could liken them to physical Jews, rather than spiritual Jews, that are circumcised in the flesh but not in the heart.

Let us go on here to Genesis 30:17:

And God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived, and bare Jacob the fifth son.

Keep in mind that there has already been four sons born to Leah, plus four sons of the two handmaids, so there are already eight sons of Jacob.  Issachar is Leah’s fifth son, but the ninth son born to Jacob of all these women.  Then Leah said in Genesis 30:18:

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

The word “hire” used here is related, but is a different word.  It is Strong’s #7939.  The earlier word for “hired” is #7936, which was found 21 times.  Strong’s #7939 is a different word, and it has a more positive expression where it is found in the Scriptures.  For example, one place that seems to identify with this is 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.

Happy or blessed is the man that has his quiver full of them.  Children are a heritage of JEHOVAH, and the fruit of the womb is his “reward,” and the word “reward” is this same word for “hire.” 

But what is unusual about our verse is the reason that Leah gives (for being blessed), as she said, “…because I have given my maiden to my husband: and she called his name Issachar.” And the name “Issachar” means “bring reward” or “bring hire.”  So as we have seen with the naming of these children, it is typically something based on the idea that God is answering their request, in the case of the handmaids’ children.   In this case, Leah was thinking, “God has given me my reward because I have given my maiden Zilpah to my husband.”  So it must have something to do with the idea of building up the house with children: “Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.”   Leah was thinking that her contribution was not only her own children, but the children of her handmaid.  Again, this is very difficult to understand, and I am not sure what is going on here on a spiritual level.  All we can do is what we can do, but we can see that this related word for “hire” in verse 18 is a more positive word.  From another prospective, with all the sons of Jacob, the tribes of Israel, God does point to them as a figure of all the elect, as it says in Revelation 7:7:

Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Levi were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Issachar were sealed twelve thousand.

It lists the twelve tribes (except for Dan), and of each one was sealed 12,000, totaling 144,000, representing the firstfruits, all those that would be saved during the church age.  So despite the fact that Leah had to hire Jacob, it turned out that she did conceive and bear a son.  And the 12 sons of Jacob do typify, on one hand, the elect of God.

We also see in Revelation 21, as the Lord shows us new Jerusalem coming down from heaven above, we read in Revelation 21:11-12:

Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:

And that would include Issachar, which is likened to a part of that city.  Therefore, that city is made up of only the elect, as we see with all the sons of Jacob.

That is as far as we are going to get in this study.  Please join us again, Lord willing, for our next Bible study in the book of Genesis.