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“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.”
(Romans
8:2)
Rachel
– Jacob’s Wife – Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rachel
רָחֵל
Born Paddan Aram,
Aram-Naharaim
(present-day Harran, Turkey)
Died Canaan
(present-day Israel)
Resting place Rachel's
Tomb, Bethlehem
Spouse Jacob
Children
Benjamin
Joseph
Father Laban
Relatives
Rachel (Hebrew: רָחֵל,
romanized: Rāḥēl, lit. 'ewe')[1] was a Hebrew Bible
figure, one of the Israelite matriarchs, the favorite of Jacob's two wives, and
the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes
of Israel. Rachel's father was Laban. Her older sister was Leah, Jacob's first
wife. Her aunt Rebecca was Jacob's mother.[2]
Marriage to Jacob
Rachel is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 29
when Jacob happens upon her as she is about to water her father's flock. She
was the second daughter of Laban, Rebekah's brother, making Jacob her first
cousin.[2] Jacob had traveled a great distance to find Laban. Rebekah had sent
him there to be safe from his angry twin brother, Esau.
During Jacob's stay, he fell in love with Rachel and agreed
to work seven years for Laban in return for her hand in marriage. On the night
of the wedding, the bride was veiled and Jacob did not notice that Leah,
Rachel's older sister, had been substituted for Rachel. Whereas "Rachel
was lovely in form and beautiful", "Leah had tender eyes".[a]
Later Jacob confronted Laban, who excused his own deception by insisting that
the older sister should marry first. He assured Jacob that after his wedding
week was finished, he could take Rachel as a wife as well, and work another
seven years as payment for her. When God "saw that Leah was unloved, he opened
her womb" (Genesis 29:31),[4] and she gave birth to four sons.
Rachel, like Sarah and Rebekah, remained unable to
conceive. According to biblical scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "The
infertility of the matriarchs has two effects: it heightens the drama of the
birth of the eventual son, marking Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph as special; and it
emphasizes that pregnancy is an act of God."[5]
Rachel became jealous of Leah and gave Jacob her
maidservant, Bilhah, to be a surrogate mother for her. Bilhah gave birth to two
sons that Rachel named and raised (Dan and Naphtali). Leah responded by
offering her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob, and named and raised the two sons (Gad
and Asher) that Zilpah bore. According to some commentaries, Bilhah and Zilpah
were half-sisters of Leah and Rachel.[6] After Leah conceived again, Rachel
finally had a son, Joseph,[2] who would become Jacob's favorite child.
Children
Rachel's son Joseph became a prominent figure in Israelite
tradition. This pre-eminence emerges in the Biblical story of Joseph,[7] who
prepared the way in Egypt for his family's exile there.[8]
After Joseph's birth, Jacob decided to return to the land
of Canaan with his family.[2] Fearing that Laban would deter him, he fled with
his two wives (Leah and Rachel) and twelve children without informing his
father-in-law. Laban pursued him and accused him of stealing his teraphim.
Indeed, Rachel had taken her father's teraphim, hidden them inside her camel's
seat cushion, and sat upon them. Laban had neglected to give his daughters
their inheritance (Genesis 31:14–16).[5]
Not knowing that the teraphim were in his wife's
possession, Jacob pronounced a curse on whoever had them: "With whoever
you will find your gods, he will not live" (Genesis 31:32). Laban
proceeded to search the tents of Jacob and his wives, but when he came to
Rachel's tent, she told her father, "Let not my lord be angered that I
cannot rise up before you, for the way of women is upon me" (Genesis
31:35). Laban left her alone, and the teraphim were not discovered.
Death
Near Ephrath, Rachel went into a difficult labor with her
second son, Benjamin. The midwife told her in the middle of the birth that her
child was a boy.[9] Before she died, Rachel named her son Ben Oni ("son of
my mourning"), but Jacob called him Ben Yamin (Benjamin). Rashi explains
that Ben Yamin either means "son of the right" (i.e.,
"south"), since Benjamin was the only one of Jacob's sons born in
Canaan, which is to the south of Paddan Aram; or it could mean "son of my
days", as Benjamin was born in Jacob's old age.
Burial
Main article: Rachel's Tomb
Biblical scholarship distinguishes between two narratives
for the site of Rachel's burial, a northern one suggesting a site north of
Jerusalem near Ramah (modern Al-Ram), and a southern one placing it close to
Bethlehem.
Rachel was buried on the road to Ephrath, just outside
Bethlehem,[10] and not in the ancestral tomb at Machpelah (where her husband
Jacob and her sister Leah were buried). Rachel's Tomb, located between
Bethlehem and the Israeli settlement of Gilo, is visited by tens of thousands
of visitors each year.[11]
1 Samuel 10:2 places Rachel's tomb "at Zelzah on the
border of Benjamin."
Additional references in the Bible
Mordecai, the hero of the Book of Esther, and Queen Esther
herself, were descendants of Rachel through her son Benjamin. The Book of
Esther details Mordecai's lineage as "Mordecai the son of Yair, the son of
Shimi, the son of Kish, a man of the right (ish yemini)" (Esther 2:5). The
designation of ish yemini refers to his membership in the Tribe of Benjamin
(ben yamin, son of the right). The rabbis comment that Esther's ability to
remain silent in the palace of Ahasuerus, resisting the king's pressure to
reveal her ancestry, was inherited from her ancestor Rachel, who remained
silent even when Laban brought out Leah to marry Jacob.
After the tribes of Ephraim and Benjamin were exiled by the
Assyrians, Rachel was remembered as the classic mother who mourns and
intercedes for her children.[5] Jeremiah 31:15, speaks of 'Rachel weeping for
her children' (KJV). This is interpreted in Judaism as Rachel crying for an end
to her descendants' sufferings and exiles following the destruction by the
Babylonians of the First Temple in ancient Jerusalem. According to the Midrash,
Rachel spoke before God: "If I, a mere mortal, was prepared not to
humiliate my sister and was willing to take a rival into my home, how could
You, the eternal, compassionate God, be jealous of idols, which have no true
existence, that were brought into Your home (the Temple in Jerusalem)? Will You
cause my children to be exiled on this account?" God accepted her plea and
promised that, eventually, the exile would end and the Jews would return to
their land.[12]
In the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (part of the
New Testament), this reference from Jeremiah is interpreted as a prediction of
the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod the Great in his attempt to kill the
young Jesus. The Jeremaic prophecy is the inspiration behind the medieval
dramatic cycle Ordo Rachelis, concerned with the infancy of Jesus.
In Jewish tradition
A major theme in Jewish tradition is that of Rachel weeping
for her children in Exile. This is based in part on a biblical passage (Jer.
31:15–17): "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children; she refuseth to be comforted for her children,
because they are not."[13] According to the rabbis, Jacob buried Rachel on
the side of the road for the purpose of her future position to plead on behalf
of the Jewish people.[14]
In Islam
Despite not being named in the Qur'an, Rachel (Arabic: رَحِـيْـل,
Rāḥīl) is honored in Islam as the wife of Jacob and mother of
Joseph,[15] who are frequently mentioned by name in the Qur'an as
Yaʿqūb (Arabic: يَـعْـقُـوْب)
and Yūsuf (Arabic: يُـوْسُـف),
respectively.[16][17]
Notes
"Leah had
tender eyes" (Biblical Hebrew: ועיני לאה
רכות) (Genesis 29:17).[3] It is debated as to whether
the adjective "tender" (רכות) should be taken
to mean "delicate and soft" or "weary". Some translations
say that it may have meant blue or light colored eyes. Some say that Leah spent
most of her time weeping and praying to God to change her destined mate. Thus
the Torah describes her eyes as "soft" from weeping.