Zilpah, Leah's maid, bore a son to Jacob while he was in Haran in the land of the children of the East, where after his night at Bethel he served Laban fourteen years for his two daughters and before his departure from Haran to return to Canaan. Zilpah and Bilhah became his concubines and bore him four sons. The chapter belongs to the record of his trials and victories through which he undergoes a complete change of heart and becomes one of the Israel of God, and to the history of the channels through which the Promised Seed would come.
The verse falls within his checkered and unsatisfactory experiences, in which his selfish plotting is followed by suffering and overreaching from others. It exhibits his polygamous household life, violating the marriage institution by having a son through Zilpah. Polygamy as seen here is evil and wrong and causes very great unhappiness in every family where it enters, as witnessed in his family. Though this evil was allowed for long ages through the whole Old Testament period and was tolerated because of the hardness of ancient Israel's hearts, it had received a terrible rebuke when it first found place among God's people and the original order of things in Eden ought never to have been departed from.
That violation does not destroy the sacred character of marriage, any more than a violation of the Sabbath in the patriarchal age would destroy the sacred character of the Sabbath. Marriage and the Sabbath were both made for man before the fall, their holiness is not derived from the Decalogue, but the seventh commandment guards the sacredness of marriage and the fourth commandment guards the sacredness of the Sabbath. Genesis 30 is cited among patriarchal accounts in a discussion of violations of marriage that do not invalidate marriage's sacred character, without singling out this verse as a violation. The children born to the handmaids were recognized as free and equal with his other sons and became heads of tribes in Israel, and being entitled to share their father's property, their mothers' status as servants did not make them chattel slaves.
Zilpah, Leah's maid, bore a son to Jacob while he was in Haran in the land of the children of the East, where after his night at Bethel he served Laban fourteen years for his two daughters and before his departure from Haran to return to Canaan. Zilpah and Bilhah became his concubines and bore him four sons. The chapter belongs to the record of his trials and victories through which he undergoes a complete change of heart and becomes one of the Israel of God, and to the history of the channels through which the Promised Seed would come.
The verse falls within his checkered and unsatisfactory experiences, in which his selfish plotting is followed by suffering and overreaching from others. It exhibits his polygamous household life, violating the marriage institution by having a son through Zilpah. Polygamy as seen here is evil and wrong and causes very great unhappiness in every family where it enters, as witnessed in his family. Though this evil was allowed for long ages through the whole Old Testament period and was tolerated because of the hardness of ancient Israel's hearts, it had received a terrible rebuke when it first found place among God's people and the original order of things in Eden ought never to have been departed from.
That violation does not destroy the sacred character of marriage, any more than a violation of the Sabbath in the patriarchal age would destroy the sacred character of the Sabbath. Marriage and the Sabbath were both made for man before the fall, their holiness is not derived from the Decalogue, but the seventh commandment guards the sacredness of marriage and the fourth commandment guards the sacredness of the Sabbath. Genesis 30 is cited among patriarchal accounts in a discussion of violations of marriage that do not invalidate marriage's sacred character, without singling out this verse as a violation. The children born to the handmaids were recognized as free and equal with his other sons and became heads of tribes in Israel, and being entitled to share their father's property, their mothers' status as servants did not make them chattel slaves.