And Bilhah Rachel’s maid conceived again, and bare Jacob a second son.
The verse records that Bilhah, Rachel's maid, conceived again and bore Jacob a second son, Naphtali, one of the sons born to Jacob. The birth occurred while Jacob was in the land of the children of the East serving Laban fourteen years for his two daughters, after leaving Bethel and before departing Haran to return to the land of Canaan. It belongs to the account of Jacob's trials and victories. It is part of Jacob's checkered and unsatisfactory experiences, marked by selfish plotting and consequent suffering. It belongs to the record of the channels through which the promised Seed was to come.
It is part of Jacob's polygamous household history in Genesis 29-30, in which the marriage institution established before the fall in Eden was violated by taking a maidservant as a wife. Such patriarchal violations do not destroy or diminish the sacred character of marriage, just as a violation of the Sabbath in the patriarchal age would not destroy the sacred character of the Sabbath. Marriage was made for man before the fall, its sanctity is not derived from the Decalogue, and the seventh commandment guards its sacredness.
Jacob's polygamous household proves polygamy was never anything but evil and wrong and was the cause of very great unhappiness in every family where it entered, including Jacob's. The ancient people of God allowed this evil through the whole period of the Old Testament, and Moses tolerated it because of the hardness of their hearts, but it remained wrong. Christ placed the whole subject back on the original order of marriage in Eden, which ought never to have been departed from. The four sons borne by Bilhah and Zilpah were recognized as free and equal with Jacob's other sons and became heads of tribes in Israel. They shared equally in their father's property, so their mothers' status as handmaids did not make their children chattel slaves.
The verse records that Bilhah, Rachel's maid, conceived again and bore Jacob a second son, Naphtali, one of the sons born to Jacob. The birth occurred while Jacob was in the land of the children of the East serving Laban fourteen years for his two daughters, after leaving Bethel and before departing Haran to return to the land of Canaan. It belongs to the account of Jacob's trials and victories. It is part of Jacob's checkered and unsatisfactory experiences, marked by selfish plotting and consequent suffering. It belongs to the record of the channels through which the promised Seed was to come.
It is part of Jacob's polygamous household history in Genesis 29-30, in which the marriage institution established before the fall in Eden was violated by taking a maidservant as a wife. Such patriarchal violations do not destroy or diminish the sacred character of marriage, just as a violation of the Sabbath in the patriarchal age would not destroy the sacred character of the Sabbath. Marriage was made for man before the fall, its sanctity is not derived from the Decalogue, and the seventh commandment guards its sacredness.
Jacob's polygamous household proves polygamy was never anything but evil and wrong and was the cause of very great unhappiness in every family where it entered, including Jacob's. The ancient people of God allowed this evil through the whole period of the Old Testament, and Moses tolerated it because of the hardness of their hearts, but it remained wrong. Christ placed the whole subject back on the original order of marriage in Eden, which ought never to have been departed from. The four sons borne by Bilhah and Zilpah were recognized as free and equal with Jacob's other sons and became heads of tribes in Israel. They shared equally in their father's property, so their mothers' status as handmaids did not make their children chattel slaves.