Lovely Rachel and Rejected Leah (Gen 29-35)

Welcome to the third generation of Abraham's family, which will officially begin the nation of Israel with its twelve tribes, formed from the descendants of Jacob's twelve sons.

As we begin to look at the lives of the women in these stories, let's note that Rebekah, our mover and shaker from the last episode, again starts the action in this story when she sends Jacob back to her family to look for a wife. She does this partly so he can escape the anger of Esau, whom she helped Jacob trick out of his firstborn's blessing from Isaac, and partly because she wants him to marry within her family rather than with a local Hittite woman like Esau has done.

Rachel and beauty
Jacob first meets Rachel at the well. This scene should remind us of when Abraham's servant met Rebekah: again there is animal watering and a beautiful eligible young woman. Rachel is introduced to us as a shepherd, which makes her the first career woman in the Bible. This time it is Jacob who takes the initiative, helping get the water and intervening in some local conflict over the well, and he is delighted to find that Rachel is a potential wife. They go to find Laban, who again is very happy to welcome an unexpected kinsman with marriage potential for his daughters.

After Jacob has been there a month, they arrange his future marriage to Rachel, which will take place after Jacob has served Laban for 7 years. Leah is mentioned as Laban's other daughter who is less desirable because of her "dull eyes." Translators tell us the meaning of the description isn't clear. But the point is that Rachel is much prettier.

Jacob clearly falls in love with Rachel instead of Leah because of her beauty. This is a major major topic among ideas about women. It's almost axiomatic that women's beauty is of high value in the world, where men's attractiveness is not as important. Beauty is considered to be a corollary of femininity. It's also pretty much universally acknowledged is that this is not fair. That most women would love to be absolutely beautiful is evidenced by all the trappings of fashion, makeup, jewelry, beauty products, fitness plans etc. It is a major deal in women's lives that takes up a lot of time, energy, and money. But we don't pursue all this stuff out of stupidity and frivolity. This story is the first Bible story giving evidence that the prettier a woman is, the more desirable and loved she will be, the more things will go well for her, and the more power she will have.  I can feel angry eyes burning back at me from the reading side of this post, but believe me mine are flashing from this end too, because it's not fair and it also affects me. But listen, let's acknowledge how this is and speak frankly about it.

Also, let's read along, and see where this advantage and disadvantage take Rachel and Leah in their lives, and how God deals with each of them in their own situation. In doing so let's look for clues about how he values physical beauty in women. He is its creator after all.

After the seven years fly by for Jacob who is so in love with Rachel that they "seemed to him but a few days," the day for the marriage arrives. Laban reveals himself to truly be from the same stock as his strategically dishonest sister Rebekah. In an almost identical trick to the one she played on Isaac, he substitutes Leah in for her sister when Jacob is unable to see her and recognize what is happening. When he realizes he's been tricked, it's too late. The deed has been done and Laban's agenda is achieved.

Laban's action is truly unfair to Jacob and he is right to be angry. But I do wonder if Laban's motivation was one of love to poor Leah, who he worried would not receive her own attention, and might not gain herself a husband on her own, and would therefore have no one to provide for her. He gives Rachel to Jacob as well, as promised, but gets seven more years of labor for himself out of the deal. Jacob takes this all as well as could be expected.

Leah and children
Immediately after the wedding, the narrative begins to take up Leah's case, that Jacob loves Rachel much more than her, and that the Lord sees this. "When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he enabled her to have children, but Rachel could not conceive." There is a lot going on there. God seems to have noticed that Leah was suffering from a lack of love from her husband, and mitigated that suffering by honoring her with children. Though we saw God's similar concern that Sarah would be the mother of Abraham's heir, the children God gives to Leah seem to be to comfort her even more specifically, since God will bless Jacob with many legitimate sons through several women in the end. God clearly finds her lack of received love to be wrong, and intervenes to compensate and bless her.

The meanings of the names Leah gives her boys are a peek into how her relationship with Jacob is developing:  Reuben -"The Lord has noticed my misery, and now my husband will love me"; Simeon - "the Lord heard that I was unloved and has given me another son"; Levi - "surely this time my husband will feel affection for me, since I have given him three sons"; Judah - "now I will praise the Lord!" Does the meaning of that last name show a development that Leah is at last giving up on Jacob's affection and turning to receive the affection of God, who blesses her regardless of what her husband does?

Rachel is on a different journey. Though she is loved dearly by her husband, she is unable to have any children. If beauty is one asset women are expected to have, fertility is another. And it was even more important in the historical setting of Genesis than it is today. Further, I think biologists would say that in the grand scheme of things, our ideas of attractiveness tend to be characteristics that indicate fertility. Beauty is often a sign of what nature deems really important between the sexes, ability to reproduce.

Rachel becomes jealous of Leah's children, despite her clear victory over Jacob's affection. Her infertility also causes a relational wedge between her and Jacob. She demands that he give her children, "or I'll die!" Jacob is "furious" at this and says that God is the one keeping her from having children. But neither of them approach God for help. Instead, we see Rachel using mandrakes to try to increase her fertility. When Rachel finally does conceive, it says that God remembered her and answered her prayers. But there is no recorded conversation between either of Jacob's wives and the Lord compared with what we had with Rebekah and Sarah.

Rachel's infertility is first mentioned in contrast to Leah, who God enabled to have children because she was unloved. I would love to understand God's motivation here. It does seem that God is comforting Leah in her loneliness and rejection by giving her children. Is Rachel punished for being loved? My idea of infertility is typically that it's a problem--that scientifically, if the right things happen, a couple will get a baby. But maybe this is the wrong way to look at it. In each of the family stories we've read, the couple has been completely dependent on God for a child, and the child does not arrive without his intervention. When you consider even from a physical standpoint all the millions of tiny developments that have to go right for a healthy baby to arrive, it does seem miraculous that it ever happens at all. And perhaps this is the correct way to look at children. They are brought about by God as a gift. Though we participate, it is up to him to give them.

Servant-wives as teammates, not rivals, this time
This drama always seems less present, though, in the lives of the servant women recruited by their mistresses for help when God is not delivering on the timeline desired. Maybe though we don't know their stories as much as we know Leah's,  God is acting similarly for the servant women who are not honored and cherished in marriage?

But in this story, the servants Bilhah and Zilpah are pretty much completely accepted into the family. Where Sarah was jealous of Hagar's pregnancy, Rachel and Leah are delighted with the children of their servants, and take credit for them. Perhaps the difference in their emotional experiences is because of the competition between the sisters. Another reason that marriage is best with just one man and one woman--competition in this relationship is terrible! Because of the rivalry between the sisters, maidservants become teammates rather than rivals themselves.

It's noteworthy that where Ishmael was rejected as the heir and sent away, Bilhah and Zilpah's children are full tribes of Israel. God does accept them, and Jacob accepts them and blesses them on his deathbed (albeit with shorter blessings than Rachel and Leah's sons receive). Though the tribes of Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher are less legendary than the Levites, the tribe of Judah, and the others from the lines of Rachel and Leah, they are Israelites, where the Ishmaelites and the Edomites are not. Is this partly due to the real influence of Sarah and Rebekah who are both influential in their stories in favoring their boys? Of course God works through all of this. But perhaps in these stories we can also see these women's actions influencing the plot.

We don't know a lot about the servant women of Rachel and Leah other than that they were lauded for bearing children. After Zilpah bears her first son, Leah says, "Now the other women will celebrate with me!" Maybe this tells us that the women of the household were a bit of a support group for each other, in the absence of the relational support of a primary marriage relationship?

Leaving Laban
When all of his children are born, Jacob feels the need to separate from Laban. After some years of negotiating about livestock with shrewd Laban, Jacob receives a message from God that he should just go, and return to his homeland. I love that he consults Rachel and Leah about this move. They respond to the idea with hearty approval, seconding Jacob's disillusionment with Laban, saying that he will not give them any inheritance, and expressing that "all the wealth God has given you from our father legally belongs to us and our children." This discussion about money is the reason they think Jacob should "go ahead and do whatever God has told you."

They leave in secret, and in an interesting development, Rachel steals her father's household idols. Are they valuable, and is she hoping to get some "inheritance" back from her father after all? Is she doing it out of superstition? Laban chases the family down, angry both because they left without telling him and because of the stolen idols. Jacob is sure of his his innocence, and unknowingly puts Rachel in grave danger, by promising to put to death anyone who may have taken them. He also promises to give back any other stolen goods, not mentioning a death penalty in that case. Maybe he would be more upset to find anyone in his household worshiping idols than thieving.

Anyway, Rachel, proving her genetic connection to her father and aunt, sneakily avoids being caught, using a very feminine excuse (while sitting on the idols, she says she can't get up, she's having her period). After Laban unsuccessfully searches Jacob's belongings, Jacob makes a great speech defending his innocence and rubbing Laban's nose in it. And that's that. As far as we know, nobody ever finds out about Rachel's theft.

In the next part of the story, where Isaac returns home and has to face down Esau, we see a contrast between him and his father and grandfather when facing conflict with other powerful men. Where both of his forefathers used their wives as bargaining chips with local kings, offering them without qualms to their rivals, when Jacob goes out to meet Esau, he protects everyone. He appeases Esau with gifts before they arrive, and then divides his family into groups to attempt to keep some of them safe. His divisions clearly and openly show the rank of the women in his family. Least protected are the servant wives and their children who go to meet Esau first, then Leah and her children, and finally Rachel and Joseph.

The meeting goes well, and after reconciliation the brothers live in two different towns. But Jacob is forced to move again after a scandalous and murderous incident with a local tribe over his daughter Dinah. I think we'll talk about this one in separate post. They leave, and return to camp at Bethel, where Jacob has earlier met God. Here Jacob does order his household to get rid of all of their idols, so he must have had some knowledge of the presence of idols in his family after Rachel's theft. Also at Bethel, they hear of the death of Rebekah's old nurse. We learn her name, Deborah, and they name the tree where they bury her "the oak of weeping." She seems to have been much beloved. In contrast, we don't even know exactly when Rebekah dies.

The sisters' lives in hindsight
Jacob's family next moves to Ephrath, or Bethlehem. But on the way, Rachel goes into labor, and winds up being the first recorded woman in the Bible to experience the curse of difficult childbirth to such an extent that it causes her death. The story is very sad. She has intense labor pains and a difficult delivery, and she must have been having a terrible time because her midwife tries to comfort her "Don't be afraid--you have another son!" "With her last breath" she names the baby "son of my sorrow." We have her pain, her fear, and her sorrow, in the last moments of her life all recorded in these sentences. It makes my heart ache.

Jacob does not want to leave the baby with this legacy from his mother in his name, and changes it to "son of my right hand" or Benjamin. They bury Rachel there and leave a stone monument, which "can be seen there to this day." I wonder when it faded out of memory. Wouldn't that be amazing to find??

After Rachel's death, her maidservant Bilhah gets into trouble with Reuben, and in half a verse we are given the report of their affair, with no other commentary. But this sexual sin keeps Reuben from receiving the firstborn's blessing from his father, even though he is the only son of Jacob who will later keep his brothers from murdering Joseph.

We don't hear any more about either Rachel or Leah, except in much counting of their descendants over the next few chapters. Though Leah's death is not recorded, Jacob later tells us that she is buried with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah at Mamre. Though she was less loved by her husband, she was honored to be the mother of the most important tribes of Israel and to be buried with the patriarchs, where Rachel was not.

These chapters are, among other things, a contrast study of the lives of a pretty woman and a plain woman. Beauty, often associated with fertility, turns out not to guarantee it for Rachel, but the favor of God does for Leah. However God does not completely deny Rachel, whose physical condition gives her the advantage in romance and disadvantage in family honor, and he also gives her a son at last. But judging from Rachel's tragic early death, beauty and a romantic spark did not ultimately give her the win in life. I wonder as the years rolled on for Leah how the pain of her rejection by her husband evolved, and whether she achieved peace and happiness in life.

Does either sister really know God? There is little evidence of their interaction. So for this story I think we can gain the most from looking at how God acts toward them. As we often see in the Bible, here God brings about a reversal, where the person you would expect to see in a place of honor: the young, pretty sister, does not receive favor from God as much as the older, less pretty sister.

About beauty itself, I think we see God acknowledging it as an asset for women, though of course he doesn't use it to calculate a woman's value. Instead, he blesses those who suffer for lack of beauty the same way he blesses the poor, who suffer for lack of money. Maybe that's a good analogy for considering beauty. Like money, or any other skill or asset, it's not good or bad in itself, it is just a resource to use for God's purposes, and he takes into account what we have been given and how we use it. Though money and beauty ease life for some, they don't guarantee happiness and can become completely irrelevant to whether we achieve it. But in neither case can they be completely ignored when you consider a person's situation in life. One difference is that money can be more attainable for most, where beauty is not as attainable. This contributes to the power dynamic between men and women where a general human lack of ability to become much more beautiful affects women more than men. But we can take heart that God sees and understands all this, and is good and trustworthy in the midst of it.

Takeaways:

• Both Sarah and Rebekah have real influence on the major plotline of the family God chooses to form his people.
• In this story we see the advantage that beauty gives some women in life being acknowledged and mitigated by God's favor.
• Neither Rachel nor Leah is recorded interacting with God. The only references to God in their lives are comments about their prayers when their children are born.

Questions:

• Why the difference in status for Ishmael compared with Bilhah and Zilpah's sons?
• How do you reckon with the intuitive way people value beauty in women? Not fair, but real. What do we do with it?

Sarah's marriage (Gen 11:27-23:20)

The marriage of Abraham and Sarah is an interesting one to consider, since we are lucky to have record of their relationship pretty much from beginning to end, over many chapters, with both of them active in action and dialogue. In this post, we'll focus on several places in her family's chapters in the Bible that provide information about her marriage: the two stories of Abraham passing Sarah off as his sister and giving her to kings, and the stories of the struggles between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. But we'll also keep in mind what we looked at last time, the important factor of Sarah's infertility in her marriage and in God's plan. There's quite a bit to chew on here!

Sarah's marriage to Abraham begins in the family of Terah, Abram's father. In this family, marriage partners were chosen from close kin. Abram had two brothers, and one of them married a daughter of the other. Abram married another daughter of his father. But we should keep in mind that at this point we are not that far out of the garden of Eden, and only 10 generations down from Noah. There just weren't that many people around yet. What strikes us as weird in marriage choice may not have been weird to these early people.

Weird or not, marriage to close kin is inadvisable for many reasons, one of which could have been the cause of Sarah's big problem in life-- her infertility. These two factors, Abram and Sarai's half-sibling relationship and Sarai's infertility, combine with a third, Sarai's great beauty, to pave the way for what are some of the most jarringly unholy acts of Abram, the man God chose to establish a relationship with to create a people for himself. Because Sarah was so beautiful, and not obviously a mother to any children, and *technically* his sister, Abram is able to get away with using her to his advantage so that instead of being killed by kings who want to steal her away, on two separate occasions he is able to sell her to the kings and receive great riches instead. Yuck.

Let's give a bit of background for these two stories. Abram is a travelling man, under orders from God. He moves to Canaan at God's command, and then down to Egypt because of a famine, then back up to the Negev, then to Canaan again, then down to the Negev again, and also spends time in several cities along the way. He occasionally participates in battles, has interactions with various rulers and lords, and negotiates in land, livestock . . . and women, as we shall see.

The two stories about the Pharaoh and Abimelech form a kind of bookend to Sarah's period of infertility in these chapters. After Abram's call, the story about Sarai being given to Pharaoh is the first real episode that takes place. Then after many more promises from God, military skirmishes, relational dramas, etc.,  the last thing that happens to Sarah before she gives birth to Isaac is that she is given to Abimelech. Of course, once she has a son, it is much more difficult for everyone to pretend she is just a virgin sister, so there is a logical end to this strategy when Isaac is born.

It is on his first trip to Egypt to avoid the famine that we first hear of Abram giving Sarai to Pharaoh, in exchange for good treatment and gifts of livestock and servants. Let's stop and take that in. In our modern moral language, we would say that Abram has just evidenced himself to be a human trafficker of not only his own wife for sex, but also of unnumbered male and female servants, listed right along with donkeys and camels. How does the father of the Jewish people get away with doing this?

Two possible mitigating factors occur to me. The first is to put a filter of "times were different" over this. Servants were a part of life back then, since the 40 hour work week and minimum wage had not yet been instituted. Abram was "very rich" the text tells us, and we can hope the members of his household were well treated and valued as part of the village or part of the family. (Sarai's servant Hagar eventually officially bridges that gap.) The second partial explanation is that it does seem like these two stories are recorded to point out that it was outrageous for Abram to do this to his wife, and he shouldn't have. (Though it's true that the main voices of complaint in both stories come from the decieved kings, not Sarai.) Servanthood and brideprices were just the accepted societal arrangements of the day. Deceptively offering your own wife to someone else was not.

Both Pharaoh and Abimelech are furious about Abraham's deception. In the course of the second story, Abimelech gives a speech I want to high five him for, "No one should ever do what you have done! Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?" Whatever indeed, Abram? Abram was audacious and wrong to do this. What was Sarai's experience in these stories? In the first story where Pharaoh is the "victim," we don't have as much information about her part, but the second story tells us a little more. Whereas in the first story, Abram asks Sarai to say she is his sister, in the second story, Abimelech says that she has said she was his sister. Based on his claim, Sarai seems to have been in on it too.

I find it interesting that in 1 Peter, Sarah is held up as a "holy woman from the past." As in, "This is how the holy women of old made themselves beautiful. They trusted God and accepted the authority of their husbands. For instance, Sarah obeyed her husband, Abraham, and called him her master. You are her daughters when you do what is right without fear of what your husbands may do." Sarah did obey her husband. But was she doing what was right? This is generally the caveat given to the marital submission command of wives to husbands. Submit, unless he tells you to sin. But Sarah appears so submissive in these stories that she just sins right off the cliff along with Abram. We'll talk more about Sarah's relationship with God next post, but I don't see evidence of a closeness between them in these stories, (of course you could also question how close Abraham was to God at the moment he was hatching these plans).

To me what is most puzzling here, is that with these two chosen sinners pulling shenanigans, God comes to the kings to warn them, without so much as a remark to Abraham or Sarah. Abram is simply given more gifts and sent along with a royal reprimand, and all signs of a heavenly blessing. He actually prays for Abimelech's household to be healed from the infertility inflicted on them as punishment for having Sarai in his house. I don't know exactly how to understand this and am going to leave it in the list of questions. Please help, dear readers, if you can.

But, back to what we can learn about their marriage from these stories. Whether Sarai went right along willingly, or unhappily obeyed Abram out of a sense of duty, we can be pretty sure that Abram was not too jealous for his wife's affection, as he had no qualms about putting her at risk of having sex with other men. Perhaps he feels she is really only a sister to him, since she has borne him no children. We can guess that she was either similarly cold toward him, or else blazing hot with fury at her treatment. Theirs was not a fairytale romance.

We have another clue about their marriage dynamics when we come to the stories of Sarai and Hagar. We have seen that Abram was willing to allow Sarai to sleep with other men in theory, though it didn't occur in the end. In the stories of Sarai and Hagar we see that Sarai was also initially willing to allow Abram to take Hagar and have a child with her. But when that did occur, she was not ok with the situation.

Her motivation, as we discussed last time, was to help Abraham receive the promise God had given him. Maybe she hoped that orchestrating the fulfillment of the promise Abram had received would heal something in their relationship, since she would no longer be the roadblock for God's promise. But even though by doing this, Sarai was able to relieve the pressure she felt on herself to have a child, she found that it was not ultimately worth it to have to share the status and compromise the position she had as Abram's wife. Her relationship with her husband and with her servant suffered even more.

It's interesting that Sarai places the blame for her emotional pain on Abram, when it was her idea for him to have Hagar. This is probably because it is his hope for a son from God that causes Sarah to suggest that he take Hagar as a wife. She even calls on the Lord to judge between her and her husband in the situation, one of the only times we hear her having any involvement with God. She may be speaking to God this first time because she feels it is his influence in Abram's life that has led her to this problem. When confronted by Sarai, Abram again exhibits coldness, practicality and passivity toward his marriage relationships, telling Sarai, "Look, she is your servant, do with her as you see fit." Get off my back, will you? Abram has a deep relationship with God; his family relationships pale in comparison.

However, God is deeply involved in Abram's marriage, continuing to reiterate that Abram will have many descendants through his wife Sarai. Though Abram is the one to receive the promise, it is really about Sarai. When he has a son of his own seed through Hagar, it does not count as fulfillment of God's plan. God want's this son to be born of Sarai herself. Their marriage is lived in this context, including the wounds it contains. I do hope Sarai knew some love and tenderness from some one, since it doesn't sound like she received much from Abram. Did God comfort her? We will look at that more in a coming post, but it's not obvious to me.

Returning briefly to the discussion of Sarah and the kings, after God's most explicit promise to Abraham that Sarah herself will bear him a son within a year, we find the story of Sarah being given to Abimelech. It is extra jarring at this place in the narrative, because now Sarah is expected to bear a son within a year. If, within that time, she is in another man's harem, who will have been the father of the baby?! The Lord delivers Sarah and Abimelech from their situation by sending him Abimelech a warning in a dream. The king and Abraham then have it out, but seem to end up being friends, since in the next chapter they make a covenant with one another. Again, I ask where is God's discipline of Abraham for coming so close to blowing the fulfillment of his promise that Sarah would bear him a son?

From Abimelech, Abraham receives his choice of land and 1000 pieces of silver. And Abraham prays that the infertility of the women in Abimelech's house, inflicted upon them by the Lord because of Sarah's presence there, will be healed. (Sarah must have been in his house for quite some time for infertility to have been noticed among the other women.) In the next breath after Abimelech's household is healed by Abraham's prayer, Sarah receives what she has been promised, and she bears Abraham a son.

Sarah's reaction to the birth of her son is so touching. "God has brought me laughter. All who hear about this will laugh with me." I hope this high point brings redemption to her for her trouble in life and marriage.

A further aftershock of Sarah's plan for Abraham to have Hagar as a wife occurs next in the text when their two sons are in conflict. Even after her own son is born, Sarah is insecure in her place in the family, and also her son's place. She convinces Abraham (though he is "very much upset") to send Hagar and Ishmael away for a final time. God promises Abraham that he is involved, and will again care for Hagar and Ishmael, and He does.

I wonder how Abraham and Sarah's marriage changed with the competing family members gone. Did Sarah feel more peace, or did her wounds fester without the possibility of a healed relationship between her servant, her stepson and herself? Did the romantically cool Abraham miss them?

The next thing we are told about Sarah is that she dies at 127 years old. Abraham's extended negotiation to buy a burial place for her gives the impression that he is putting energy into honoring her memory. I love that she is buried near Mamre, where the angels visited their family to promise their son's birth.

Sarah's marriage to Abraham is not easy by any means. But it is used by God to form the root for his people. Though it seems almost too easy of an application, we can definitely see here how God's plan goes forth in the lives of constantly sinning sinners, through his guidance and faithfulness. We can also see that the purpose of this marriage was not at all the romantic fulfillment of the spouses involved. Their steadiness in family-membership despite their unsteadiness in happy companionship was the context for God's great establishment of official contact with humanity. They hung in there through heartbreak, redemption, sin, good times and bad times, and this was the stuff God used to move forward his plan to save the world.

Takeaways

• Sarah's marriage was difficult, nothing like modern versions of romance. 
• When God made promises to Abraham about his descendents, their fulfilment hinged on them being given to his first wife as well as himself.
• Though it seems A and S had a tense marriage, their main point of unity was in their shared parentage of Isaac.
• Though this does not seem to be a model marriage, we can say that a less than model marriage was still a context for a great work of God in building his kingdom through the birth of a child.

Questions

• Why do we only hear God warning to the kings about the deception of Abraham and Sarah regarding the wife-sister tricks, with no consequences for either of them?
• Do you see evidence of a loving relationship between Abraham and Sarah that I have missed?

Sarah's infertility (Gen 11:27-18:15)

When we first meet Sarai in Genesis, she is introduced in this way. "The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah. (Milcah and her sister Iscah were daughters of Nahor's brother Haran.) But Sarai was unable to become pregnant and had no children." This first detail we learn about Sarah is central to her life. As we know from our earlier reading, the story of humanity is the story of children being born, growing, and having more children. Half of God's mandate (the first half!) to the human race is that we fill the earth. Women are honored to bear the main burden in this human work, and Sarai along with her family would have looked for this as a measure of success and value in her life. Being unable to bear children was a big problem for her and would have been worth mentioning in her life summary even if not for the rest of this story.

But as we read on in the story of Abram's life, we find so much of it wrapped up in how God's plan will go forward when Sarah cannot bear a child. The weight of the world was on her womb. She must have felt this acutely. During the brief season when I was trying to become pregnant without success, my every thought was wrapped up in my body and timing, and whether any symptom was significant, and every month of waiting was a new small devastation, even though in my world childbearing is optional for women and my worth can be measured elsewhere. I can only imagine the pain and feelings of worthlessness Sarah must have endured over the 85 or so years of her life where she was unable to do the one thing God's plan of salvation for the world hinged upon--this thing she had no control over that everyone expected from her and that she was unable to produce.

The story of Abram's call and the blessings he is promised make clear the honored and intergral part women play in God's plan through childbearing. In these chapters, God meets with Abraham several times. The first one is in chapter 12, and God promises Abram, "I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous and you will be a blessing to others.  I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you." Already implicit in this promise is that Abraham will have descendants. Whether Abram questioned this the first time God met him, we aren't told. But the next time God comes to him and promises to give him a great reward (not even specifically descendants in 15:1), Abram responds, "O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don't even have a son? Since you've given me no children, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household will inherit all my wealth. You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my servants will be my heir."

This speech of Abram sounds so sad and emotional. He trusts God, but has this huge impediment to really grasping the promise he has made: Sarah is barren. We don't hear much from Sarah about the promises that Abram receives, but I imagine they deeply increased her sense of failure to conceive. She was unable to enjoy the family pleasures of raising children, and she knew that all the wealth of her family would be passed to another after her husband's death, but also, and worse, the relationship with God that shaped her husband's life was made difficult by the fact that she could not bear children. There must have been significant tension between them over this. I hope that Abraham would have been understanding and shared the sorrow with her, but the details we have about their marriage don't really point to a mutually encouraging tender partnership. Sarah may have been drowning in sorrow, bitterness, and self-contempt for many years of her life.

God responds to Abraham's question about this detail in the promised blessing with a reiterated and more specific promise, that Abraham himself will have a son of his own who will not only inherit his wealth, but will increase into a nation with descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. This promise is what "Abram believed and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith." Think of it, this central point in Christian theology, that faith in God is righteousness, was in reference to a child being promised to a barren woman. This role of women is right in the middle of what God makes happen when he is at work.

I get irritated at the idea that it's demeaning to women to imply that "a woman's purpose is childbearing." Women have amazing minds, capable bodies, strong and compassionate hearts, innumerable talents and capacity for greatness. They can do many things other than childbearing extremely well. But ask any accomplished mother (professionally or otherwise) what has been her most valuable work in life, and I can almost guarantee she will tell you it was using all her abilities as she witnessed and contributed to the growth and and development of her children. Most fathers will say this as well. Bearing children is not some sideline thing that is not what's really important in life. It is high, and hard, and holy, and right in the middle of what is going on with humanity. Sarai and Abram knew this, God knows it, we should know it as well.

This story also gives such hope in situations where women are desperate to bear children but unable for whatever reason. It shows that God cares about this situation, he is there and shaping his people through long years of suffering through it, and he will ultimately redeem it. Though Sarah receives a child at the end of her long life and some women will not, we can all trust in the fact that God has worked to bring blessing and redemption to us all in the end through these promised descendants who produced his own son after many long years.

Abram must have reported his specific promise about bearing a son to Sarai, because in the next chapter, she gets right to work trying to accomplish it's fulfillment for him herself. There is such heartbreak behind this action in my mind. Sarai knows this is of ultimate importance for Abram, and so she arranges a way for it to happen that is in her own power. She gives him her servant Hagar. When her plan works, she reaps even more misery because Hagar begins to treat her with contempt. What was once a shared sorrow for her and Abram, has been lifted from him and become hers alone. Furthermore Hagar's developing pregnancy is constantly visible evidence that a servant has been able to produce what a wife had not been. Where is her place in the family hierarchy now?, I'm sure Sarah wonders. This conflict between the women gets so bad that Sarah convinces Abram to let her send Hagar away. We'll talk about Hagar more in another post. But she does eventually bear her son, who is accepted as Abram's heir while Sarah continues to live with the new family situation.

Soon after Hagar's son Ishmael is born, God gives Abraham another more specific promise, changing his name to "father of many," and Sarai's name to Sarah, and revealing that Sarah herself will bear a son for Abraham. This is followed by a personal visit to Abraham by three holy messengers from God who promise even more specifically that Sarah will bear a child within a year. Sarah does hear this promise directly, from inside the tent. She laughs. She no longer believes in any possibility of this for herself, being past the age of childbearing. But it is still central to God's plan, and he intends to carry it out through her, despite the fact that she has no hope left.

We don't know how old Sarah is when she gives birth to Isaac. We do know she dies at 127, before Isaac is married, and that Abraham is 100 when Isaac is born. They both live about 85 years or more of life suffering through infertility. Most of their testing ground as they walk with God is in this state. His promise is given, but is a long time in coming. This particular female kind of suffering was a main issue in the first family God called to form his people in the fallen world. God cares deeply about it and works in it.

We will look at Sarah's experience when she finally does receive her son in another post.

Takeaways

• The "woman's work" of childbearing is integral to God's plan in establishing a people for himself. 
• God acknowledges that infertility is hard, and he works to redeem it in his plan.

Questions

• Why doesn't the Lord give Sarai any promises directly about the birth of Isaac?

God's Princess, an overview (Gen 11:27-23:20)

Today, we come to the story of a woman who's life is described, alongside her husband Abraham's, for eleven chapters! This is the first woman we come to know in any real sense after Eve. Since it is such a long story, my first step here will be to outline the information points we have about Sarah in a rough timeline of her life:

• She is the wife of Abram (we later learn she is Abram's half sister) and she is unable to become pregnant.
• With Abram, she moves from Haran to Canaan, and then to Egypt when there is a famine in Canaan.
• She is given by her husband to Pharaoh, so he could avoid being killed, and then given by Pharaoh back to Abraham after plagues fell on his house.
• She travels by Abram's side as he travels with Lot, and settles in Canaan, and participates in a local war.
• Abram receives the promise that he will have many descendents, which depends on her.
• She offers her servant Hagar to Abram, to help God fulfill his promise.
• She is treated with contempt by Hagar, and sends Hagar away. God cares for Hagar and sends her back.
• Abraham receives another covenant from God establishing circumcision, changing his name, and her name.
• God promises Abraham that Sarah specifically will have a son.
• Three holy messengers visit Abraham at Mamre and announce birth of a son through Sarah within a year. Sarah overhears this from inside the tent and laughs.
• After Lot is rescued from Sodom, Sarah accompanies Abraham south. 
• Again Abraham says she is his sister and gives him to Abimelech. The Lord warns Abimelech she is married and he gives her back, saying she was in on the deception.
• She gives birth to Isaac in her old age, and declares God has brought her laughter.
• She sends Ishmael away because he is mistreating Isaac.
• Abraham offers Isaac.
• She dies at 127, and was buried at Machpelah, near Mamre, where Isaac's birth was promised by the holy messengers and she got caught laughing at the promise.

Based on this outline, Here are several themes I want to look at.

The central one is Sarah's infertility. Though Abraham is the lead in this story, the first thing we learn about his family pertains to Sarah--that she cannot bear children. We have previously seen how important childbearing is in the story of humanity. It is certainly given first priority in these chapters. Even God's promise to Abraham to establish a people through him to be God's own special people hinges on this important womanly detail of Sarah's life.

The next interesting feature of this story is what we are told about her marriage relationship to Abram. It begins within their nuclear family (!?).  We are told she has great beauty and, with no children, a lack of obvious matronhood. This allows Abram to claim her as only a sister, and twice effectively pimp her to menacing kings. We also have God's attention to these situations without obvious reprimand to Abram.

I'd also like to look at her relationship with God. Throughout the story, Sarah is in the action, and even speaking, but not to God. God only speaks with Abraham, with one possible exception. How did Sarah herself relate to God in the often difficult circumstances of her life?

Finally, I want to think through the time in her life when God's promise is fulfilled and she finally gives birth to Isaac. We have a few pieces of information that speak about this, and the touching final record that she is buried at Mamre, where the holy messengers promised his birth within a year and she laughed.

Stay tuned! There is a lot of really valuable stuff here I suspect.

Since this is an overview, I will save the takeaways and questions for the next posts, where we will dive deeper into Sarah's life.

Sons of god and daughters of men (Gen 6:1-7)

Chapter 6 opens with what is to me one of the most fantasticly perplexing little sections in the entire Bible: 

• Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw the daughters of men [translated "beautiful women" in the NLT] and took any they wanted as their wives. Then the Lord said, 'My Spirit will not remain in humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.' In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth. For whenever the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of men, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times." 

All together now, "HUH?"

I am mostly trying to let scripture speak here and see what I can make of it without the outside voices of commentaries, but for this passage I have done a bit of reading. And no one seems to know with certainty what this is talking about. To keep us from being drawn into a lengthy review of ancient literature and Hebrew words etc, I am going to stick to the strategy of gleaning what is glean-able here and leaving the (many!) questions to the side.

What I think we can tell is that there was some lust happening from males (male somethings!) toward women, which they were freely acting on in a way that displeased the Lord. This is the first record of the sexual sin that history will reveal to be such a serious problem for men through all time. What specifically displeased the Lord in these relationships? To me there are a couple of possibilities. Though it's hard to know what is meant by the distinction that the sons were sons "of god" and the daughters were daughters "of men," I think there's a chance that this intermingling in itself was the problem. But without knowing what the groups are, it's hard to really say much about that. To me it seems more likely that the fact they "took any they wanted" to be their wives might be the real issue. 

Based on the design for marriage described earlier in the story of creation, we know God wants us to have one spouse to unite ourselves to, to reproduce with, to rule over creation together with, in submission to Him. Let's also remember that Eve was given as a helper for Adam in marriage, and this does imply that men are leaders in the marriage relationship. But from this story we can tell that this leadership does not mean freely taking women when desire strikes. We'll have to keep our eyes open for a positive example of how marriage should be established outside Eden as we keep reading.

So, God cares deeply who we marry. It's not ok to just take whoever you want, based only on your own desire. In this ancient situation, taking anyone you wanted for a wife might have meant having multiple wives, abandoning previous wives and children, taking other people's wives or other abuses. Whatever was specifically happening, we can see that disregarding God's plan for marriage separated us even further from fellowship with him ("my Spirit will not dwell in humans") and from immortality ("their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years"). 

The punishment God gives is interesting in that it isn't specific to the sinners, or the sins, nor does it really rectify anything that has happened. It just sets a limit on the amount of time that men will be able to sin in this way in the future. Like the initial consequence of sin for humanity-death, it just puts a temporal limit on the moral decay of people, now an even lower limit.

Were the "daughters of men" complicit in this sin, and hence, justly punished in the judgment, (which they also received)? Or were they just delivered from suffering as recipients of lust after 120 years? The text doesn't make that clear, but I think either is possible. The main thing, though, is that God is not happy with men brutishly taking any women they want and he will not put up with it. 

In this chapter, childbearing continues to be a main element in the story of humanity. The fruit of the relationships between the sons of God and daughters of men is a group of children  called giant Nephilites, who "became the heroes and warriors of ancient times." 

Heroes are only made through great feats, and warriors through battle, so here again we find a reference to exciting things happening offstage from the action in the text.The author seems at first glance to be describing the Nephilites with favor, calling them heroes and warriors. But when we consider what follows in the text, we may change our opinion about that. 

These strange paragraphs together form the introduction to a dark and difficult story of judgment with a spark of hope, the second of it's kind we have encountered so far. (The first was the fall of humanity with a promise of future triumph through the offspring of Eve.) This is a theme which the whole story of the Bible repeats again and again in different settings. Here, God is about to judge and destroy the mass of humanity in a flood, because "The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. And the Lord said, "I will wipe out this human race I have created from the face of the earth." 

These verses tell us that life on earth including marriage, brotherly relationships (Cain and Abel), heroic deeds and battles (the Nephilites),  advances in farming, music, and metal-working (the sons of Cain) had become completely corrupt. What we have been puzzling over in the previous paragraphs was certainly sinful, whatever exactly was going on.

"But," the text tells us "Noah found favor with the Lord." We'll pick it up there next time!

Takeaways:

• God cares deeply who and how we marry.
• Male leadership in marriage does not equal license for any men to take any women they want for wives. The Lord refuses to tolerate this kind of behavior.
• Children born out of toxic relationships can turn out to be heroes.

Questions:

• Anyone want to take a stab at the "sons of god" and "daughters of men"?
• Nephilites, famous or infamous?
• Do you think the "daughters of men" were victims in this story or were complicit?

Generations (Gen 4:17-5:32)

A few more generations of children being born are listed before we get to Lamech, who is remembered as having two wives who gave birth to talented craftsman, and the first daughter recorded by name. The question of his polygamy goes undiscussed, as does his killing of another man, which he boasts of in speech to his wives and claims God's protection for, referencing God's protection of Cain. However, there is no dialogue or direct action between him and God. Lamech's family presides over some of the first great progress of the human race: raising livestock, playing harp and flute, forging tools of bronze and iron. However, this progress seems to be taking them further from the time of mankind's friendship with the Lord, since we never hear God speak to Lamech.

He addresses his speech to his two wives, "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; listen to me you wives of Lamech." Why he so emphatically want them to hear this? Were they concerned for his safety? Anxious to avenge the murder themselves? Who, exactly, was the young man and why did Lamech kill him? All missing pieces, but surely more unsavory business was unfolding, and in the midst of it, Lamech felt he needed to assert himself to his two wives. We hear nothing from them, nor from any wife or woman, except Eve (who speaks again in the next paragraph), until Sarai speaks to Abram in Genesis 16 about her alternate plan for him to bear children through her servant Hagar.

In all this time, women do appear to have been ruled over. Though wives are mentioned, they do not drive the action in any way, and are not even named until Sarai. Lamech's story ends with his speech, and his two silent wives taking it in.

Of course, even in the garden before the fall, Adam's place as the first human, the one for whom Eve was made, was established. So had humanity not fallen, we may have still heard more about the adventures of men in the wide world, than those of women with their children. But given the importance placed on childbearing and the awe with which the first few births are treated, combined with the redemptive importance for humanity of Eve bearing children, maybe we can say the story is a little silent here on the mothers of all the generations recorded. Either way, the Bible gives us a reason for the patriarchy it records. Some of it was designed in Eden, some influenced by the wound between men and women that happened in the fall.

Then we jump back to the first family. Eve bears another son. She exclaims, "God has granted me another son in place of Abel, whom Cain killed." Compared with her exclamations about her first children, this exclamation is tainted with the sadness gained from time spent living in the fallen world. But it also shows that she is still looking to God as the one who provides good things for her. Having walked with God in the garden, it must have been  hard to forget his goodness and provision, even in such a changed place.

The last line of chapter 4 gives us the interesting note that when Adam and Eve's second son, Seth, had a son, people began to worship the Lord by name. If the chapter has all been chronological, there would have been generations of Cain's descendents living who did not worship the Lord before Seth's son's birth. Or maybe this is just a flashback to the first family after the mini-story of Cain's departure and what followed it. In that case, there would have been worshippers and non-worshippers living side by side. I wonder what this early worship looked like, handed down from the first people in Eden to their grandchildren. I also wonder what name it was by which they worshipped. But these question don't have too much to do with our central theme here, so like so many others, I'll just leave them by the side.

Chapter 5 opens with a reiteration that God created people in his image, both male and female. Then ten generations of Adam's descendents are named through their firstborn sons, though all also have "other sons and daughters." There is not much detail here except for the famous Enoch, who walked with God until one day "God took him away." The other detail is the meaning for Noah's name, given to him by his father Lamech. Noah sounds like the word for relief or comfort. Lamech hoped that Noah would somehow bring them relief from the difficulty they were having working the land after the curse, which Lamech specifically mentions. Perhaps an unrecorded daughter somewhere may have been named similarly by her mother ("Epidurala" perhaps?).

When we return to the story, we will zoom on on Noah's lifetime. By then, things on earth have really deteriorated. Stay tuned. . .

Takeaways:

• Women are on the sidelines in the biblical narrative from Eve until Sarai.

• Patriarchy is established in Eden, but corrupted along with everything else in the fall.

• God is the source of our good gifts, and should be praised, even outside the Garden.

Questions:

• What is the backstory to Lamech's speech to his wives?

• What do you imagine to be the experience of these first women, offstage?