BRAGADAYJAH 97

Now Rachel was so set on having children for her husband Jacob that she gave her handmaiden Bilhah unto Jacob and commanded him to go in unto her so that she would conceive and so her child would be hers. This may sound strange to the modern ears and eyes; but at that time and even down to Roman times, the principle of what I call fructus, was at large. By fructus I mean that a maid, like a fruit tree, or not to put too fine a point on it, a horse, or a cow, was in the power and possession of the owner. Accordingly any fruit of the tree, fructus, was also in the power and possession of the owner of the tree, the horse the cow, the maid; so that any offspring of Bilhah was by law and custom, the property of Rachel the owner of the maid. So what would God do? Would he allow Bilhah to conceive? Surely He did; for Bilhah conceived and bore a son; and Rachel said, “The Lord has judged me and has also heard my voice;” so therefore, she called his name Dan. And when after Dan, Bilhah bore another son, Rachel said, “With great wrestling have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed; therefore, she called this second son Naphtali.” There are great lessons to be learnt from this brief account. Firstly, that the Lord God Almighty is the Master of all creation. It is he and he alone who is the giver of life. Rachel thought that all Jacob had to do was to produce seed and a child would come forth, and so she was angry with her husband because she could not conceive. But finally, when she saw that God gave children to her made she finally came to the realization of where babies come from. Secondly she was spending her time, in expending useless energy wrestling with her sister instead of wrestling with God; for as will be seen later, until she learnt to wrestle with God, her life remained barren. Thirdly that God always have a plan and a purpose for everything that happens in our lives. Suppose for instance it was Rachel who was fruitful and Leah was not. One could see Rachel demanding that Jacob put her away. But since Leah was the one who was bearing Jacob’s children it was less likely even very unlikely that, as much as Jacob disliked Leah at the start, he could have been persuaded to send her away. So that it is a reasonable inference that God was looking after Leah to prevent any grave injustice befalling her. More.