Let me read chapter 30, verse 1.
And when Rachel saw that she bared Jacob
no children, Rachel envied her sister and said
unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I
die.
You see, a woman in that day was
disgraced.
Unless she did have offspring, and the more,
well, the more she had, maybe not to
marry her, but the more the better, it
was for her.
That is her position.
Now notice verses 2 and 3.
And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel, and
he said, Am I in God's stead, who
hath withheld from thee the fruit of the
womb?
And she said, Behold, my maid Billa, go
in unto her, and she shall bear upon
my knees that I may also have children
by her.
Well, again we see this was the practice
of that day.
And you will recall, I'm sure, those of
you following this study, that Abraham and Sarah
practiced it, and God did not approve it
then, and He's not going to approve it
here.
The record is here, and it's an accurate
record, but it doesn't mean God approved it.
In fact, it's quite obvious that God disapproved
it.
My, the strife that we've already called attention
to that was in the family of Abraham
was in the family of Isaac, as we
saw.
Now it's in Jacob's family already, and he's
in for a great deal more trouble.
Now we find that Billa was Rachel's maid,
and she bared Dan and Naphtali.
And then we find that Zilpah, the maid
of Leobor, Gad, and Asher.
So we have here, well, another, Issachar.
And we find, I'm not reading these verses
in this chapter, as you see, just a
record of the birth here of these boys.
You'll remember that there were twelve sons of
Jacob, and they're very important, because from these
twelve sons will come the twelve tribes of
Israel.
That is, the nation will come from them.
Believe me, Jacob had his hands full with
these twelve boys.
We find also that there's a girl there
from Leah's maid.
Her name was Dinah.
And I guess she served a good purpose,
because there are a lot of restaurants today
named Dinah's Shack or Dinah's Dining Room or
something.
And so she did serve a good purpose.
And Issachar and Zebulun are mentioned here also.
Now I'm going to read in verses 22
here.
Well, I'll read down to 24.
And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to
her and opened her womb.
She conceived a bare son and said, God
hath taken away my reproach.
And she called his name Joseph and said,
The Lord shall add to me another son.
Now, this is the boy that will follow
down into the land of Egypt and make
way for the rest of his brethren later
on.
He's quite remarkable.
We'll have to save that story of him
until another day, but it's coming up, you
can be sure.