Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
30:1 VA TER'E RACHEL KI LO YALDAH LE YA'AKOV VA TEKAN'E RACHEL BA ACHOTAH VA TOMER EL YA'AKOV HAVAH LI VANIM VE IM AYIN METAH ANOCHI
וַתֵּרֶא רָחֵל כִּי לֹא יָלְדָה לְיַעֲקֹב וַתְּקַנֵּא רָחֵל בַּאֲחֹתָהּ וַתֹּאמֶר אֶל יַעֲקֹב הָבָה לִּי בָנִים וְאִם אַיִן מֵתָה אָנֹכִי
KJ (King James translation): And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
BN (BibleNet translation: And when Rachel saw that she bore Ya'akov no children, Rachel envied her sister; and she said to Ya'akov, "Give me children, or else I am a dead woman."
She must be very ignorant of human biology; or else she speaks as a goddess who has not been worshipped properly, her fertility expressed in child-bearing.
Again the patriarchal wife is barren; and again it is clearly not the man's fault; and again it will be proven later that she isn't barren - all in the normal nature of the fertility cults.
And in fact, the statement will prove tragically ironic, because she will die in childbirth with Ben-Oni (Bin-Yamin).
30:2 VA YICHAR APH YA'AKOV BE RACHEL VA YOMER HA TACHAT ELOHIM ANOCHI ASHER MANA MIMECH PERI VATEN
וַיִּחַר אַף יַעֲקֹב בְּרָחֵל וַיֹּאמֶר הֲתַחַת אֱלֹהִים אָנֹכִי אֲשֶׁר מָנַע מִמֵּךְ פְּרִי בָטֶן
KJ: 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?
BN: And Ya'akov's anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, "Am I accountable for the actions of the gods, who have withheld from you the fruit of the womb?"
YACHAR APH (ויחר-אף): this is usually how gods react, not men; connected to the incense of the sacrifice and of course to the bull.
HA TACHAT ELOHIM: The customary translation is "am I in Elohim's stead", which is half the meaning, but inaccurate; the version here is a little better, but not much. The idea of TACHAT is subordination: "Am I one of the lesser angels in the department of babies who keeps getting memos from the boss to close your womb and who is simply obeying orders?" – something like that.
But his response is also a tacit permission for her to stop asking the deity and start trying other means of getting pregnant, as we will see her do shortly with the mandrakes.
30:3 VA TOMER HINEH AMATI VILHAH BO ELEYHA VE TELED AL BIRKAI VE IBANEH GAM ANOCHI MIMENAH
וַתֹּאמֶר הִנֵּה אֲמָתִי בִלְהָה בֹּא אֵלֶיהָ וְתֵלֵד עַל בִּרְכַּי וְאִבָּנֶה גַם אָנֹכִי מִמֶּנָּה
KJ: And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.
BN: And she said, "Here is my maid Bilhah, go in to her; she can have a child for me, and I can make my posterity through her."
AMATI (אמתי): strange use of the word, having such close root connection to IMA (אמה) = "mother". It almost seems to give the idea of "handmaid" as being "surrogate mother", and in a sense, of course, that is exactly what it means. But on this occasion the word used is not Shiphchah (שפחה), which would be a "handmaid" in the sense of "a household servant", and which was how Bilhah was described when Lavan gave her to Rachel in Genesis 29:29. A Shiphchah is not the same thing as a PILGESHET, which is a "concubine", though apparently Bilhah is about to become both.
VE IBANEH GAM ANOCHI MIMENAH: In Genesis 16:2, when Sarah gives Hagar to Av-Raham, she says exactly the same thing, using exactly the same words (albeit in a different order): "ULAI IBANEH MIMENAH - maybe I shall be built up through her."
Again it is the servant who substitutes; presumably in the original myth it was the priestess who substituted for the triple-goddess in the fertility rite; the original surrogate mother.
It is particularly fascinating when compared to the Hagar story. Barren Sarah wants Av-Raham to have a child through her for his heir and gives him her maid to provide it; Rachel says she wants her own child (v1) and that if Ya'akov fathers one on Bilhah it will still be hers. These two stories do not fit together; yet the language is identical, especially "bear upon my knees" and "built up through her". Read this in conjunction with the Sarah story, and with Peninah/Chanah in 1 Samuel 1.
For those interested in following up this theme of the double-wives, one barren, the other fertile, its connections with the mother-goddess cult, and its variations in the three Biblical tales (Sarah-Hagar, Le'ah-Rachel, Penina-Chanah), I warmly recommend Savina Teubal's excellent "Sarah the Priestess".
AL BIRKAI (על-ברכי) – "On my knees". Can we presume adoption from this? And more, can we presume adoption in the Roman sense, or as David adopted sons: i.e. appointing his heirs. Note that BIRKAI = "knees" is built from the same letters that give BARUCH = "blessing".
The significance of this verse is twofold. First, it makes clear that woman is nothing until she has validated her womanhood in childhood (not an opinion that necessarily holds beyond the text; just an opinion that appears to hold within this text); and, as noted previously, the term VE IBANEY (ואבנה) with its links to Ben (בן) = "son" are gender-crucial.
Second, and this still needs some working out, but the relationship of the child to its parents is being described here. Bilhah is nothing in this, a mere vessel, like Hagar, and yet… how does it tie in to Rashi's interpretation of the Beney Kena'ani slave versus the Beney Yisra-Eli slave law in the Jubilee list (see my note to Genesis 16:3)?
At what point does she give Bilhah? Zilpah appears to have been given to Le'ah as a kind of wedding gift, and Bilhah to Rachel in the same manner; the giving of both to Ya'akov comes some years later, and then it is Bilhah first, before Zilpah.
30:4: VA TITEN LO ET BILHAH SHIPHCHATAH LE ISHAH VA YAVO ELEYHA YA'AKOV
וַתִּתֶּן לוֹ אֶת בִּלְהָה שִׁפְחָתָהּ לְאִשָּׁה וַיָּבֹא אֵלֶיהָ יַעֲקֹב
KJ: And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her.
BN: And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid as a wife; and Ya'akov went in to her.
VA TITEN (ותתן): As Bilhah had been given to her; the same with Zilpah later.
Polygamy: the Arabs to this day allow four wives.
ISHAH: English has two words, "wife" and "woman", and they or may not be synonymous. Yehudit, like the French "femme", uses the same word for both, so we can not know from the text if there was a formal marriage ceremony, and Bilhah thus now has clan status beyond the handmaiden status she had before, or if she was merely given instruction as a slave-girl to share Ya'akov's bed as required. We will follow this through the tale to see if the question resolves itself.
30:5 VA TAHAR BILHAH VA TELED LE YA'AKOV BEN
וַתַּהַר בִּלְהָה וַתֵּלֶד לְיַעֲקֹב בֵּן
KJ: And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son.
BN: And Bilhah conceived, and bore Ya'akov a son.
And if it is the former, then the same will presumably apply to Zilpah later; can we then infer a tribal hierarchy through the status of the four wives? If so, and clearly Le'ah comes first despite Ya'akov's preference for Rachel, but does Bilhah come before or after Zilpah, and being Le'ah's maidservant, even though she is the last to be given him, does Zilpah jump Bilhah, and even Rachel, when she is given. We have absolutely no anthropological or sociological data from the time and place to help us answer these questions; again, we will follow the text as the tale develops and see if it provides any answers. The first hint is in fact in the very next verse.
30:6 VA TOMER RACHEL DANANI ELOHIM VE GAM SHAMA BE KOLI VA YITEN LI BEN. AL KEN KARAH SHEMO DAN
וַתֹּאמֶר רָחֵל דָּנַנִּי אֱלֹהִים וְגַם שָׁמַע בְּקֹלִי וַיִּתֶּן לִי בֵּן עַל כֵּן קָרְאָה שְׁמוֹ דָּן
KJ: And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan.
BN: And Rachel said, "Elohim has judged me, and he has also heard my voice, and given me a son." Therefore she named him Dan.
DAN (דן): yet again the unlikely explanation that conceals the true one - see the link to Dan. First though, Rachel not Ya'akov names the boy. Second, Rachel not Bilhah names the boy, which clearly makes Bilhah's children her's - this does not, however, tie in with their status later, so we have a hint, but not an answer. Why does Rachel name Bilhah's child, and not either Bilhah herself, or Ya'akov? Perhaps even more interesting, Bilhah now has a son named Dan, and Le'ah will later have a daughter, and name her Dinah, the female equivalent of Dan? This last seems to me to give a clue that the Redactors allocated children in a manner that suited them, and with meanings that suited them - and the answer probably lies in the tribal map, which was self-consciously a mirroring on earth of the map of the constellations of the heavens, at that time. (The map on the left shows Dan in his original position, at the time of Yehoshu'a; later he moved to the northernmost point of his full-brother Naphtali).
If the legal status of Dan is as described above, then Sarah had no need to throw Hagar and Yishma-El out; Yishma-El was likewise her son, the issue of inheritance was resolved, and all it needed was to send Eli-Ezer to Padan Aram and bring back a wife for him - as happened with Yitschak thirteen years later. So we need to go back to that story and ask: what other reason might there have been to throw out Yishma-El? At one point the tale says it was more about Hagar's self-importance now that she had a child and Sarah didn't; but again, if the legal status of Dan is as described above...
Are we then back in the territory of racial purity - the problem of Hagar was her being Egyptian? The children of Bilhah and Zilpah, like Yishma-El, like the children of Esav, all have mothers from outside the Beney Yisra-El. They are members of the clan by law, but not by blood, by gene. In the modern world they would theoretically be able to change this through the seven-year process of conversion; theoretically, because this too only changes their legal status, not their blood or their genes, which is why even conversion is rejected in some Jewish groups and why it is the mother's and not the father's genetico-religious status that matters.
The likelihood is that Bilhah's and Zilpah's children were not Beney Yisra-El by origin (not fathered by Ya'akov), and that this is a means of partially explaining how they came to join the tribe; that is to say, that they were tribes of foreign ancestry who were either conquered, assimilated, enslaved and liberated, or who entered into confederacy, at some point of history - easy enough to think back on English history and register that "English" comes from the Germanic Angles, but they arrived on these shores at the same time as Germanic Saxons, who were a different people, and with Dutch Jutes and Fresians, who were again different peoples, and later absorbed Celts, Gaels, Picts, Scots, Vikings Normans... and all of them ultimately collected under the single name "English". So with the Beney Yisra-El. For more background on Dan's origins in this regard, see the essay "The Leprachauns of Palestine".
30:7 VA TAHAR OD VA TELED BILHAH SHIPCHAT RACHEL BEN SHENI LE YA'AKOV
וַתַּהַר עוֹד וַתֵּלֶד בִּלְהָה שִׁפְחַת רָחֵל בֵּן שֵׁנִי לְיַעֲקֹב
KJ: And Bilhah Rachel's maid conceived again, and bare Jacob a second son.
BN: And Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid, fell pregnant again, and bore Ya'akov a second son.
30:8 VA TOMER RACHEL NAPHTULEY ELOHIM NIPHTALTI IM ACHOTI GAM YACHOLTI VA TIKRA SHEMO NAPHTALI
וַתֹּאמֶר רָחֵל נַפְתּוּלֵי אֱלֹהִים נִפְתַּלְתִּי עִם אֲחֹתִי גַּם יָכֹלְתִּי וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ נַפְתָּלִי
KJ: And Rachel said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed: and she called his name Naphtali.
BN: And Rachel said, "Great struggles have I had with my sister, but in the end I have prevailed." And she named him Naphtali.
NAPHTALI (נפתלי): once again the explanations flatter to deceive. Again it is Rachel who names the child. We might think that the word "wrestling" followed by the word "prevailed" was a foreshadowing of Penu-El. But actually the words used there are different - Genesis 32:25 has TE'AVEK for "wrestled" and 32:29 has TUCHAL for "prevailed".
But no question that Aries is catching up with Taurus, and will soon supplant her; though Le'ah is about to stage a doomed fight-back, doomed because the menopause may only be a pause in her case, but it will soon enough become a menostop.
30:9 VA TER'E LE'AH KI AMDAH MILEDET VA TIKACH ET ZILPAH SHIPHCHATAH VA TITEN OTAH LE YA'AKOV LE ISHAH
וַתֵּרֶא לֵאָה כִּי עָמְדָה מִלֶּדֶת וַתִּקַּח אֶת זִלְפָּה שִׁפְחָתָהּ וַתִּתֵּן אֹתָהּ לְיַעֲקֹב לְאִשָּׁה
KJ: When Leah saw that she had left bearing, she took Zilpah her maid, and gave her Jacob to wife.
BN: When Le'ah saw that she had left off bearing, she took Zilpah her handmaid, and gave her to Ya'akov as a wife.
The jealousy - indeed the competitiveness - between the two sisters is formidable, but the story is simply absurd; again c.f. Sarah and Hagar. Perhaps this should be read as two fertility cults, or two fertility goddesses, in competition, as the brothers have been previously. The number of children they can breed gives them their status. Who won in the end? Le'ah got buried at Machpelah, and mothered the surviving tribe of Yehudah, so in a sense she did; Rachel became the fertility goddess with her own shrine near Beit Lechem, still very much active to this day, and mothered both Yoseph and Bin-Yamin. A draw then?
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| Rachel's Tomb in Beit Lechem |
One other possibility: there were four wives, of equal status in everything but order of marriage, who served Ya'akov as his official consort during each of the four terms of his sacred kingship in Padan Aram, each of whom gave him a certain number of children; first Le'ah, then Bilhah, then Zilpah, last Rachel; but polygamy was no longer accepted by the time of the Redactor, so the tale needed to be transformed; alongside it, the sacred-kingship was no longer accepted, so that had to be removed; alongside it, political rivalries had left the Rachelite and Le'ahite tribes dominant; alongside it the cow/sheep rivalry in theology had gone on for centuries and become part of myth and ceremony... etc. Cultural shifts at multiple levels, that we don't even notice when they are happening around us. Why, after all, have Purim and Chanukah, rabbinic not Torah festivals, both of dubious historicity, both probably imported variants of the festivals of other religions, both having so little significance that they passed only minorly uncelebrated until the mid-20th century, why have they become two of the major festivals in the Jewish calendar since the late 20th century? So did eternal, fixed and immutable beliefs grow, develop, transform... into other eternal, fixed and immutable beliefs.
But of course all this presumes that there was one father, four wives, twelve sons (and don't forget the daughter – everybody does). Go to Number Twelve in The Dictionary of Names and you will see that this was an artifice, necessary to the creation of a functional political entity. Presumably the story we are now reading wasn't "invented to support the artifice" so much as "a weaving together of different folk-tales, myths, tribal legends", until this emerged as the synthesis; and this is why it doesn't really work.
30:10 VA TELED ZILPAH SHIPHCHAT LE'AH LE YA'AKOV BEN
וַתֵּלֶד זִלְפָּה שִׁפְחַת לֵאָה לְיַעֲקֹב בֵּן
KJ: And Zilpah Leah's maid bare Jacob a son.
BN: And Zilpah, Le'ah's handmaid, bore Ya'akov a son.
30:11: VA TOMER LE'AH "BA GAD". VA TIKRA ET SHEMO GAD
וַתֹּאמֶר לֵאָה בגד וַתִּקְרָא אֶת שְׁמוֹ גָּד
KJ: And Leah said, A troop cometh: and she called his name Gad.
BN: And Le'ah said, "Fortune is come!" and she named him Gad.
GAD (גד): The regular translation is "behold a troop cometh", which sounds like the American-"Indian" custom of naming a child after the first thing seen after birth. GAD means "fortune", but in a different sense from MAZAL, which is really a constellation of stars in the horoscopal sense. In mediaeval, and even until Victorian times, "begad" was an expletive in English, taken from this verse without generally knowing it (it is often wrongly thought to be a mispronunciation of "by God"). People had a different sense of fortune then, perhaps. MAZAL TOV is used to mean "good luck" or "good fortune" (the two are not the same!), but what it actually means is "may the stars align in your favour", which is a form of pagan idolatry and therefore, in Judaism, one more of the many forbidden superstitions practiced daily.
Note the grammatical variation; sometimes the text has ET SHEMO (את שמו), sometimes just SHEMO (שמו). Why? If it's an accusative, it requires the ET. To save you hunting, verses 6, 8 and 18 all have SHEMO; verses 11, 13, 20 and 24 have ET SHEMO. In my view, the three are in error.
30:12 VA TELED ZILPAH SHIPHCHAT LE'AH BEN SHENI LE YA'AKOV
וַתֵּלֶד זִלְפָּה שִׁפְחַת לֵאָה בֵּן שֵׁנִי לְיַעֲקֹב
KJ: And Zilpah Leah's maid bare Jacob a second son.
BN: And Zilpah, Le'ah's handmaid, bore Ya'akov a second son.
30:13: VA TOMER LE'AH BE ASHRI KI ISHRUNI BANOT VA TIKRA ET SHEMO ASHER
וַתֹּאמֶר לֵאָה בְּאָשְׁרִי כִּי אִשְּׁרוּנִי בָּנוֹת וַתִּקְרָא אֶת שְׁמוֹ אָשֵׁר
KJ: And Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed: and she called his name Asher.
BN: And Le'ah said, "Happy am I! For the daughters will call me 'happy'." And she named him Asher.
BN version 2: And Le'ah said, "Praise be to Asherah, the goddess of fertility, and may the women of the shrine sing praises to her on my behalf." And she named him Asher.
It is impossible to avoid noting that this word is crucial to many of the Psalms, so crucial indeed that it becomes almost a synonym in itself, and provides the opening two lines for the daily prayer that is also known as Ashrey, the same word once again. The Ashrey Psalms are invariably addressed to the sun-god YHVH and his consort Yah, the form of the cult at the time of King David, a transitional phase from full polytheism to the monotheism that would begin in Ezra's time. But Asherah, as we have seen, is also the Aramaic form of Sarah.
Psalm 84:5: Ashrey yoshvey beytecha, od yehalelucha/אשרי יושבי ביתך עוד יהללוך -Happy are they who dwell in your house.
Psalm 144:15: Ashrey ha am she cacha lo, ashrey ha am she YHVH Elohav/אשרי יעם שככה לו אשרי העם שיהיוה אלהיו - Happy are the people who are so favoured, happy are the people whose god is YHVH.
All the "Ashrey" (אשרי) Psalms are attributed to King David, and all were originally liturgical hymns to Yah (as in Hallelu-Yah = May Yah be praised: Rabbinic commentators have attempted to make Yah a male variant of YHWH = Yahweh/Jehovah, but this is a falsehood), the Phoenician moon-goddess who we first encountered when Av-Raham bought the cave of Machpelah from her brother Ephron. We can thus make a further claim for Le'ah's identification as the cow-deity Io (her Egyptian equivalent, thinking Hagar again, was Hat-Hor). But does it also mean that we are dealing with Le'ah's tribes as Ashurim (אשרים) = Assyrians, given that Assyria came to occupy what was previously Padan Aram; or more likely that ASHER is in fact a spelling-variant of OSHER, the correct Egyptian name for Osiris, the brother of Eshet (Isis), who was herself a late form of Yah? Remember also that Asherim (אשרים), from the masculine form of the same root, means "totem-poles"; and of course, what else was Ya'akov's dream-ladder at Beit-El if not a form of totem-pole?
There are many other examples among the Psalms, such as 89:16: "Happy is the people that knows the joyful shout; they walk, YHVH, in the light of your countenance."
The tribe of Asher was located on the north-west coast of Yisra-E (see map, above), in other words at the southern end of the Phoenician, Astarte-worshipping world; perhaps more significantly, the Egyptian legends of Osher (Osiris) have Eshet hunting for Osher's body on the Mediterranean coast, at precisely the geographical location where the tribe of Asher was located.
end of third fragment.
A NEW STORY? THE STRANGE TALE OF THE MANDRAKES
30:14: VA YELECH RE'U-VEN BI YEMEY KETSIR CHITIM VA YIMTSA DUDA'IM BA SADEH VA YAV'E OTAM EL LE'AH IMO VA TOMER RACHEL EL LE'AH TENI NA LI MI DUDA'EY BENECH
KJ: And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.
BN: It was in the days of the wheat harvest, and Re'u-Ven went out to find mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother Le'ah. Then Rachel said to Le'ah, "Please, may I have some of your son's mandrakes."
How old was Re'u-Ven at the time? From the previous, and from what follows, Yaakov has not yet served two full 7-year terms, so Re'u-Ven, even if Le'ah got pregnant on her wedding night, cannot be more than 12, going on 13. It may not be relevant, of course; but it gives the tale a human context. It may also not be relevant that they are described here, and again in the next verse, as being Re'u-Ven's mandrakes, as though he brought them for himself - what is a 13-year old doing with aphrodisiacal substances? (Remember that Re'u-Ven will have an affair with Bilhah later on).
What we appear to have here is a rite of the wheat harvest, in which Re'u-Ven has some temple duty on behalf of his mother the priestess; Rachel wishes to be involved in the rite but has no role. Is she, so to speak, "stealing her sister's birthright"? Or are the mandrakes some kind of fertility inducer, a Biblical IVF? Why can she not go and get her own?
✡
A NEW STORY? THE STRANGE TALE OF THE MANDRAKES
30:14: VA YELECH RE'U-VEN BI YEMEY KETSIR CHITIM VA YIMTSA DUDA'IM BA SADEH VA YAV'E OTAM EL LE'AH IMO VA TOMER RACHEL EL LE'AH TENI NA LI MI DUDA'EY BENECH
וַיֵּלֶךְ רְאוּבֵן בִּימֵי קְצִיר חִטִּים וַיִּמְצָא דוּדָאִים בַּשָּׂדֶה וַיָּבֵא אֹתָם אֶל לֵאָה אִמּוֹ וַתֹּאמֶר רָחֵל אֶל לֵאָה תְּנִי נָא לִי מִדּוּדָאֵי בְּנֵךְ
KJ: And Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes.
BN: It was in the days of the wheat harvest, and Re'u-Ven went out to find mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother Le'ah. Then Rachel said to Le'ah, "Please, may I have some of your son's mandrakes."
How old was Re'u-Ven at the time? From the previous, and from what follows, Yaakov has not yet served two full 7-year terms, so Re'u-Ven, even if Le'ah got pregnant on her wedding night, cannot be more than 12, going on 13. It may not be relevant, of course; but it gives the tale a human context. It may also not be relevant that they are described here, and again in the next verse, as being Re'u-Ven's mandrakes, as though he brought them for himself - what is a 13-year old doing with aphrodisiacal substances? (Remember that Re'u-Ven will have an affair with Bilhah later on).
What we appear to have here is a rite of the wheat harvest, in which Re'u-Ven has some temple duty on behalf of his mother the priestess; Rachel wishes to be involved in the rite but has no role. Is she, so to speak, "stealing her sister's birthright"? Or are the mandrakes some kind of fertility inducer, a Biblical IVF? Why can she not go and get her own?
DUDA'IM (דודאים): is there any connection here to the name David? Bearing in mind that the final Aleph (א) in Aramaic four-letter roots is always dropped in the Yehudit. DOD means "beloved" – as in "this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17) an allusion to the Messiah being a descendant of the House of Yishai (Jesse) through David. And if so, then this should be pronounced Dodim, and ties in again with the Ashrey. And also with Lecha Dodi, sung every Friday evening in synagogue to welcome in the Sabbath bride.What actually is this scene about? The mandrake root is a familiar enough aphrodisiac in most cults and cultures; is there some kind of rite taking place here too, of fertility as usual in these episodes? Or does Rachel simply believe that the mandrake will make her fall pregnant. When exactly was the wheat harvest? At the same time as the corn harvest? In which case Sukot, which is not insignificant.
The margin notes of the Revised Version suggest "love-apples", which are actually a type of plum, and thought of in the Middle East as a powerful aphrodisiac.
What is true of the mandrake in this culture was/is true of other plants in other cultures. In Britain, for example, primroses are fairy-flowers, and hint at wantonness, while the bean in mediaveal times was associated with ghosts (people would tell you to spit beans at ghosts to get rid of them). In Roman times, according to Pliny, the souls of the dead resided in beans, which was probably where the British got it. And witches, of course, use bean-stalks for broom-sticks, anot just for Quidditch. In the Greek world the apple tree represented poetic immortality; in particular its version of Eden, the Garden of the Hesperides, which was guarded by a hundred-headed serpent and whose fruit is one of the false reasons why most Europeans think the forbidden fruit of Eden was an apple (the other was that an apple in Latin is a malus).
30:15: VA TOMER LAH HA ME'AT KACHTECH ET ISHI VE LAKACHAT GAM ET DUDA'EY BENI VA TOMER RACHEL LACHEN YISHKAV IMACH HA LAILAH TACHAT DUDA'EY VENECH
וַתֹּאמֶר לָהּ הַמְעַט קַחְתֵּךְ אֶת אִישִׁי וְלָקַחַת גַּם אֶת דּוּדָאֵי בְּנִי וַתֹּאמֶר רָחֵל לָכֵן יִשְׁכַּב עִמָּךְ הַלַּיְלָה תַּחַת דּוּדָאֵי בְנֵךְ
KJ: And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son's mandrakes.
BN: And she said to her, "Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? And now you want to take away my son's mandrakes as well?" And Rachel said, "He can sleep with you tonight, in exchange for your son's mandrakes."
Extraordinary! No mandrake can be worth that much - unless it has a sacred value!
Le'ah is here accusing Rachel of stealing her husband! Presumably the earlier statement that Le'ah gave off breeding contained the inference that Ya'akov had stopped visiting her bed and was sleeping now exclusively with Rachel - whence the restoration of the rivalrous jealousy (remember how "he hates me" had changed to "happy am I" after the birth of Asher). Given that Rachel has given Ya'akov Bilhah for a bed-companion, that he is also spending some nights with Zilpah, and given that polygamy appears to have been the norm, offering him to Le'ah for a night cannot really have been such a big deal to her - though it may have been so to Ya'akov.
Much explaining needed of all this verse, though probably it needed much less explaining in Ezra's time, when polygamy was normal in the Middle East even if no longer among the Beney Yisra-El; unlike today.
She seems to be making a deal: you give me the mandrakes, I will let you have Ya'akov in bed tonight; his role in the rite is thus key. Whoever sleeps with him is the Harvest-Queen and thereby has immense tribal status. The Moslem chadith tell how, whenever Muhammad traveled, he drew lots to determine which of his wives should accompany him; this was apparently a long-standing rule of the harem, even amongst mere mortals with multiple wives.
But we can also see and feel the hatred that Le'ah described earlier – and it is coming from her, though she felt it as coming to her.
30:16: VA YAVO YA'AKOV MIN HA SADEH BA EREV VA TETS'E LE'AH LIKRATO VA TOMER ELAI TAVO KI SACHOR SECHARTIYCHA BE DUDA'EY BENI VA YISHKAV IMAH BA LAILAH HU
וַיָּבֹא יַעֲקֹב מִן הַשָּׂדֶה בָּעֶרֶב וַתֵּצֵא לֵאָה לִקְרָאתוֹ וַתֹּאמֶר אֵלַי תָּבוֹא כִּי שָׂכֹר שְׂכַרְתִּיךָ בְּדוּדָאֵי בְּנִי וַיִּשְׁכַּב עִמָּהּ בַּלַּיְלָה הוּא
KJ: And Jacob came out of the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, Thou must come in unto me; for surely I have hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night.
BN: And Ya'akov came from the field in the evening, and Le'ah went out to meet him, and said, "You must come in to me; I have hired you, for the price of my son's mandrakes." And he slept with her that night.
This quite surpasses credibility and we have therefore to assume that we are not understanding it. Le'ah tells Ya'akov that he has to sleep with her because she has bought him with her son's mandrakes! What is he, some kind of male prostitute? Answer: in this context, mythologically speaking, yes.
The mandrakes become ever more significant and therefore require much detailed explanation. Sadly, I do not have it. There is no indication that the aphrodisiac is needed by Ya'akov; he seems to be producing children at about the same speed his speckled rams will produce lambs later on. Post-menopausal Le'ah might need it - but she isn't menopausal, as we shall see in the very next verse. Maybe it isn't a Viagra or an IVF; maybe it's Biblical marijuana - but then, again, what is she doing sending Re'u-Ven out to fetch it? As I say, I do not even have a hypothesis, let alone an explanation.
30:17 VA YISHMA ELOHIM EL LE'AH VA TAHAR VA TELED LE YA'AKOV BEN CHAMISHI
וַיִּשְׁמַע אֱלֹהִים אֶל לֵאָה וַתַּהַר וַתֵּלֶד לְיַעֲקֹב בֵּן חֲמִישִׁי
KJ: And God hearkened unto Leah, and she conceived, and bare Jacob the fifth son.
BN: And Elohim listened to Le'ah, and she fell pregnant, and bore Ya'akov a fifth son.
Le'ah here refers to Elohim, not YHVH. For the most part we have seen Rachel refering to Elohim and Le'ah to YHVH, but it is not absolute.
VA YISHMA (וישמע): heard what? We haven't heard her say anything, other than expressing jealousy that Rachel is getting children from Ya'akov through a handmaid; so presumably there was a prayer that went with the mandrakes, and this is what has been heard. And why should she be jealous, when she has more than Rachel, from her own womb, anyway? (And if there was a prayer, then maybe the mandrakes were offered up as a votive, and not smoked, or burned as incense, or whatever else you might think to do with it).
The jealousy is all about competitive child-bearing: as though several fertility goddesses are challenging for supremacy.
I think we can state with certainty that Re'u-Ven brought the mandrakes for Le'ah at her request, as a fertility assistant (Re'u-Ven will later have an affair with Bilhah, but we are not told whether they used mandrakes). What the god heard was her desire to have more children, both to get her husband back, but also because her status as a woman and as a priestess demands it. She cannot be seen to be infertile. This remains true in the orthodox world today, where twelve children is still the norm.
Is there perhaps a high level of oestrogen in a mandrake (part of the answer to that can be found here, but look up Etoposide as well)?
30:18: VA TOMER LE'AH NATAN ELOHIM SECHARI ASHER NATATI SHIPHCHATI LE ISHI VA TIKRA SHEMO YISASCHAR
וַתֹּאמֶר לֵאָה נָתַן אֱלֹהִים שְׂכָרִי אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי שִׁפְחָתִי לְאִישִׁי וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ יִשָּׂשכָר
KJ: And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I have given my maiden to my husband: and she called his name Issachar.
BN: And Le'ah said, "Elohim has given me my reward, because I gave my handmaid to my husband." And she named him Yisaschar.
To what extent were the stories invented, literally invented, as a conscious act of fiction, in order to provide an aetiological background to the meaning that was being imposed upon the name
YISASCHAR (יששכר): Or possibly YISSASSCHAR, ISSACHAR, YISHACHAR, YESH SACHAR, or even YAH SHACHUR. This is the most difficult of all the tribal names. We truly do not know how to pronounce it, because a double Seen is unprecedented – and anyway it might be a double Sheen and therefore YISHASHCHAR, or one of each and therefore... etc. Le'ah makes it connect to Elohim, with the Yud prefix indicating the future tense; some other Yehudit names do this (Yishma-El for example), while other Yud prefix names refer to Yah: Yah-Natan, Yahu-Ram etc. See Dictionary of Names. But I am being contraversial here (which may not be the same as controversial; a matter, too, of spelling). The way it is written, it ought to be YISASCHAR; until someone can convince me otherwise, I am simply presenting the name phonetically.
Does the name have anything to do with the sale of the mandrake roots as Le'ah claims (and are they in any way comparable to the sale of the birthright for a mess of potage?) - see under Yisaschar in the Dictionary of Names for a fuller account of this.
Again no ET (את) before SHEMO (שמו).
But what has this to do with Zilpah?
Note the link to "hire"; false aetiology again; unless the name links to his "sacred child" status, resulting from birth through the harvest-rite.
But there is still more to unravel, because Rachel did the deal in order to get the mandrakes, presumably for her own fertility, and yet she ends up worse off: she gives Ya'akov back to Le'ah, albeit only for one night, but one night proves sufficient for her to conceive another son, and clearly there more nights, with or without mandrakes, because there will then be another son, while Rachel still has none.
This appears to be another example of the Redactor trying to eliminate a pagan belief of such depth that it had to be included, but incorporated, assimilated, Judaised, in the way that Christmas (Sol Invictus) and Easter (the spring festival of Ishtar, and properly spelled Oester, just like the oestrogen in the mandrake roots) and even Valentine's Day (the Lupercalia) were so effectively absorbed by Christianity that - no one reading this will ever believe it - none of them have anything whatsoever to do with Jesus.
30:19 VA TAHAR OD LE'AH VA TELED BEN SHISHI LE YA'AKOV
וַתַּהַר עוֹד לֵאָה וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן שִׁשִּׁי לְּיַעֲקֹב
KJ: And Leah conceived again, and bare Jacob the sixth son.
BN: And Le'ah fell pregnant again, and bore a sixth son to Ya'akov.
Despite my note to the previous verse, this surely cannot be right. She had to buy his services for the 5th son, and "hire" him for the night, so we presumed they had stopped sleeping together; and the Zilpah reference confirmed this. And previously she had reached menopause. Yet here they are conceiving again, and no hire, no maid, nothing. So what are we really describing: a cult priestess, an oracular goddess, a fertility icon? Or simply a really bungled attempt to artifice a tribal amphictyony out of a random collection of folk-tales, local shrine liturgies, odds and ends of what was thought to be history, other people's god-legends, and some made-up extras? Probably both.
30:20 VA TOMER LE'AH ZEVADANI ELOHIM OTI ZEVED TOV HA PA'AM YIZBELENI ISHI KI YALADETI LO SHISHA VANIM VA TIKRA ET SHEMO ZEVULUN
וַתֹּאמֶר לֵאָה זְבָדַנִי אֱלֹהִים אֹתִי זֵבֶד טוֹב הַפַּעַם יִזְבְּלֵנִי אִישִׁי כִּי יָלַדְתִּי לוֹ שִׁשָּׁה בָנִים וַתִּקְרָא אֶת שְׁמוֹ זְבֻלוּן
KJ: And Leah said, God hath endued me with a good dowry; now will my husband dwell with me, because I have born him six sons: and she called his name Zebulun.
BN: And Le'ah said, "Elohim has endowed me with a good dowry. Now surely my husband will come and live with me, because I have borne him six sons." And she named him Zevulun.
ZEVULUN: Not Zebulon, as most English translations mispronounce it. And again we have a convoluted route to an aetiology. Better to look at Ya'akov's blessings in Genesis 49 if we want to understand the real meanings of the names.
This time there is an ET (את) before the SHEMO (שמו).
What did actually happen to all these wives when Ya'akov returned? We know that Rachel died and was buried near Beit Lechem, and that Le'ah was later buried at Machpelah. But what of Bilhah and Zilpah? And what of Leah's life after the return to Kena'an? It simply doesn't get recorded.
What Le'ah says deserves some unpicking. Why is it a good dowry? The dowry is provided by her father, not her husband; she might mean that Ya'akov will provide one for her offspring, but her offspring are all boys, so it doesn’t apply. Perhaps she means that six boys will bring six wives, each with a dowry, providing a pension for their old age. And why will Ya'akov now "dwell" with her because she has given him six sons? Is this too because of the money they will bring in from wealthy marriages? Or does the number of sons affect matrilocal versus patrilocal principle? No. She already dwells with him in terms of geographical location. So does she think he'll now cohabit with her, and not Rachel, because she has reproven her fertility and he will want more boys? The sheikhs in those days, as in ours, confined the women to the harem, all of them together, and a summons for the night, or a personal visit, to whoever he selected. No one gets to dwell in the sense of cohabit. Sad to say, I do believe that Le'ah is counting these boys as real estate, and Ya'akov's status as a clan chief as a guarantee of significant tribal alliance marriages.
Is six a significant number in this regard (one for each day of Creation perhaps, to serve in the Temple or at the shrine?) If all 6 had come during his 7-year term, then of course it was significant, because the Fisher King will have been shown to bring continuous fertility throughout his time of service. But the text spreads the sons out through at least two terms of service, possibly into the third. If, on the other hand, the text has been edited and in the original all six came in the first term of office, not produced by Le'ah at all, but with Le'ah serving as consort, and either Ya'akov, or even perhaps a surrogate for him in his priest-king role, doing the necessary with whoever was the May-Queen, then either Rachel provided consort for the second term, or Bilhah; then vice-versa; and finally Zilpah, or Rachel, for the 4th term of office; towards the end of which time, recognizing that he isn't going to get a 5th, and that he may well be sacrificed, literally, he takes the whole camp and flees.
We also need to keep in mind that historically Rachel may well never have been in Padan Aram in the first place. Or at best that the name was attached to someone else (in the way that Eurydice in the Greek becomes Lot's wife in the Yehudit). Historical evidence suggests the Rachelite tribes were from elsewhere, much further north; and that Bin-Yamin was added later, having originally been Ben Oni, and Egyptian.
30:21: VE ACHAR YALDAH BAT VA TIKRA ET SHEMA DINAH
וְאַחַר יָלְדָה בַּת וַתִּקְרָא אֶת שְׁמָהּ דִּינָה
KJ: And afterwards she bare a daughter, and called her name Dinah.
BN: And later on she had a daughter, and named her Dinah.
Thrown in as an afterthought, and again without needing to hire him for the night? Or is it significant that the child of the 7th day is female - as is the Shechinah, the bride (Kalah - כַּלָּה - in Yehudit) to the Dodi mentioned with the mandrakes above? Follow through who Dinah/Diana/Danae really was, right up to the Ephesus cult that transformed her into the Virgin Mary.
DINAH (דינה): This is important - the daughter is always forgotten. She has no tribe and no inheritance; she is the seventh of Le'ah's children, a significant number; her name also connects her to Dan (דן), either as a female form of the same or as a twin or tan or sister. There is no attempt in the text to explain the name, which is most unusual. It is almost unprecedented to name the daughters - there has to have been a reason for mentioning her, other than prefiguring her for the rape by Shechem in Genesis 34 (which didn't require her to be named).
There must also be something odd in the numbers of boys these women bore without having any girls, if we take the stories literally. In fact, the Easter rites will invariably have led to a roughly equal number of girls, but girls didn't count. With four wives (and concubines in addition), a fertility cult that considered making babies (peru u revu) the primary role of women, and therefore no question of contraception, there were probably dozens more children than just these listed, boys as well as girls. The ones listed are the Nazirim, the sacred children, the ones engendered at the Easter ceremonies; the others were just offspring.
30:22 VA YIZKOR ELOHIM ET RACHEL VA YISHMA ELEYHA ELOHIM VA YIPHTACH ET RACHMAH
וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹהִים אֶת רָחֵל וַיִּשְׁמַע אֵלֶיהָ אֱלֹהִים וַיִּפְתַּח אֶת רַחְמָהּ
KJ: And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.
BN: And Elohim remembered Rachel, and Elohim heard to her, and opened her womb.
Is this the delayed answer to the previous question in verse 18? Interesting that the ancients saw fertility as a matter of whether the womb was able to open or not.
VA YISHMA (וישמע): again why? Presumably we are again reflecting the old female fertility cult. With the mandrake root for incense, or otherwise, both women have prayed to the mother goddess to open their wombs; the Elohim who hears and responds to the offerings in this Yehudit version is obviously a late male replacement god, of dubious value in such cults.
Once again with Rachel it is Elohim, not YHVH.
30:23: VA TAHAR VA TELED BEN VA TOMER ASAPH ELOHIM ET CHERPATI
וַתַּהַר וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן וַתֹּאמֶר אָסַף אֱלֹהִים אֶת חֶרְפָּתִי
KJ: And she conceived, and bare a son; and said, God hath taken away my reproach:
BN: And she conceived, and bore a son, and she said, "Elohim has allowed me at last to harvest my own crop."
CHERPATI (חרפתי): one of the occasions on which it is the English translation not the Yehudit explanation that seeks to deceive; this is usually given as "Elohim has taken away my reproach/humiliation". The first of these leaves us wondering: what reproach? The second leaves us wondering if her position is really so humiliating. But neither is correct. The root is CHARAPH (חרף) = "to pluck, to gather" whence CHOREPH (חורף) is name of the the season in which the fruits are gathered; in Kena'an it is also the word for "winter", from November to March; it is presumably in relation to the gathering of the fig in winter that Isaiah 47:3 gets CHERPHA (חרפה) to mean the female pudenda.
ASAPH (אסף) does not mean "taken away" either, but likewise "gathered" or "collected", emphasising the CHARPATI (חרפתי). The relevance of her statement, in the light of Yoseph's career as sun-god and corn-god, a Beney Yisra-Eli half-way-house between Egyptian Osher (Osiris) and Babylonian Tammuz, is therefore obvious. As with Helios, and later Christ, the sun-god is always born in mid-winter: so we can say that Yoseph completes the picture, the twelve constellations (Ephrayim and Menasheh needed to make up the space) provided by the twelve brothers, Dinah providing the moon, Bin-Yamin, with his capital city of Yeru-Shala'im, providing the earthly palace. So Ya'akov, the prolific Ouranos of the Yisra-Eli myth, has propagated the entire Milky Way that he dreamed at Beit-El (Genesis 28:10). The phrase therefore needs a much better translation.
"Elohim has gathered in my gatherings" – meaning that she has harvested her crop, and the portion set aside for god has been accepted. Do we now know in which month the mandrake-festival took place?
Remember the name when you come to read the Psalms; Asaph is a variant of Yoseph (Joseph).
The reproach, incidentally, if there was one, would have to be the one hinted at in Genesis 29:30/31 and in 30:1. Le'ah's, not Elohim's. See notes above.
30:24: VA TIKRA ET SHEMO YOSEPH LEMOR YOSEPH YHVH LI BEN ACHER
וַתִּקְרָא אֶת שְׁמוֹ יוֹסֵף לֵאמֹר יֹסֵף יְהוָה לִי בֵּן אַחֵר
KJ: And she called his name Joseph; and said, The LORD shall add to me another son.
BN: And she named him Yoseph, saying, "Now, YHVH, give me another son."
RACHEL linked this time to YHVH, though it was clearly Elohim in the previous verse.
But we are being given a second aetiology here and it cannot be both. Two versions again then.
How, based on all the above, do we unravel the full tale? One of the Redactor's greatest problems was how to reinforce the Judaic identity as a single, homogenous people within the Davidic confederacy, and focused on Yeru-Shala'im, while also dealing with the zealous tribal affiliations of people who had never really accepted the Davidic confederacy or the supremacy of Yeru-Shala'im, and who had resisted (as we know only too well from the Prophetic texts) any attempt to make them give up their traditional gods and goddesses and rites and practices for the centralised Temple cult. Whoever mother Rachel was originally - and presumably she was another version of the mother goddess - Yoseph and Bin-Yamin were nothing to do with her, but had to be given to her to retain her status. Likewise the foreign tribes out of the north that had been assimilated needed to retain some of their history, hence Bilhah and Zilpah's absorption into the family as second class citizens. A complex and ultimately unsuccessful allegory seeks to make political unity where political unity is not achievable, and does so by using the fertility cults of the religion as its method. This, actually, is what the Old Testament ultimately is.
There is no formal break here, in either the Yehudit or the Christian versions; I have made an informal break because the story is lengthy, and this is a natural transition point. What follows is the deception of Lavan - "the world's first known experiment in genetic engineering" - and Ya'akov's departure with his family.
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Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
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