Meditate

30. Rachel and Bilhah

30

When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!”²Jacob became very angry with Rachel and said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?”³Then she said, “Here is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, that she may bear upon my knees and that I too may have children through her.”⁴So she gave him her maid Bilhah as a wife; and Jacob went in to her.⁵And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son.⁶Then Rachel said, “God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son”; therefore she named him Dan.⁷Rachel’s maid Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son.⁸Then Rachel said, “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed”; so she named him Naphtali.

⁹ When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her maid Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife.¹⁰Then Leah’s maid Zilpah bore Jacob a son.¹¹And Leah said, “Good fortune!” so she named him Gad.¹²Leah’s maid Zilpah bore Jacob a second son.¹³And Leah said, “Happy am I! For the women will call me happy”; so she named him Asher.

¹⁴ In the days of wheat harvest Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”¹⁵But she said to her, “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?” Rachel said, “Then he may lie with you tonight for your son’s mandrakes.”¹⁶When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him, and said, “You must come in to me; for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” So he lay with her that night.¹⁷And God heeded Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.¹⁸Leah said, “God has given me my hire because I gave my maid to my husband”; so she named him Issachar.¹⁹And Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son.²⁰Then Leah said, “God has endowed me with a good dowry; now my husband will honor me, because I have borne him six sons”; so she named him Zebulun.²¹Afterwards she bore a daughter, and named her Dinah.

²² Then God remembered Rachel, and God heeded her and opened her womb.²³She conceived and bore a son, and said, “God has taken away my reproach”;²⁴and she named him Joseph, saying, “May the Lord add to me another son!”

Jacob Prospers at Laban’s Expense

²⁵ When Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country.²⁶Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, and let me go; for you know very well the service I have given you.”²⁷But Laban said to him, “If you will allow me to say so, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you;²⁸name your wages, and I will give it.”²⁹Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your cattle have fared with me.³⁰For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly; and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?”³¹He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything; if you will do this for me, I will again feed your flock and keep it:³²let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and such shall be my wages.³³So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.”³⁴Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.”³⁵But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in charge of his sons;³⁶and he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, while Jacob was pasturing the rest of Laban’s flock.

³⁷ Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the rods.³⁸He set the rods that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink,³⁹the flocks bred in front of the rods, and so the flocks produced young that were striped, speckled, and spotted.⁴⁰Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and the completely black animals in the flock of Laban; and he put his own droves apart, and did not put them with Laban’s flock.⁴¹Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob laid the rods in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the rods,⁴²but for the feebler of the flock he did not lay them there; so the feebler were Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s.⁴³Thus the man grew exceedingly rich, and had large flocks, and male and female slaves, and camels and donkeys.

8. Life Through the Spirit

⁹ But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.¹⁰But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

42. Psalm 42

BOOK II

(Psalms 42–72)

Psalm 42

Longing for God and His Help in Distress

To the leader. A Maskil of the Korahites.

1

As a deer longs for flowing streams,

so my soul longs for you, O God.

2

My soul thirsts for God,

for the living God.

When shall I come and behold

the face of God?

3

My tears have been my food

day and night,

while people say to me continually,

“Where is your God?”

4

These things I remember,

as I pour out my soul:

how I went with the throng,

and led them in procession to the house of God,

with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,

a multitude keeping festival.

5

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help⁶and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;

therefore I remember you

from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,

from Mount Mizar.

7

Deep calls to deep

at the thunder of your cataracts;

all your waves and your billows

have gone over me.

8

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,

and at night his song is with me,

a prayer to the God of my life.

9

I say to God, my rock,

“Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I walk about mournfully

because the enemy oppresses me?”

10

As with a deadly wound in my body,

my adversaries taunt me,

while they say to me continually,

“Where is your God?”

11

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help and my God.