Genesis 35:16-20

SEVENTH SECTION

Departure from Bethel. Benjamin’s birth. Rachel’s death.

Genesis 35:16-20

16And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath [fruit, the fruitful]: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labor. 17And it came to pass, when she was in hard labor, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also. 18And it came to pass as her soul was in departing, (for she died,) that she called his name Ben-oni [my son of pain or sorrow]: but his father called him Benjamin [son of the right hand]. 19And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem [house of bread]. 20And Jacob set a pillar [monument] upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel’s grave unto this day.

EXEGETICAL, AND CRITICAL

And they journeyed.—The residence at Bethel, enjoined upon him, had reached its end with the founding of the altar, and the completed thanksgiving. And there was but a little way.—An unknown distance. The Rabbinical explanation, “as far as one could plough in a day,” is senseless, for in one direction they could plough miles, but in ploughing a field, the breadth ploughed depends upon the length of the field, but in any case is too small to be the measure of distances. The Sept., misunderstanding the passage, makes it the name of a place. [In the 19th verse, however, the Sept. has hippodrome. A. G.] Delitzsch conjectures a distance equal to a Persian parasang. And Rachel travailed.—The wish she had uttered at Joseph’s birth, that God would give her another son, now, after a long period, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years, is about to be fulfilled, but it caused her death. Jacob was now old, and Rachel certainly was no longer young; moreover, she had not. borne children for many years. Delitzsch reckons Jacob’s age at one hundred and six, and Rachel’s at about fifty years. When she was in hard labor.—The Piel and Hiphil forms of קָשָׁה denote not merely heavy birth-pains, but the very birth-throes and anguish. The midwife, i. e., a maid-servant skilful and trusted in this matter. Thou shalt have a son.—The last consolation for Rachel. She dies during the final fulfilment of the strongest wish of her life. [As her soul was departing, denotes not the annihilation of the soul, but the change of state and place. It presupposes, of course, its perpetual existence; at least, its existence after death. A. G.] In this sense we must explain the giving of the name. The emphasis in the son of my pain, must be laid upon son. From her very death-anguish, a son is born to her. Knobel explains the name to mean son of my vanity, און, because his birth caused her “annihilation,” i. e., death. In this explanation, the child becomes the father, i. e., originator of her “annihilation,” but is not the son. The son of her pain, on the contrary, denotes the great gain of her sorrow; she dies, as it were, sacrificing herself; and, indeed, the once childless, now in childbed. But his father called him.—Against the interpretation of Benjamin, as the son of prosperity, may be urged the ימין in the Hebrew, which cannot with any certainty be said to mean prosperity; and further, that this would have been in harsh contrast with the dying word of the mother. Delitzsch, therefore, holds that the son of the right hand, may mean the son of the south, since the other sons were born in the north. Some derive the name son of prosperity from the fact that Jacob had now reached a happy independence, or from the fact that Benjamin filled up the prosperous number twelve (see Delitzsch). But Benjamin might be regarded as the son of the strong right hand, since he fills up the quiver of the twelve mighty sons (Psalms 127:5). We may bring into view, further, the relation of the name to the state of rest which Jacob now believed that he had attained. The tired wanderer now prepares himself as a patriarch to rest, and his youngest favorite must take the place at his right hand. But he is not thereby designated as his successor. Jacob seems, in some erroneous way, for a long time to have had Joseph in his eye for this position; still, not with the same self-will with which Isaac had chosen Esau. The Samaritan explanation, son of days, ימים, i. e., of his old days or age, we pass with a mere allusion. Some suggest, also, that Jacob called him Benjamin, so that he might not be constantly reminded of his loss by the name Ben-oni. This lays the ground for the change of the name, but not for the choice of Benjamin. In the way to Ephrath.—Ephrath (from פָרָה) is the fruitful, a name which corresponds with the added name Bethlehem (house of bread). The distance from Jerusalem to Bethlehem is about two hours, in a southerly direction, on the road to Hebron. About a half-hour on this side of Bethlehem, some three hundred steps to the right of the road, there lies, in a small recess, the traditional grave of Rachel. This “Kubbet-Rahil (Rachel’s grave), is merely a Moslem wely, or the grave of some saint, a small, square stone structure, with a dome, and within a grave of the ordinary Mohammedan form (Robinson: “Res.” vol. i. p. 322), which has been recently enlarged by the addition of a square court on the east side, with high walls and arches (later “Res.” p. 373).” Keil. We must distinguish between the old tradition as to the locality, and the present structure. Knobel infers, from Micah 4:8, that Jacob’s next station, the tower of the flock, was in the vicinity of Jerusalem. In that case Rachel’s grave, and even Ephrath, must be sought north of Jerusalem, according to 1 Samuel 10:2, and the addition—which is Bethlehem—must be viewed as a later interpretation. In Micah, however, in the passage which speaks of the tower of the flock, or the stronghold of the congregation, the words seem to be used in a symbolical sense. But the passage, 1 Samuel 10:2, is of greater importance. If Rama, the home of Samuel, lay to the north of Jerusalem, then Rachel’s grave must have been in that region, and the more so, since it is said to have been within the limits of Benjamin, whose boundaries did not run below Jerusalem. We refer for further discussions to Knobel, p. 275, and Delitzsch [and Mr. Grove, in Smith’s Bible Dict. A. G.] We are inclined to regard it as probable that the Benjamites, at the time of the conquest of the country, brought the bones of Rachel from Ephrath, into their own region, and that since then, there have been two monuments of Rachel, one marking the place of her death, and her first burial; the other, the place where they laid her bones, in the home of her Ben-oni. Similar transportations of the remains of the blessed occur in the history of Israel. In this view we may explain more clearly how Rachel (Jeremiah 40:1) bewailed her children at Rama, than it is by the usual remark, that the exiled were gathered at Rama. Unto this day.—From this notice Delitzsch infers that Genesis was not completed until after the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan. Keil says this remark would have been in place within ten or twenty years after the erection of the pillar. Still, he appears to have felt that a term of from ten to twenty years could make no distinction between older and more recent times, and hence adds in a note, if this pillar was actually preserved until the time of the conquest, i. e., over four hundred and fifty years, this remark may be viewed as an interpolation of a later writer. It belongs, doubtless, to the last redaction or revision of Genesis. Still there are possible ways in which the Israelites even in the desert could have received information as to the existence of this monument, although this is less probable. [Kurtz defends the genuineness of the passage, but locates the grave of Rachel in the vicinity of Rama, on the grounds that the announcement here of a stretch of land is indefinite, and further, that the designation of the place by the distant Bethlehem, arose from the fact that the tower of the flock in Bethlehem was the next station of Jacob, and his residence for a considerable period; and lastly, that Jeremiah 31:15 clearly points to the vicinity of Rama. Keil urges in favor of his own view, that the existence of a monument of this kind, in a strange land, whose inhabitants could have had no interest in preserving it, even for the space of ten or twenty years, might well have appeared worthy of notice. A. G.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Rachel’s wish; Rachel’s death; but her death at the same time her last gain in this life.

2. Rachel’s confinement at Bethlehem, viewed in its sad and bright aspects: 1. The sad aspect: A confinement upon a journey; a death in the presence of the goal of the journey so long desired; a parting by death from the desired child. 2. The joyful aspect: A son in whom her old wish is now fulfilled (see Genesis 30:24; also the passionate word, “Give me children, or else I die,” Genesis 30:1); a new enriching of Jacob, and indeed, to the completion of the number twelve; the triumph that she dies as the mother of a child.

3. Rachel’s death and grave. A preliminary consecration of the region of Bethlehem. Through her tragic end she becomes the ancestress of the suffering children of Israel generally, even of the children of Leah (Jeremiah 31:15; Matthew 2:17). Her grave probably at, Ephrath and Rama at the same time. Rachel as the first example mentioned in the Scriptures of a mother dying in travail, and a comforter to mothers dying in similar circumstances. The solemn aspect of such a death (Genesis 3:16). Its beauty and transfiguration (1 Timothy 2:15).

4. The heroic struggles, and struggling places of travailing women. Through these painful struggles they form the beautiful complement to the manly struggles in sacred wars. While the latter are institutes of death, the former are the institutes of life.
5. The first midwife who appears in the region of sacred history, is a worthy counterpart to the first nurse, Deborah. She shows the vocation of a midwife, to support the laboring with sympathy, to encourage her, and to strengthen her by announcing the birth of a child, especially of a son, or the announcement of the beginning of the new life.
6. The name Benoni, on Rachel’s lips, was not an utterance of despair, but of a deeply painful feeling of victory. The desired fruit of her womb came out of these death-struggles. Jacob’s naming connects itself with this also: the son of my right hand, companionship of my rest, support, joy of my old age. It is true, indeed, even in the sense of the usually received antithesis, that every new-born child is a Benoni, and a Benjamin; Benoni in Adam, Benjamin in Christ.
7. The youngest children of a family, Benjamin’s companions; and frequently described as Benjamins, they stand under the blessing of a ripe old age, under the protection of older and stronger brothers and sisters; but on the other hand, the danger that the paternal discipline should give way to grandfather-like indulgence, great as it may be in particular cases, is scarcely brought into view here. They embrace, as it were, in themselves, the whole past of the family and the most distant future.
8. Bethlehem here enters, clouded by Jacob’s mourning; afterwards enlightened by David, the Old-Testament hero out of Judah, and finally glorified by the fulfilment of Israel’s hope.
9. The following verse shows how Jacob, as the Israel of God, rises from his grief over Rachel’s death.
10. As her soul was departing. As Starke suggests, we have thus an indication that we are to regard death as the separation of the soul and body. For if, indeed, נֶפשׁ, the soul, is life also, so, and much more, is the human life, soul.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See the Doctrinal and Ethical remarks. It requires no special notice that this section is peculiarly adapted for texts at the burial of women dying ir confinement, at the transactions over consecrated graves, and similar occasions. Rachel’s death upon the journey. Rachel’s journey home in a two-fold sense. Our life a pilgrimage. As we are all born during the pilgrimage, so we must all die upon our pilgrimage. We reach a fixed, permanent goal only upon the other side. Benoni and Benjamin: 1. The similarity of the names; 2. the difference between them. Jacob at Rachel’s grave. His silent grief. His uttered faith.

Starke: An enunciation of Jacob’s sorrows. It is connected with the names: Simeon, Levi, Dinah, Rachel, Reuben, and Bilhah. Then follows Isaac’s death, and afterwards Joseph’s disappearance; the famine, etc. Hence he says: “Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been” (Genesis 47:9). (An allegorical comparison of Rachel, at this birth, with the Jewish Church. As Rachel died at the birth of Benjamin, so the Jewish Church at the birth of Christ.)—Cramer: The birth-throes are a cross and a reminder of our sins (Genesis 3:16). God recognizes this, and gives his aid (John 16:21). But if the divinely-blessed mother, or her fruit, should die, their happiness is not put in peril (1 Timothy 2:15). Christian midwives should encourage women in this fearful crisis. Women in this state should diligently prepare themselves for death. Osiander: The dead bodies of the pious are not to be treated as those of irrational animals, but must be decently buried, that we may thus testify our hope in the resurrection from the dead (Proverbs 10:7). Schröder: Bethlehem is called now Beit-Lahm; i. e., meat-house. Benjamin a type of the Messiah, who, in his humiliation, was a man of sorrows, and in his exaltation a son of the right hand of God (Drechsler). [Wordsworth here brings out several striking analogies between Benjamin and St. Paul, basing them upon the word ἔκτρωμα, which the apostle applies to himself “as one born out of due time,” properly, “the child whose birth is the cause of his mother’s death.” Paul speaks of himself as one thus born, and thus seems to invite us to compare him with Benjamin. P. 145. A. G.]

Footnotes:

[4][כִּבְרַת־הָאָרֶץ, a space or stretch of ground. How long is unknown; see Genesis 48:7; 2 Kings 5:19. Josephus renders a furlong; the Sept., “somewhat longer distance.”—A. G.]

[5][Lit., for this is also to thee a son. A. G.]