I believe we should defer to the words of Jesus in this matter, even though His context is divorce: “From the beginning it was not so,” says Jesus. He speaks of the joining of man and woman into a bond of one flesh. The qualities of faithfulness, unity, selfless love, are all implicit in the true marriage. Indeed, the marriage of Jesus to His Church is considered one Spirit uniting to one collective Spirit. The imagery of marriage is one man, one woman. The breaking of that simplicity, either by divorce or multiple wives, though a forgivable sin, is certainly not the norm God had in mind.

Polygamy causes problems, as Jacob discovered early and often. Successfully navigating the difficult seas of a monogamous marriage is difficult enough. One can only imagine what Jacob endured. Life was beginning to produce fruit from the seeds he had planted earlier. Deceivers eventually will be deceived.

But the question is still unanswered. Was it Jacob’s character in this area of his life, his feeling of obligation to Laban, or to Leah, or even to his God, that allowed him to continue negotiating for a wife but not deserting the first one?

Surely there was no legal code about this yet, but Leviticus 18:18, that addresses Jacob’s situation, may indeed have been included by the Spirit of God to cover such things in the future.

So in the pressure of the moment, guided by loyalty but also by a great desire for Rachel, suddenly there are two wives. And once that road is traveled, it becomes easier and easier for one to stay on the highway. There will be four wives before it is over.

Though his father seems to have been a one-woman man throughout his life, grandpa may have been a bit of Jacob’s justification for such an active marital life. He heard the story of Hagar, no doubt. Then there was Keturah, but that was after Sarah’s death.

In short, we do not know exactly what he was thinking, but the practice would be a part of Jewish life often through the years, some carrying it to wild extremes, none of those extremes blessed by the One Who had set in motion a beautiful plan for propagation, affection, familial love.

Interesting to note. Israel was still God’s chosen people, though its beginnings were a little rough, and clearly human at times. Yet Judah, the son who would eventually give us Messiah, was born of the first wife. The legal one. The one unloved. The one unwanted.

Rachel was Jacob’s choice. Not too shabby a history from that love either. Joseph, who saved his world from total destruction. Benjamin, whose tribe would be right there with Judah, even sharing the city of Jerusalem over the years.

God has a way of balancing all things out, when all is said and done. And a way of forgiving, and overlooking our awful failures. Even using them for His glory.

2. Genesis 30:14. What are mandrakes? Why so valuable in this story?

Macarthur says they are an “orange-colored fruit… superstitiously viewed in the ancient world as ‘love apples’, an aphrodisiac or fertility-inducing narcotic… a folk remedy…” Secular sources verify that not only are mandrakes ineffective in fertility, they can cause serious medical conditions and side effects. They are in fact poisonous.

But Rachel and Leah both knew the myth: Mandrakes produce children! Rachel then released Jacob to Leah for the night, and asked for some of Leah’s mandrakes in return.

Result? Fertile Leah, who was having children without mandrakes, continued to have children. Rachel, trusting the mandrakes, it would seem, more than her God, did not have a child for several years.

3. Genesis 30:37. Does this propagation method work? What exactly was going on here? Did his wives know what he was doing? (See 31: 5 ff )

Jacob has had enough. He wants to go back to his family, and he wants to take his wives and children with him. Laban is crushed and begins his normal wheeling and dealing to get him to stay. They arrive at a plan, and Jacob stays a few more years.

The plan: Jacob wants only one thing. All the spotted and speckled sheep and goats, and all the black lambs. If he can have only these, he will consider that sufficient wages for his ongoing work. Laban is delighted. He shall have all the superior animals, and Jacob will hurt himself. The kind of deal everyone wants to make.

So Jacob starts rounding up the sheep and goats he has described, and gives them to his sons to take care of, while he is managing the rest of Laban’s business.

Then a very strange thing.

Jacob took some sticks, branches. Peeled their bark back until white showed. The combination of bark and innards of the stick produced a streaked affect. These rods he stuck in the “gutters”, the watering troughs, where the sheep not only drank, but mated. These were Laban’s “pure” sheep and goats, mind you. But when they looked at these rods while they were mating, the offspring were streaked and speckled!

Then Jacob observed the relative strength of Laban’s animals, when they were of breeding age. It was a simple matter for him to then place those same rods in front of strong sheep or goats, and remove the rods from the sight of the weaker ones.

Thus, all the stronger animals, now streaked and spotted, were Jacob’s.

I will allow my readers to do the research on this, but it has been proven often that it is possible for creatures to reproduce themselves in connection with the power of their imagination. That is, when sheep, goats, horses, etc are presented with a particular image while in the act of copulation, that image will be passed on to their young.

Even in humans. But I will leave it at that. Truly the incidents are out there.

The commentaries are in agreement that 1) this process was given to Jacob by God, and that further 2) it was blessed of God. God was favoring his servant Jacob, for sure. It is physically possible, this imagination conception, but when blessed of Heaven, it is going to happen, a lot.

A strange post script to all of this is in the next chapter, where Jacob determines once more that it is time for him to go. I am a bit concerned with the explanation he gives his wife, stating simply that when Laban said his wages were to be the streaked,

“all the flocks bore streaked.” As though Jacob had nothing to do with it. Did his wives not know what he was doing out in the fields every day, manipulating the conceptions of the very strongest for himself?

Or is he here merely trying to give God the glory for it all? He quotes the angel of the Lord as saying that all the rams impregnating the sheep and goats were speckled and streaked. But were they? In fact, was he not using Laban’s “pure” animals in all his doings? If this truly was the Lord speaking, was He just saying that in the Spirit, the animals were producing according to the perfect will of God?

It might be good for you to re-read this story, using some of the ideas I have suggested, and see what understanding you receive.

4. Genesis 31:19. Was Rachel sold out to the God of her fathers? Why the Teraphim?

Teraphim were household gods, possibly small human or angelic figures. They were worshiped, consulted, trusted by many. Rachel grew up in Haran. Though her immediate family was indeed Yahweh related, they had obviously bought into the paganism of the day. It is no different from Western Christians who imbibe much of paganism via tv and computer in our day. The mixture always seems to be a possibility, does it not?

Some say Rachel took Laban’s personal gods so he would not be able to consult them and find the path of their escape. Others believe that Rachel was still clinging to some hope that more children would come by means other than God. Prophetically at Joseph’s birth she had declared that the Lord would add another son to her, but that son would not come until her dying day, after the escape.

Whatever the reason, she did believe in the efficacy of these statues. This was a problem in Israel throughout its history. Indeed, her firstborn son, though God’s man, would marry an Egyptian in Egypt, and especially one of the sons born of that union, Ephraim, would produce a tribe that would become the essence of God’s anger with his idolatrous people.