The Mandrakes

Rachel saw that she was not bearing children for Jacob, and she envied Leah. “Give me children, or I will die!” she said to him. Jacob became angry. “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld children from you?”

Rachel answered by giving him her maidservant Bilhah as a wife, so that Bilhah might bear children for her. Jacob slept with Bilhah, and Bilhah conceived and bore a son. Rachel named him Dan, saying that God had vindicated her, heard her plea, and given her a son.

Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. This time Rachel’s words named the contest directly: “In my great struggles, I have wrestled with my sister and won.” She named him Naphtali. Bilhah had borne the children; Rachel spoke the names and declared the victory.

When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she gave her maidservant Zilpah to Jacob as a wife. Zilpah bore a son, and Leah named him Gad, speaking of her good fortune. Zilpah bore a second son, and Leah named him Asher. “How happy I am! For the women call me happy.”

During the wheat harvest, Reuben went into the field and found mandrakes. He brought them to his mother. Rachel asked Leah for some of her son’s mandrakes, and the request brought the sisters’ marriage into their own conversation.

“Is it not enough that you have taken away my husband? Now you want to take my son’s mandrakes as well?” Leah answered as a wife who still described her husband as taken away. Rachel offered an exchange: “Very well,” said Rachel, “he may sleep with you tonight in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.”

When Jacob came in from the field that evening, Leah went out to meet him. “You must come with me, for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” The sisters had settled the exchange before he returned. He slept with Leah that night.

God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. “God has rewarded me for giving my maidservant to my husband.” That was Leah’s account of the birth, and she named the boy Issachar. The telling says that God listened to her; it makes no claim for the mandrakes.

Again Leah conceived, and she bore a sixth son. “God has given me a good gift,” she said. “This time my husband will honor me, because I have borne him six sons.” She named him Zebulun.

Her husband had returned to the words she spoke over a child. At Judah’s birth she had spoken of praise; at Zebulun’s she spoke again of what Jacob would do, and counted the sons she had borne him. After that, she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah. No speech from Leah accompanies her daughter’s name.

Then God remembered Rachel, listened to her, and opened her womb. She conceived and gave birth to a son. “God has taken away my shame,” she said. The sister who had demanded children from Jacob now had a child of her own.

Rachel named him Joseph and said, “May the LORD add to me another son.” Even at this birth, her words reached toward another. Leah had six sons and a daughter; Bilhah and Zilpah had each borne two sons; Rachel had borne Joseph. The family had grown through these births and bargains, and soon both sisters would be called out to the field to hear Jacob speak about leaving their father.