Thus he goes on his journey; and among the children of the east ensues a characteristic scene, which need not be entered into in a detailed manner – the providential introduction to his experiences with Laban and his family (Genesis 29).
Now experiences are admirable in their own way as a school for the heart in the soul’s finding its way to God; but experiences completely melt away in the presence of God. This and the grace known there in Him who died and rose again alone can give fully either the end of self or communion with God. Experiences may be needed and wholesome; but they are chiefly wholesome as a part of the road while on our way to Him. Before what God is to us in Christ they disappear – I do not mean the results, but the processes.
So we shall find it was with Jacob. He is a man evidently cared for by God. He shows us much that was exceeding sweet and lovely. No doubt he had often to suffer from Laban’s deceit; but was there not a memorial here of the deceit in which he had acted himself? He is deceived about his wife, deceived about his wages, deceived about everything; but how had he dealt with his father, not to speak of his brother? Deceit must meet with deceit under the retributive hands of God. Wonder not overmuch at the tale of Jacob; but bless with all your heart the God who shows Himself caring for His servant, and, after he had suffered awhile, giving him although slowly yet surely to prosper.
At his setting out he was by no means a young man, being somewhere about eighty years of age when he reached Laban. There he receives, not willingly, two wives instead of one. Leah he did not want, Rachel he did. But in his checkered course, as we know, their maids were given as concubines, with many a child and many a sorrow. And spite of Laban abundance was his in herds and flocks (Gen. 30).
Rachel is at length remembered by God, who takes away her reproach by adding to her a son (Joseph) – type of One glorified among the Gentiles and delivering His Jewish brethren after suffering among both Jews and Gentiles. So her history closes in the death of her Benoni and Jacob’s Benjamin, son of the mother’s sorrow and of the father’s right hand, as the people of God will prove in the end.
I take this opportunity of noticing the beauty of Scripture in the use of the divine names in these chapters, the best answer to the superficial folly which attributes them to different writers and documents.
In the case of Leah (Gen. 29), who was hated compared with Rachel, Jehovah as such interposed with His special regard to her sorrow, and this was expressed in the name of her first-born son, Reuben; and His hearing in her second, Simeon. At Levi’s birth she does not go farther than the hope of her husband’s being joined to her; but Jehovah has praise when she bore Judah.
In Rachael’s case (Gen. 30) there is no such expression at first of confidence in Jehovah’s compassionate interest; bid in disappointment of heart she gives Jacob her maid; and, when Dan was born, she accepts it as the judgment of Elohim, and at Naphtali’s birth speaks of His wrestlings.
Leah, following her example, gains through Zilpah Gad and Asher, but makes no acknowledgment of the divine name in either form. After this comes the incident of using mandrakes for hire, when Elohim acts for Leah in sovereign power, and she owns Him as such when Issachar was born, and in Zebulun on the pledge of her husband’s dwelling with her.
In the same power did Elohim remember Rachael, who not only confesses that the God of creation had taken away her reproach, but calls her son Joseph, saying, Jehovah shall add to me another son. This is the more striking because it is an instance of the combined use of these names, admirably illustrating both sides of the truth, and irreconcilable with the double-document hypothesis.
Rachel rose from the thought of His power to the recognition of His ways with His own. And even Laban (verse 39) is obliged to confess that Jacob enjoyed the blessing of one who was in special relationship with Him – of Jehovah.)