Genesis 35:18

This sorrow comes straight after one of the high points of Jacob’s life. God had sent him back to Bethel and met him there (Genesis 35:1–15). He gave Jacob the name Israel, told him to be fruitful and multiply, and promised that nations and kings would come from him (Genesis 35:9–12). Jacob was in the land because God had told him to return to it (Genesis 31:3), and he had come by way of Peniel, where he wrestled with God (Genesis 32:30), and by way of his meeting with Esau. Earlier on this journey Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, had died and been buried (Genesis 35:8). Now, on the next stage of the road, Rachel’s time comes.

The verb for “journeyed”, nâçaʻ, means to pull up, used especially of tent pegs, and so to break camp and set out. The patriarchs lived this way, moving from place to place as God led them, and here a large household with women, children and animals was travelling when Rachel went into labour.

They had “but a little way to come to Ephrath”, the older name for Bethlehem or for the district around it. There “Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour”. Both “travailed” and “labour” come from yâlad, the ordinary verb for bearing a child, so the verse says twice over that she was giving birth. Between them stands qâshâh, to be hard, difficult or severe, the word Scripture uses for suffering, for severity and for stubbornness. Childbirth was dangerous for mother and child in that age, more so on a journey far from a settled home, and this labour was hard from the start.

Rachel had once cried to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die” (Genesis 30:1). God had given her Joseph, and now he gives her a second son. Jacob’s family carried God’s blessing from Bethel straight into pain, because they lived, as we do, in the fallen world that began in Genesis 3. Those closest to God’s promises still meet suffering and death, and God’s purposes go on through them.

When the labour was at its hardest, the midwife spoke to Rachel. Women relied on midwives in childbirth for their skill and for their comfort, and the Hebrew word for the midwife comes from the same verb yâlad, which in one of its forms means to act as midwife. Her first words, “Fear not”, use yârêʼ, to fear, and in Hebrew are the short command al tire’i. Scripture is full of that reassurance. God says to his people, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee” (Isaiah 41:10), and the psalmist answers, “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear” (Psalm 118:6).

“This son also” looks back to Joseph, Rachel’s first son, and tells her that the child is a boy. A son carried on a family’s line, and for Jacob this was one more of the many descendants God had promised. The midwife’s comfort came true for the child, and the mother died, as the next verse says. Her words were still a real kindness. In the worst hour of Rachel’s life someone stood beside her and told her of the gift she was being given.

“As her soul was in departing” uses nephesh, from a root meaning to breathe. It means a breathing creature, life, soul or self, and here it is Rachel’s life going out of her. The words “(for she died)” say plainly what that meant.

With her last strength Rachel named her son Ben-ʼÔwnîy, Benoni, “son of my sorrow”. The name joins ben, son, with a form of ʼâven, a word for trouble and sorrow. In Scripture a child’s name often records how the birth went or what the parents felt, and Rachel’s name puts her pain and her dying into words. It is honest grief, spoken before God and her family.

“But his father called him Benjamin”, Binyâmîyn, “son of the right hand”. The right hand (yamin) stood for strength, honour and favour. Kings and honoured guests sat at the right hand, and blessings were given with it, as when Jacob crossed his hands to lay his right hand on Ephraim (Genesis 48:13–20). Jacob heard his wife’s grief and chose for his son a name of strength and favour that looked to a good future, so that the boy would carry honour with him all his life. Jacob’s name is the one that stood. The tribe of Benjamin later became known for its warriors and gave Israel its first king.

Benjamin is Jacob’s twelfth and last son, and the chapter goes on to list all twelve, the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel (Genesis 49:28). God had promised Abraham to make of him a great nation (Genesis 12:2), with descendants as many as the stars (Genesis 15:5), and at Bethel he had just told Jacob to be fruitful and multiply. On the road from Bethel that word is kept, at the cost of Rachel’s life. The same promises run through the lives of all the patriarchs from Genesis 12 on, and here the family that will become Israel is complete.

“And Rachel died.” The verb mûwth is the plain word for dying. Jacob had loved Rachel from the first and served for years to marry her (Genesis 29:18), so this was the hardest loss of his life.

She was buried “in the way”, derek, the road or path. The family was travelling, and she was laid in a grave by the roadside. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah were all buried in the family tomb, the cave of Machpelah (Genesis 49:29–32), and Rachel’s grave stood apart from theirs, near Bethlehem. Near the end of his life Jacob still spoke of her death and burial on that road (Genesis 48:7).

“Jacob set a pillar upon her grave.” The verb nâtsab means to station or set up, and the pillar, matstsêbâh, is an upright stone, a memorial stone or a sacred pillar. The patriarchs set up such stones to mark a covenant, to remember a meeting with God, or, as here, to mark a grave and honour the dead. Jacob had set up a pillar at Bethel years before, after God met him in his dream (Genesis 28:18). This one marks the grave of the wife he loved more than Leah (Genesis 29:30), and it shows his love and his grief. Scripture tells of another memorial pillar, the one Absalom set up for himself (2 Samuel 18:18).

The second “pillar” in the verse is a closely related word, matstsebeth, a monumental stone. “That is the pillar of Rachel’s grave unto this day” uses yôwm, day, in the phrase ʻad hayyōm, “unto this day”. The phrase comes often in the Old Testament and tells us that the monument was still standing and known when the account was written. Rachel’s grave was a landmark in the land of Israel, and the first readers could go and see the place where these things happened.

The two names given to one child give us a picture of Christ. Isaiah foretold a servant who would be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:3–5). Jesus bore that sorrow to the cross, and after his resurrection he was received into heaven and sat on the right hand of God (Mark 16:19). He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3), he intercedes for us there (Romans 8:34), and Stephen saw him standing at God’s right hand (Acts 7:55–56). In him the Son of sorrow is also the Son of the right hand, and through his sorrow he brings his people life.

Jacob’s pillar marked a grave, and a stone is all a grieving husband could set over the one he loved. Jesus is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), and he promises a day when God will wipe away all tears and there will be no more death or sorrow (Revelation 21:4). Because of him believers grieve their dead with hope, “that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18).

Genesis 35 holds God’s blessing at Bethel and Rachel’s grave on the road a few verses apart, and both are true together. Scripture records a mother naming her son for her sorrow, a husband burying his wife by the roadside, and a stone set up to keep her memory, and it records them with tenderness. Grief is allowed its full voice in God’s family.

The same passage shows God keeping his word. The twelfth son is born, the family that becomes Israel is complete, and the town by Rachel’s grave becomes the town of David and of Christ. Jacob’s renaming of his son shows a father who looks past the hour of loss to the good God had promised. The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart (Psalm 34:18), and he was near to Jacob on that road.