Jacob Marries Bilhah and Zilpah

Today I read Genesis 30 where Jacob is given Bilhah and Zilpah as wives by Rachel and Leah respectively. Rachel is sad that she is not able to give Jacob any clothes so, just as Sarah did with Abraham, she gives Jacob her handmaid to wife so that she can have surrogate children through her. Leah, not to be left out, does the same with her handmaid, Zilpah. So Jacob now has four wives.

Jacob definitely had a favorite wife, Rachel. It is not clear if he excluded all his other wives or not although I would say not because he had so many children by his other wives and most parents can agree that it generally takes more than one try to get pregnant. However, part of this story makes it seem like at times Jacob did not share his attentions equally with his wives. Reuben picks mandrakes out in the field for Leah and Rachel desires some. Leah won't give them to her because Rachel had, as Leah put it, stolen her husband away. So Rachel prostitutes Jacob out by promising Leah that Jacob would come have sex with her that night in return for some mandrakes. I'm honestly not how I would feel about this if I were Jacob. This is honestly a reason I would not want multiple wives, how do you share your time evenly so that everyone is happy? It's not like when you have multiple children and you can play with them all at the same time when they are younger and make sure to spend time with them individually as they get older.

The husband and wife dynamic is much different and if my wife is any indication of what the normal woman is like, wives are very jealous of their time with their husbands and anything that takes their husbands away from them. My wife certainly understands that I have a job to provide for our family and loves to watch me play with our daughter, but she certainly misses our time together and if we go too long without some time for just us, even if all we are doing is sitting side by side on the couch watching a movie together. I imagine most husband and wives are pretty similar to my experience with my wife. I could not imagine having more than one wife to try and spread my time between work, my children, what I want to be doing, and the needs of my wives. I am extremely happy that the practice of multiple wives was done away with because I'm not sure how I would be able to handle it.

The rest of the chapter is Jacob increasing his wealth and flocks through what appear to be duplicitous means. He takes the spotted and speckled cattle and sheep and goats. If I am reading it correctly it reads like Jacob does certain things to the animals to make them have more of the "imperfect" physical blemishes on their babies. Through this Jacob was able to become a very wealthy man. He most certainly did work for it all though. He served his uncle Laban for 14 years. And now that time has come to an end. This is one of those instances that I am glad the Bible does not have more detail. I think any more info on this story than what we have now would be a little too much. And this chapter ends the story of Jacob working for his wives. Until tomorrow.