Genesis 30 - The Mandrake Soap Opera

Chapter 30 of Genesis is like a soap opera. Everyone is sleeping with each other, cheating each other out of sheep, repeating the mistakes of their parents, bartering sex for mandrakes. The whole thing is a mess.

And I think that mess has probably been discussed a million different times by a million different writers. But I am a big fan of the "edge verses," those little lessons that we miss because they are hidden on the edges of neon stories. Like the ones in this chapter. So instead of focusing on all the action, I want to write about six words Rachel says in verse 1. What are they? They are actually very simple:

"Give me children, or I'll die."

This is such a perfect picture of jealousy and envy. In the first half of the sentence she makes a demand. She orders Jacob to give her children. But the reality is that Jacob is not a God. He cannot simply give her children, a fact he points out by saying "Am I in the place of God?" The problem, is that's how jealousy works. It makes our object of desire impossible. It makes what we want and our attempts to get it impossible. Had she asked God, at the bare minimum Rachel
would have been asking someone capable of fulfilling the command. But Jacob can't.

I see this in marriages sometimes and to some degree, this is Hollywood's fault. We've bought into the Jerry McGuire idea of thinking our husbands and wives "complete us." They don't. They can't. They won't. And when you put that kind of pressure on them, you cripple them. Your wife can inspire you, challenge you, encourage you, warm your heart, but only God can complete you. Only God can do the seemingly impossible, whether that's giving you children or giving you self esteem and making you whole.

In the second half of the sentence Rachel lays out an extreme consequence of what will happen if her demand is not met. She will die. She throws the die card. Not that she will be unhappy or sad or unfulfilled, she will die. I know that feeling. There are things in my own life that I struggle with when it comes to envy. Authors or young pastors I am jealous of. There are other blogs I wish I could be like. I wrestle with my own sense of jealousy and desperate demands and ugly envy.

I wish I didn't. I wish that most of these chapters in Genesis did not apply so directly to my own life, but they do. My challenge to you is that the next time you find yourself making a demand of what you need, or a consequence of what will happen if you don't get it, remember Rachel.