Mandrakes - Genesis 30:14-21

30:14-21 - Between his two wives and their two handmaids, Jacob is creating quite a brood of kids. Leah is sitting at 4 boys, Rachel has none, Bilhah and Zilpah each have two boys, making the total to 8 boys and who knows how many girls. It’s interesting to think about the human condition that we have here which gives a wife the right to take away the child of her handmaid because she wants to raise it herself. The lecturer from the Torah Class series said that while both handmaids had given birth to sons, and those sons had been taken to be raised by Rachel and Leah, they surely were left some children of their own to raise because it would have been shameful for the handmaid to not be left with any of her own children. When I heard that, I thought, how did we get here, to the point where children can be removed from their mothers because of a social construct like servitude, it’s just baffling to me. Anyway, there’s all this moving around of kids and maybe they all raised all the kids together so it wasn’t that big of a deal, I don’t know. Surely the discontent that Leah felt at being “loved less” and Rachel’s desire for her own children, would have all been common knowledge amongst Jacob’s clan and probably played heavily into the politics of the group. We know that after the birth of Judah, Leah stopped having babies for a bit and I would imagine that it’s because of all these factors that Reuben, the first born of all the children, went into the field one day and “found mandrakes… and brought them unto his mother Leah.” It's really adorable how Reuben showed love to his mother and wanted her to be happy. It’s like when my husband left me, it didn’t happen at the time, but after a while I was able to see that my husband could reject me all day long, but I was still the most important woman in my son’s life. Mandrakes were also used as either an aphrodisiac or to help in fertility, and the word “mandrakes” is cross-referenced with the word “superstition” in the footnotes, but honestly, at this point in time, people didn’t have modern healthcare, so they could consider it to be medicine, not necessarily blood and bones superstition. Reuben has made this incredible gesture to his mother, and Rachel is not pleased and demands that Leah give her “of thy son’s mandrakes.” Leah declines for obvious reasons, but states “is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? And wouldest thou take away my son’s mandrakes also?” This statement might give some more insight into the family dynamics at play here. Leah was snuck in to be Jacob’s first wife, I always assumed that that meant that she accepted the fact that Rachel was the main wife, the favorite and that Leah’s place was after her sister in the pecking order, but this is clearly not the case. Leah considers herself the main wife, and the fact that Jacob prefers Rachel is offensive to her even though she knew from the very beginning that Rachel was the one he wanted. It just goes to show that even after so many years and children, etc. that this whole situation isn’t as clear cut as I had imagined that it was. Leah wasn’t content with her place at the bottom. Rachel negotiates with Leah for the mandrakes saying, “therefore he shall lie with thee to night for thy son’s mandrakes.” Again, another insight into just how messy this situation is becoming with the favorite wife trading her husband for what matters most to her, becoming pregnant. When Jacob comes in from the field that night Leah tells him that he is having sex with her tonight because, even though it’s implied that he was planning to be with Rachel, Leah “hired” him by trading the mandrakes. Jacob did as he was told and had sex with Leah and “God hearkened unto Lead, and she conceived, and bare Jacob the fifth son.” Leah attributes God’s gift of a son to the fact that she had her handmaid bear Jacob children, so she calls the fifth boy’s name Isaachar. She then has a sixth son, and is convinced that this is a gift from God and the child that will convince Jacob to “dwell with me,” or “honor me, exalt me,” as the footnotes say. So interesting the human side of this power struggle for love and attention, and she calls this sixth boy Zebulun, and then she has a baby girl whom she names Dinah. Dinah’s name meaning isn’t stated and even though she’s the first daughter mentioned, surely she couldn’t have been the only one, I think her birth is just mentioned because she’s important later.