Forgetting history. Rachel goes back to the great matriarch Sarah for what she does next. She offers her servant Bilhah as a concubine wife for Jacob. Leah, though she has, up until this point, shown a stronger faith and understanding of God and his ways, offers her servant Zilpah to Jacob. And Jacob agrees to the arrangement. Surely Jacob knew the story of how Abraham took Hagar, his wife’s servant to be his wife and the complete disaster that resulted. Surely Jacob had heard the creation mandate that the man shall leave his mother and father and cleave unto his wife and the two shall be one flesh. Either Jacob acquiesces to the requests of his wives or he thinks this is a good arrangement. Either way, this will only bring about more trouble for himself and his family. Sin often follows sin but Jacob, who had already sinned by taking Rachel as his wife, now is ready to compound the trouble. Baby battles. Rachel gives Jacob Bilhah as a wife and then claims the children as her own. The complete disregard for the Bilhah and Zilpah by Rachel and Leah is quite disturbing. The children that the two servant women would have would not be their own. They would not have any legal rights to the children. They would not be allowed to name them. They are only vessels to bear children for the two sisters. Rachel names the first son of Bilhah Dan which sounds like the word judged because she said that God has judged her and gave her a son. What she is saying is that God has judged her in the right and has approved of her by giving her a son. We should never use the kind providence of God as a justification for our sin. That is a dangerous place to go. The second son is called Naphtali which sounds like wrestling because Rachel feels she has gotten a leg up on her sister in the baby war. But we see in verses 9-12, that God will not allow Rachel to think that she is in control and allows Zilpah to conceive twice. And so Rachel’s wrestling is nullified. Interestingly, Leah does not attribute to God the birth of Gad and Asher. She says I have had good fortune and now I am happy because women call me happy. This competition between the sisters was all about themselves and yet God is using their petty and destructive ways to bring about the 12 tribes of Israel. So far we have eight sons and we have a few more to go.