Children for Rachel?

Back then, infertility was viewed as an affliction. God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their family would produce the “seed” by means of whom all families would bless themselves. (Genesis 26:4; 28:14) Yet, Rachel was childless. Jacob reasoned that only God could give Rachel sons, enabling her to contribute to such blessings. Still, Rachel was impatient. “Here is my slave girl Bilhah,” she said. “Have relations with her, that she may give birth upon my knees and that I, even I, may get children from her.”​—Genesis 30:2, 3.

Rachel’s attitude might be hard for us to comprehend. However, ancient marriage contracts discovered throughout the Near East indicate that it was an accepted custom for a barren wife to give her husband a servant girl in order to produce an heir.a (Genesis 16:1-3) In some cases, the slave girl’s children would then be regarded as children of the wife.

When Bilhah had a boy, a delighted Rachel proclaimed: “God has acted as my judge and has also listened to my voice, so that he gave me a son.” She called him Dan, meaning “Judge.” She too had prayed about her plight. At the birth of Bilhah’s second son, Naphtali, meaning “My Wrestlings,” Rachel said: “With strenuous wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister. I have also come off winner!” The names point to the strife between the rivals.​—Genesis 30:5-8.

Perhaps Rachel thought that she was acting in harmony with her prayers when she gave Bilhah to Jacob, but this was not God’s way of giving her children. There is a lesson in this. We should not grow impatient when we petition Jehovah. He can answer prayers in unexpected ways and when we least expect it.