CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 35:18. Ben-oni.] Heb. Son of my pain. Benjamin. Heb. Son of right hand, or, son of happiness.—
Genesis 35:20. The pillar of Rachel’s grave unto this day.] The grave of Rachel was well known in the time of Samuel. (1 Samuel 10:2.) The expression “unto this day” occurs often in Genesis, but not elsewhere in the Pentateuch, excepting once in Deuteronomy.—
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Genesis 35:16-20
THE DEATH OF RACHEL
Consider it—
I. In its solemn and melancholy aspect
1. It was death upon a journey. “And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath.” (Genesis 35:16.) In such cases, death is generally an unlooked for event. This sad circumstance deeply impressed Jacob, and many years afterwards he looks back to it with sorrowful remembrance. (Genesis 48:7.)
2. It was death in the time of travail. This is always a melancholy circumstance when the mother sacrifices her own life in giving life to her child.
3. It was death just when her old fond desire was accomplished. When Joseph was born, she believed that God would add to her another son. Now the long expected gift is granted, but she expires in the very moment of victory. Consider it—
II. In its hopeful and prophetic aspect.
1. It teaches the doctrine of victory through pain. She enriches the family of Jacob with a son, thus completing their number to twelve. The midwife comforts her thereupon. But the dying mother gave to the boy the name of Ben-oni, son of my pain. Through pain and sorrow this victory was gained. This was not an utterance of despair, but a conviction that life had come out of death; victory out of pain, sorrow, and apparent failure. This is the spirit of the cross. Through pain and sorrow, and apparent failure, Christ has purchased victory for us.
2. It teaches that death is not annihilation. “As her soul was in departing, (for she died).” (Genesis 35:18.) Death is here represented, not as the complete extinction of all thought and feeling, but as the separation of soul and body. It is not a sinking into nought, but only a change of state and place.
3. It teaches us what is the characteristic mark of God’s chosen people. Israel of old had the portion of affliction, and thus became the type of the Messiah, whose peculiar and distinctive mark was, that He was “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3.) Rachel was the ancestress of the suffering children of Israel.
4. It teaches a lesson of encouragement to all mothers dying in similar circumstances. This is the first instance, recorded in the Bible, of a mother dying in travail. How solemn was the original penalty. Gen. (Genesis 3:16.) And yet in God’s later Revelation that penalty becomes transfigured, and there is in it an element of hope and blessing. (1 Timothy 2:15.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Genesis 35:16. Bethel beheld him at the summit of worldly happiness; Bethlehem, the next town through which he passes, sees him in the depths of affliction. The incident recalls, with painful vividness, the passionate exclamation she had before uttered, “Give me children, or else I die.” Her prayer was heard, but at the expense of her life. Alas! how often should we be ruined at our own request, if God were not more merciful to us than we are to ourselves.—(Bush).
Genesis 35:17. The first midwife who appears in the region of sacred history is a worthy counterpart to the first nurse, Deborah. She shows the vocation of a midwife, to support the labouring with sympathy, to encourage her, and to strengthen her by the birth of a child, especially of a son, or the announcement of the beginning of the new life.—(Lange).
Genesis 35:18. Her words appear to have had no influence upon Rachel, who has the sentence of death in herself, and makes no answer; but, turning her dying eyes towards the child, and calling him, Ben-oni, “Son of my sorrow,” she expires.—(Bush).
The former name, though very appropriate at the time, yet if continued, must tend perpetually to revive the recollection of the death of his mother, and of such a monitor Jacob did not stand in need. It is not for him to feed melancholy, nor to pore over his loss with a sullenness that shall unfit him for duty, but rather to divert his affections from the object that is taken, and direct them to those that are left.—(Fuller).
It is true, indeed, even in the sense of the usually received antithesis, that every newborn child is a Ben-oni, and a Benjamin; Ben-oni in Adam, Benjamin in Christ.—(Lange).
Let men make their burdens as light as they can, and not increase their worldly sorrow by sight of sad objects. It will come, as we say of foul weather, soon enough; we need not send for it.—(Trapp).
As her soul was in departing. An ordinary historian would have said, as she was dying, or as she was ready to expire. But the Scriptures delight in an impressive kind of phraseology, which at the same time shall both instruct the mind and touch the heart.—(Fuller.)
Genesis 35:19. Bethlehem here enters, clouded by Jacob’s mourning; afterwards enlightened by David, the Old Testament hero out of Judah, and finally glorified by the fulfilment of Israel’s hope.—(Lange.)
Genesis 35:20. The pillar of Rachel’s grave. Jacob loves the monumental stone.—(Murphy).