With great wrestlings— That is, according to the Hebrew, with wrestlings of God; either with great and hard wrestlings or strivings, or by wrestling with God in fervent prayer; and by God's grace and strength.
Naphtali— Rachel, like Leah, denominated her children from the occasion: Dan, i.e.. Judging, was so called, because God had judged her cause: and Naphtali, i.e.. My wrestling, is so named, because she had wrestled or strove, and prevailed. Others think, that the word פתל (patal) whence comes Naphtali, signifying to contrive or counterplot, the beginning of the verse should be rendered, by an excellent artifice or contrivance, &c. But Mr. Parkhurst, who enters deeper into the word פתל patal, (the original sense of which, according to him, is to wreath, entwist, intwine,) renders it, By the agency of God I am intwined with my sister, i.e.. My family is now interwoven with my sister's, and has a chance of producing the promised Seed. To this purpose the LXX render it, God hath taken me into partnership, (viz. with Leah,) and I am intwined (συνανεστραφην) with my sister: and Aquila still plainer, God hath intwined me, and I am intwined, συνανεστρεψεν με ο Θεος, και συνανεστραφην. The Vulgate also preserves nearly the true sense, though not the idea of the word; comparavit me Deus cum forore mea, God hath made me equal with my sister.
REFLECTIONS.—From connections like Jacob's, little domestic happiness could be expected. Accordingly we find, 1. Rachel's envy at her sister, and her perverse demand from her husband: she speaks as one at the point of death, Note; (1.) Envious discontent and disappointed pride have the most fatal effects. A broken heart is not a death so uncommon, perhaps, as it is thought to be. (2.) Inordinate desire after creature-comforts, makes almost all our miseries.
2. Jacob's reproof. It was impiety to quarrel with God's dispensations. He therefore corrected warmly, as he loved. Note; (1.) Our love to the person must not suffer us to connive at sin. (2.) In all our trials God must be applied to. (3.) It is folly as well as sin to expect that happiness from the creature, which only God can bestow.
3. The wrong expedient Rachel took to relieve herself. Though none surely could be so near as her sister's children, she thought she could not nurse them and rule them as she could those of her servant, and therefore Jacob must take her maid to wife; and when she bore two sons, they have names of contention, Dan and Naphtali, given them, as if she had now prevailed. Note; It is wickedness in parents to transmit their quarrels in their children.
4. The same expedient used by Leah. Jacob consented perhaps at Rachel's importunity, and now he cannot refuse Leah pleading the precedent. Note; When men are once overcome by temptation, they in general the more easily yield to it a second time.