Season two of Love in Context podcast welcomes you.
Get ready for engaging unscripted conversations with your hosts, Ben and Spencer.
Our mission remains unchanged to explore the Bible through the powerful lens of love.
In this new season, we'll embark on a journey together, unearthing fresh insights and gaining
deeper understanding of how we can love God and live out our faith in practical ways.
So let's dive into this season of Love in Context, where love and the context of the
Bible intersect to transform our lives.
Welcome to Love in Context podcast, episode two of Winging in the Bible.
I'm Ben.
I'm not Ben.
And this is Laura Frank.
She's with us again.
Hi.
We had fun last week.
That was fun.
The nature of podcast is that we actually recorded this one like 15 minutes after the
first one.
Magic's dead.
Sorry, guys.
But that's how it was.
It just wore the same shirt the next day, right?
You guys did too.
We are really faithful followers of Jesus.
We only have one set of clothes that we have to wear over and over again because we gave
the rest to the poor.
Well, you know, in Matthew, when Jesus is sending his disciples out and he's like, don't
take anything with you.
Like, that's how we live our lives.
Right?
Yeah.
We just don't own anything.
And this is my one sweat shirt, my long pair of pants.
My king and country.
It got off the rails so quick.
Yeah.
So, we are in the second episode of Women in the Bible.
And this one, we tend to be titled as Women of Promise.
And we're going to be talking about women of promise.
Yeah.
Because a lot of times when we're talking about, especially in Torah, we talk about
like the men that God works through there.
But we're going to take some time where we're going to talk about that because that's not
exactly how that works.
I think that we've maybe overemphasized these men of faith and deemphasized what the women
are doing at the same time.
For example, like Abram has multiple kids.
Not just he has Ishmael, sure.
He has Isaac, sure.
But after that, he actually has a bunch of other kids.
Only one kid carries the promise.
It's the child that he has with Sarah.
Rebecca has two kids, but there's one kid who carries the promise.
Jacob has multiple wives, but there's one kid that carries the promise.
Now, ultimately, of course, all 12 become like tribes of Israel.
But there's one that actually is being worked through to actually bring forward into the
next section of what God is doing in their story.
And it's not just the men.
It is the men and the women together.
And we're going to talk about that a little bit today.
Teamwork.
Teamwork makes a dream work.
Where's that from?
I don't know.
I know.
I don't know where it's from.
Figure out where that's from and then send it to me.
Don't send the thing to me.
Just tell me where it's from.
It's probably from something super inappropriate and I just referenced it.
So the first figure I want to talk about is Sarah.
And then Sarai is originally her name and has changed to Sarah.
Sarai is a name and actually means my princess.
And it's actually interesting.
There's a video and we'll link it in here.
It has to do with the genealogy in Genesis 11.
That is done by Baamah with Marty Solomon.
And they talk about how there is a Midrash conversation about who is Sarai and why does
God choose Abram to partner with Abram and Sarai.
There's this thing that happens in Genesis 11 where it says that there are kids and there's
one named Milka and there's another named Iska, who's by the way never mentioned again.
But Iska is a Chaldean name that means my princess, whereas Sarai is a Hebrew name that
means my princess.
So there's conversation about are Iska and Sarai the same person, which then people are
like, oh, he's marrying his niece.
That's less weird in their culture than it is today.
And so I'm not saying that it's not strange.
It would be very strange in our culture.
It says that Abram and Nahor both took wives.
Now in Hebrew literature, whoever you list first is usually credited with making the
decision.
Even if they make it together, if it's Abram and Nahor, Abram is the one who made the decision
and would likely be the one who makes the choice.
So Abram chooses to marry a barren woman.
Now why is that significant?
What did we talk about last week?
Gender value for what they can produce, what they can produce as children.
Abram is choosing the woman that they know to be barren.
Right?
Like that's a significant choice as a patriarchal society where it's about creating lineage
and family.
He now doesn't have the option of continuing his lineage with Sarah.
It's only going to be through somebody else because she's barren.
And I remember in that episode, Mari was talking about, he's like, wow, how do they know that
she's barren?
It's a completely different culture.
You know if somebody is barren.
Because as soon as they're not barren, they get married off because they can produce children.
So we'll link that episode.
I recommend getting in there.
So barren women, you kind of have to think about the impact that has on their psyche.
You have no worth, you have no value, you have no purpose.
And yet for Sarah, she's chosen.
Now it is interesting in the story later with both Pharaoh and Abimelek, they both, Sarah
by the way, must have been some kind of beauty.
Because she caught the eye of Pharaoh, Abimelek, and like Abram was aware enough of it that
he is like, well, we'll just pretend you're my sister so that they don't kill me.
Men.
Yeah.
Thank you.
And I believe we did talk about this in the episode when God changes her name.
But we're going to talk about the other side of it where we're talking about Sarai.
It is unlikely that both Pharaoh and Abimelek would have known that she was barren.
They would have just seen her.
And maybe also, especially in the case of Pharaoh where they have multiple wives, he
might not even care if she was barren because he's looking for a trophy.
Trophy life.
But the point of bringing up the barrenness is I want us to put our finger on barrenness.
Keep track of it because it's going to come up way, way often.
And going back to last week when we talked about this curse, this curse that people talk
about, that they would have trouble getting pregnant.
This is barrenness.
So right away we see in the lives, like we're having women who are having difficulty getting
pregnant.
We start to see a reversal of this in the lives of the women as they live into God's
mission.
Right.
Okay.
Also, the men that are associated with these women, they start to multiply in herds.
And Isaac is going to plant a field in famine and it's going to produce a hundred times
what he plants.
Right.
Okay.
So these imageries are going to come up over and over again and it's not an accident.
It's almost like it had a divine hand guiding it to write the Bible.
Right.
Over what's going on.
There is a section of the story of Sarah that I want to hold off on talking because I want
to talk about her at the very end.
So we're not going to talk about Hagar yet.
Okay.
I'm going to reference her briefly, but we're not actually going to talk about her till
the end of the episode.
So in the life of Sarah, like, so she is a barren woman who's chosen.
She goes with Abram.
Abram chooses to leave his father's household, which is just so dramatic.
Right.
It's a huge deal.
She goes with them knowing that their line is going nowhere.
Right.
She's, she's wanted by Pharaoh.
Later she's wanted by Abimelech.
She's called the sister and she's just going with him through all of these different things.
And eventually they're given this promise that they're going to have kids.
Of course they wait until she's like 90.
Right.
Because you know what women really, when they would definitely want kids, when they're 90.
Right.
Yeah.
Like you were, you were thinking, cause you had your first kid, how old were you?
I was 24.
Yeah.
You were thinking, I wish I was like 70 years older than this.
Oh, at 66.
No way.
Right.
Yeah.
We were, we were talking about when my, my mom came down when she was with the kids for
a week that she was like, she was like, I'm so tired.
I was like, yeah, that was, that was 24 hours.
The reason that there is a reason the young have children trust me.
Yeah.
I, I'm even thinking, I was like, it might've been easier to have kids at like 23 than like
31.
And you know, I was like, that being said, like, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not
nobody on the podcast is having through listenership is having, has any sympathy for me.
No.
One because my kids are awesome.
So they have no sympathy.
Let's see.
And nobody on this podcast who is 90 wants to have kids.
No, you know, nobody who's listening, no matter how desperate you are.
Yeah.
So like it's like 90, 99 is when how old Abram is.
And so they're, they're quite aging when they have kids.
But it's the life expectancy during that.
Well, so it says that Sarah dies at like one 15, one 20.
I forget exactly what the text says.
It's older one.
So we're probably looking in, in the range of like 90 to one 20.
Okay.
So maybe the last third of their life.
Yeah, probably.
And so there's a story where three visitors come by Abrams tent.
Now he's just received the sign of the covenant, which is circumcision.
And so he's been circumcised and he's sitting by in the front of his tent recovering because
gently.
Yes.
It's very typical when you're older and when you're younger, there's a reason why people
get circumcised on the eighth day as opposed to the 90th birthday.
Right.
And then he recognizes these three visitors and in whatever capacity you want to have
a conversation about it.
Like he recognizes that it's God and he says, well, hold on, let me make you some food.
And so he goes and he's running around, which there's a great story about like how Abrams
is full of generosity and, and love.
But one of the things that's interesting is he tells Sarah to take three sias of fine
flour, right?
To bake bread.
Okay.
Three sias of flour is like making 120 loaves of bread.
Like he's not messing around.
And so she's supposed to take three sias of flour and make it into bread.
And then of course.
300 loaves of bread.
Yeah.
Like like 300 loaves.
It's a lot.
It's a lot of bread.
And even if the bread in that time was not a loaf of bread, like we still a lot of bread,
still a lot.
Like however you want to define it, it's a lot of bread.
And so there's a midrash in there where it talks about how Sarah was actually a miracle
actually occurred that she could even make the bread.
Right?
Cause she makes all the bread for the visitors, sends food along with them on their way.
But they're talking about the extravagant nature of hospitality.
Now this story is actually one that Jesus references in the New Testament because he
says the kingdom of heaven is like a woman who takes three sias of flour and bakes them
into bread.
Yeah.
And the thing about heaven is that we don't necessarily call it sias in the Old Testament.
Like the language doesn't transfer over, but that is absolutely what Jesus is referencing.
And he says the kingdom of heaven is like the hospitality that Sarah exemplified.
Not Abraham.
Yeah.
And that's not to, that's not, we're not actually downing Abraham because Jesus talks about
Abraham a lot, but he's actually, he actually in his teaching is referencing something that
Sarah did.
I mean, she made all those loaves.
Yeah, she made all those Abraham did not make those loaves.
He was, he was also probably in a, in a fair amount of pain.
So he had the worst birthday present ever.
But you think about, you think about Jesus making this statement.
He says, you know, the kingdom of heaven is like that day that we went by Abraham and
Sarah's house and she made us all that bread and this hospitality, this love that we have
for each other.
And he, and you actually have the son of God referencing a very famous woman in the Bible
and talking about how this actually represents the kingdom of heaven.
You know, like that is, that is a really cool thing that happens in her life.
Right?
Well, 10, let's say 10 would have been good.
10 would have been great.
I mean, okay, guys here, you can eat these and you can take, right.
And take some for the road.
Right.
And, but 300 plus.
Yeah.
Was there any of your family, like one of those ones where you go over dinner and they
send you home with like six night fags full of food.
Hey, when Les and I were first married, that saved us.
We didn't starve to death.
But it's, but like, that's what it feels like, you know, it's like I go to grandma's house.
I'm probably walking home with like a, like a trailer full of food.
And, and if the kingdom of heaven is like that, that's not just going to give us what
we need in a little bit more.
I mean, you're talking exponential.
So whenever my family does like a big extended family gathering, it's all, it's usually like,
and if it's going to be for multiple days, it's usually like, okay, you're going to do
this meal, you're going to do this.
Now you're going to do this meal.
The reality is, is my mom has already bought all the food for all the meals.
Of course she has.
And she's already got, she's already, she's already got the plan of every meal she's going
to cook.
Right.
And so, so, you know, we still do our parts.
We bring our part, we bring what we have to the table.
And then my mom, then we get there and mom's like, no, I got it.
And then she makes something like way better than what we were going to make.
Right.
And happens every time, every time.
And then all myself and my siblings were all like, why did we even bother?
Like, we know that, we know that she's going to exercise the hospitality she knows how
to exercise.
Right.
And, and so it's kind of like that where it's like, we're still bringing our stuff to the
table, but God's already filled the table with everything we need.
Even better.
Right.
Even better.
Well, and the fun, the fun thing about this story is that that's when God tells Abraham,
it's like, when you come through next time, when I come through next time, like Sarah's
going to be pregnant and she goes, ah, and she laughs like in due to fair, rightfully
so.
Yeah.
Right.
Because you know, and she's like, she's like, man, is that, am I going to give a baby to
that wrinkly old dude over there?
That baby is going to be as wrinkled as that dude.
Like, that's the truth.
And so she laughs.
Now the ironic thing is that the name Yitzhak actually means he laughs.
Right.
But there's this fun little conversation that like God and Sarah have where he's like, Sarah,
why did you laugh?
He's like, I didn't laugh.
He's like,
Yes, you did.
It's the dad.
Yeah, the dad.
Yeah, you did.
I want to just, I want to keep an idea, like keep this in the back of your head, but she
laughs, Yitzhak name means he laughs.
Okay.
This idea of like something that the mother does that is actually picked up by the son,
because I'm going to come back to that a little bit later.
Then of course, Yitzhak is born.
There's this whole thing with Hagar and Ishmael.
We're going to get into that in a little bit.
So I don't want to step in there too quickly.
And then Sarah, one of the last times that she's mentioned before they talk about her
dying is right before Isaac goes up on the mountain with Abraham, you know, the very
famous story that's going on there.
After Isaac is on the mountain, Sarah dies in a place where Abraham isn't.
It says that he has to go to the place that she is, which I think is a really interesting
thing in the text.
Now you can always read too much into that.
Right.
Like he could have been like visiting and going to her.
But also there's probably a little bit of a rift that happens after that.
Also Isaac is not with his dad.
Like he has to go and go and see his dad.
They're not in the same place, which is just, it's very abnormal.
Yeah.
Right.
There's actually an excellent episode of Baymah where they actually explore this a little
bit in some of the Midrash in there.
I'm just going to link that in there for you guys to check out because that's not actually
pertinent to our conversation today, but it is interesting that Sarah is just not mentioned
at that point until she dies.
Right.
So Isaac, Sarah's son, has a wife and her name is Rivka.
Rebecca is what we would call it, but it's Rivka.
And she is found in a very interesting way.
So Abraham realizes that he's getting old.
Older.
Yeah.
I mean, like he did have, he's been old for a while.
He has, he has, he has, I think he has 90 or 99.
One of the 99.
99.
Yeah.
I think he has Ishmael at 90.
90.
Right.
Yeah.
Ishmael is older.
He's getting old.
And so he calls his servant.
He says, Hey, I need you to go and find a wife for Isaac, but I don't want you to find
them among the people who are here.
Right.
This is by the way, something that Isaac is going to say to his kids as well.
It says, I want you to go back and go to Laban's household and, and look for one there.
So the guy goes and he, there's this whole thing about like, Lord, if, if you want me
to find this person, then I'm going to ask them to drink and they're not only offered
it a fee or give me drink, but they're also going to offer to bring water for my camels.
Right.
Have you ever seen a camel drink water?
I have.
And drink.
And it says that he has camels.
Yeah.
So they're, I think, I think there's something like 12 camels.
Yeah.
Well, he's not traveling alone.
You didn't in those days.
It's not like he got on his camel and he wrote to find a wife.
Well, and so you're dealing with like, so I don't know if you guys have ever seen these
wells.
I probably will not be able to find a picture to put on the podcast, but if you look up
some of these ancient wells that they go into, they're like these awkwardly carved steps
that go down into this area where you actually go and draw the water.
So you have to go down these awkward steps and then carry it back up.
And your jars are only probably about this big.
You know, you got to be able to carry it back up probably a gallon or less.
And so if you have to get like 130 gallons for 12, you know, Rebecca is, is making a
lot of trips up and down.
And I love that the servant of Abraham is just like, I'm going to sit here and make
sure she does every one because he's a little bit cantankerous because like he, Abraham
says, if you can't find her, then you're just being a step free.
Right.
And so like, maybe he's like, he's like, okay, God, I'll trust you.
You know, I'm going to, I'm going to make it like, well, and you need to touch on that
set free thing a little bit.
Yeah.
Because for Abraham's wealthy at this point.
And so to be a servant in Abraham's household means you actually have access to this wealth
and this provision and to be set free means that you will no longer have that.
I trust them.
Like, and so if you're a servant with nothing and Abraham's like, all right, I'm setting
you free, it's not, it's not like being set free from slavery after the civil war in the
U S right.
It's not like that.
It's like, Hey, you're now on your own and you don't have access to the wealth of my
household.
Right.
So we, what you see in Rebecca Rivka is you see this same kind of spirit that Abraham
has that Sarah has, right?
Like this is what Abraham is actually wanting.
And this is why he's going back to his family back in, back in Caldea.
Right.
Because you need to go back and find them here because these are the, like this characteristic
is what, what God is actually looking for.
This is who we are and I want them to represent it is who I want for my son Isaac.
And it's interesting that a Rivka, we actually see the exact same kind of generosity, the
exact exact same kind of hospitality, just extravagant because it's one thing to be like,
Hey, I'll give you water.
And then it's like, and I'm going to get 130 more trips for your camels.
That's a lot.
Well and didn't it say his, the people that was with him to his people.
So it's like not only,
I can't remember if it says that or not, but I mean, I think that it's believed that there's
probably good implication that that would be the case.
I know that when we were setting up to record down here, I had to take two or three shots
up and down our really nice stairs at the, at the church.
And I was also very tired.
And when we were done, we have to then take things back up.
I can't imagine 130 types.
Good quads.
130 times.
Yeah.
That's just so many.
One of the reasons that Abraham sends her there is actually it's, it's previous in the
book of Genesis, in Genesis, it actually says that Abraham had been told that, that Nahor
had had kids with Milka.
And so now there was, there was actually kids in the line.
So once again, if you're trying to keep things, sounds weird here, but keep things in the
family and then keep your clan strong, connected.
This is the idea you would actually go in from your, or somebody closely related to
your family.
It sounds super weird.
Now it's not weird there.
We can, you have your culture by our current standards.
The thought process actually behind that was that your genes were more pure if you kept
them in the family.
Yeah.
And so the Egyptians held onto that thought process.
So that's why when you had Egyptian dynasties towards the end, towards the end of almost
every one of those dynasties, the last Pharaoh usually had some sort of deformity because
of the amount of incest that was going on.
It's actually also why in Levitical law and just Torah in general, there's a lot of instructions
about not having sexual relations too closely to family about like, these things are not
good.
Don't do this.
Instead of explaining DNA and how you're going to end up with hemophilia, you're going
to end up with all these things.
Just don't do it.
Yeah.
And so modern science is actually confirming what God is commanding Israel to do in Levitical
law.
So one of the things that happens on Genesis 15 is Abraham is given this blessing by God
who says that look up in the skies and heavens, right?
Now I want you to hear this blessing that Rebecca has given from her family.
Our sister, may you increase to thousands upon thousands, may your offspring possess
the cities of their enemies.
Once again, you're having this thing of like population growth and like say your descendants
are going to be like the, you know, so numerous.
You're much mirroring like this whole Abrahamic thing, like she has hospitality in the same
way that Abraham has hospitality.
Now Isaac was apparently when they bring Rebecca back, he's apparently with his mother or was
with his mother before she died because when he sees Rebecca, he weds her and then he brings
us into his mother's tent, which is super weird to me.
It's a weird turn of phrase, but it makes more sense culturally for them.
So Isaac has been with his mother.
That would be my implication from reading this is that even if Abraham is somewhere
else, he was with Sarah before she died.
Then once again in the text, what comes up next is Rebecca is not having children.
Barrenness again.
The difference in this, what happens here is that Isaac prays.
Isaac involves God and then God opens the womb of Rebecca, right?
Because she was childless.
And once again, we have God's people being fruitful when in relationship with God, like
following after God.
Now one of the things I think is really interesting, because I want to start drawing some parallels
in what's happening here between Abraham, Isaac, and these generations upon generations,
because I started to pull some really cool things out.
Ishmael, the child of Hagar and Isaac are always going to be at war against each other.
It's a longstanding thing.
If you are not familiar, Ishmael tends to come into what is modern day Islam, and Isaac
is going to be with modern day Judaism.
There's a little bit of conflict between those two people.
I don't know if you're familiar with that.
Now the thing is...
Wow.
It's been a while.
A little lonely recently.
Now the interesting thing is if you actually look at Rebecca, she has two babies at the
same time and they're jostling up inside.
So she goes to see somebody and the statement that they're warring within themselves and
what they actually tell her is they say, you have two babies that are warring within you
and that they're fighting for superiority.
By the way, you should see that parallel between Jacob and Esau and Ishmael and Isaac, right?
Now one of course in one family as opposed to two different women, but this symmetry
of what's going on here.
And in both of the lives of Sarah and Rebecca, it was the son that they favored.
Now because remember when Hagar has a child, technically that belongs to Sarah, right?
Hagar has a child, Ishmael would be technically Sarah's because of how families work in that
time with like handmaiden and things.
But she also has Isaac whose birth from her, she favors one son, which is Isaac.
And sends the other away.
In the life of Rebecca, she also favors one of the sons and sends one of them away.
But in this case is the one that she favors, right?
It was the son that they favored that God worked through even when the fathers didn't
agree because Abraham didn't particularly want to send Ishmael away, nor did Isaac want
to give the blessing to Jacob over Esau, right?
And there's a lot of story by Isaac, by the way, just a small note here, you have a repeat
of the story of the Memlech too.
He does the exact same thing his dad does.
He says, oh, Rebecca's my sister, which technically the word that's used for sister there is technically
accurate, but it's also definitely not.
Yes.
So I know this is actually where, right in this section it says that Isaac goes and he
then plants in the time of famine.
So in a time of famine, Isaac goes and works the field and it produces a crop a hundred
times.
This is actually referenced in the book of Luke when Jesus is talking about if a grain
falls to the earth and it produces a crop 10 or a hundred times.
There's only one time in scripture that a crop is produced a hundred times, what is
sown and that's actually with Isaac.
That's a nice little callback in the scripture, what Jesus is talking about.
He says that when you lay yourself down, because this comes down the heels of Isaac laying
himself down on a couple of different occasions, once again go read it in Genesis, you will
see the kingdom of God come among you and multiply.
Because once again, what is the curse?
The ground is cursed because of you.
And yet Isaac, a man favored by God, plants and yields a hundred times in a time of famine.
It's just huge.
The last little piece that connects Ishmael and Esau is that Esau actually marries a woman
from the line of Ishmael.
Yeah, it's right after he sends Jacob away.
Genesis 28.
Yeah.
He hears Isaac tell his son, he's like, he's like, tell the wife like, don't let him marry
like Canaanite women, I don't like them.
Right after Esau's married to Cainanite woman and he's like, oh, okay, well I'll go find
him.
But like there's a lot of connections between those two.
Like Esau and Ishmael, man, those names, there's a lot of, yeah.
And then you move on to the next couple of women in our list that we're going to talk
about and that is Rachel and Leah.
Yeah.
And this is really interesting because a lot of times we just focus on Rachel.
Right.
And you need to throw Leah in there too because they, because when Jacob was going to wed
Rachel, the dad was like, hey, seven years of work and you can have her.
So he's like, okay.
So he's like, okay, so he's been married for seven years and then goes to the tent and
then wakes up next morning, which is interesting.
And I was like, yeah, okay.
I took you all night.
Let's figure that one out.
And then he's like, wait, this isn't Rachel.
I don't have nightlights.
I know.
Right.
Well, Leah was probably told, keep your mouth shut so you don't hear the difference.
Right.
And then, and then he goes back and he's like, this was not the daughter I asked for.
And he's like, okay, well, you can have the other one just another seven years.
All right.
So, so there's this whole thing with Jacob being a little bit of a trickster, also being
cheated out of some stuff.
And there's a whole lot of stuff, but with Rachel and Leah, there's a couple of interesting
things that you got to know is Genesis 30 is probably one of the weirdest chapters in
the Bible.
And I don't know if this is a note, but we're going there.
I mean, there's, I was going to say the weirdest.
I mean, there's, no, there's so much.
There's so much.
I recall in Ezekiel, they're talking about wheels and wheels.
Yeah.
Right.
Oh yeah.
Right.
And so what you have is you have Jacob's sons being born.
It's the story of their sons being born.
And what you have is you have this, essentially this competition going on between Leah and
Rachel on who can pop out more kids and Leah is clearly winning this contest.
So Leah's winning.
So Rachel's like, I'm going to get my servants involved.
Right.
Has it happened before?
The servants being involved in.
Yeah.
Well, right.
Yeah.
Right.
So the 12 tribes of Israel are actually born of four different women.
Yeah.
Because then as soon as Leah sees that Rachel's getting her servants involved, Leah's like,
I'm getting my servants involved.
And so Genesis 30 is this whole story about the 12 tribes of Israel being born from four
different women.
Well, and, and getting there.
So when we have Abraham, we have two, two children that are fighting.
There is Isaac and Ishmael.
Yeah.
In the life of Isaac, there's two children who can't get along.
There's Esau and there's Jacob.
And then Jacob goes, and he has two wives that can't get along, Rachel and Leah, sisters,
by the way.
And I was like, you do realize that's actually repeating the exact same thing, but now instead
of two boys, it's two women.
I think the moral of the story is don't spend too much time with your animals.
Is that what you're doing?
Well, here's the hard thing for Leah.
Like I really want to, I really, I feel for Leah in the story, like so hard because like
one God, God hears her, opens up her womb because she's bearing up to that point and
then producing children.
Right.
So Leah is, she is married to Jacob.
Then next day he recognizes that she's not Rachel.
So the promise is for another seven years of work, but it actually says he completes
his week with Leah and then he marries Rachel.
Right.
So he doesn't wait another seven years to get married.
He actually marries Rachel right away after a week.
So whereas typically you would get married and you spend a full year getting to know
each other, learning to love each other, all those different things.
She only has Jacob to herself for one week, one week.
And that's just, that's hard, you know, like everything about that.
And like she's called with like weak eyes and then all these different things.
And it's just, she was not Jacob's beloved.
But a lot of her children, by the way, one of her children, Judah is actually where we
get the line of Jesse.
It's where we get the line of Jesus with King David and a lot, and the things that come
through that line.
It is, it is, it is incredible what God does through the life of Leah.
Now I will say that Leah is not, is in this, in this title where we call women a promise,
while she is later a woman of promise, we're actually going to focus on Rachel on this,
on this particular one.
Let me ask a question about Leah really quick.
Leah was not the first choice.
She was not beloved.
There's a lot of other things that you were saying, you know, she was nearsighted or whatever
and she, right?
Well, weak eyes has to do with her beauty.
Oh, okay.
Well, it's a, it's a turn of phrase.
Okay.
So, she had more children, right?
Significantly more.
She had, yeah, significantly more.
And Judah, which that's the line of Jesus, did God bless her in that, saw her, recognized?
You know what I'm trying to say?
I believe that you could absolutely say yes, God did absolutely.
Recognized her, saw her.
Yeah.
And she's part of the whole women of the, you know.
Yeah.
It says that God sees Leah and enables her to concede is actually what it says.
Now the reason that's significant, we're going to talk about Hagar, but Hagar calls God the
God who sees me.
Okay.
So, this isn't the first time that God sees somebody, right?
God is the God who sees people, even in their oppression, because like whatever you want
to say about the line of Ishmael to this day and whether or not like people warning and
all those different things, God keeps his promises.
And he also sees people who are being oppressed, which in that case Hagar was, which we'll
get to in a few minutes.
And Leah, in a culture where women's purpose was to continue the lineage, then in everything
else she didn't have, she had esteem from the family, from the culture, from wherever
she lived by having these children.
Yeah.
And I would probably say that she doesn't necessarily recognize the esteem that is necessarily
poured out over the next 400 to 1200 years.
She doesn't recognize it, but now we recognize the line that came through her life.
God sees her, needs her to conceive.
And once again, this connection between Genesis 3 between God and the man and the woman, like
God sees and enables her to conceive, in other words to produce fruit, right?
Leah gives birth to Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.
By the way, who is Levi?
Levitical priests.
Yeah, I was going to say that, yeah.
Yeah, the ones who are charged with actually keep teaching the entire nation how to be
a kingdom or priest.
Like these are, so you have the firstborn, you have Simeon, who I don't have anything
good for, but you have the Levitical priest and you have Judah, right?
And like those are all really significant figures and tribes in Torah, right?
Now the interesting thing to your point where you say she's having a hundred children and
now Rachel's feeling left out, like you know what she doesn't do?
She doesn't go and pray.
She goes and was like, Jacob, why aren't you giving me children?
Right?
And who else does that?
Sarah.
Yeah.
When I was going through this and preparing like some bare bones for us to go through,
I was like, man, there are so many parallels that we could pull out in these stories that
you don't see when you don't look at the women.
By the way, that's what happens when you don't look at the women because you miss a big part
of the story.
Yeah.
And so you have, getting back to our context of Mormon in the Bible, right?
So you have Rachel repeating Sarah's mistakes.
And then going like to your guys' point, like she goes and hey, bring my maidservant into
this, which then Leah also does, which is-
Which guys, whenever your significant other says, hey, let's bring another woman into
this, it's always, it doesn't.
That is a bad choice.
If you say bad choice, it's not going to end well for you.
Stop.
Yeah.
Just stop.
It is really interesting too, because there is a subparion in here where I believe it's
Simeon, but one of Leah's kids finds mandrakes, which is a food, right?
And Rachel wants the food.
She wants the food and she's willing to give Leah something that's valuable in order to
get the food.
Where have I heard that story before, except instead of lentil stew, which I don't know
why anybody would give up their birthright for, it's mandrakes, which I also don't, I've
never had a mandrake, have you ever had a mandrake?
But it's once again, and one of the reasons I want to point that out is because the things
that God is doing with the men in these stories, he's also doing with the women.
It's very clear that it's happening to both.
Which is that equal.
Right, exactly.
And so then it says that God listened to Leah because then she's, because she's given up
and now she has this blessing and she can see again.
And it's so important.
Another thing that I think is super important in this story, I don't know if you actually
noticed this, that it's actually been the mothers that are naming the children.
That doesn't typically happen.
That doesn't typically happen because Abram is told by God his name is going to be Isaac.
Right?
So they name him Isaac.
They name him Esau because he was red and hairy when he came out.
And they named him Jacob because he was grasping the heel.
It wasn't, that's why they named him that.
And so there's no indication that it was Rebecca that named him.
Right?
But rather that that's just what they were named because that's what it looks like.
But then every kid that's coming through, he's going to be Reuben, he's going to be
Simeon.
All the way through to the last kid, when Rachel has the kid, she names him, oh actually
hold on, I want to get there yet.
Well, he names him, but I'm going to get there in a second.
There is a statement in here that says God remembered Rachel.
Which also begs the question, did God forget?
And like, that's kind of tongue in cheek.
Like obviously God didn't forget.
I've always read it as remembered, not that he forgot her, but in a sense of promises
or that she's the wife or that, you know, it's like not acknowledged.
Well the turn of phrase comes up in the Old Testament for the long to in Exodus.
What else comes up before that in the story of the flood?
Yeah, and remember Noah.
Yeah, and the turn of phrase isn't that God forgot, the turn of phrase is that God is
on his way.
Yeah, God's on his way.
That's what it's really, what it kind of references, it's like saying with them in Israel is in
Egypt, it wasn't that God forgot them for 400 years, it's that he is now on his way.
When you hear that phrase, God, he then remembered what God remembered.
And if you're looking at a covenant to society where the greater party is always, the lesser
party is always at the behest of the greater party.
You have signs of covenant, God keeps the sign of the covenant, when he puts the sign
of the covenant in a way that you can't lose it, literally cutting it into your skin.
The fact that God remembered is significant.
It means that God, the greater party, is initiating the covenant.
That was what happened in the story of Noah, it's what happens in the story of the Exodus,
is what happens right here.
God is initiating his covenantal work in Rachel.
He remembers and he is enacting change.
He's coming to do something.
And now Rachel has two kids, she has Joseph, who gets in trouble for a number of reasons.
We talked about Joseph, go check out the episode.
But she also has a kid that she names Ben-O-Mai, which is son of Mysoro.
And this is the only son, by the way, that Jacob names, according to the text.
He says, he changes his name to Benjamin, which is a great name.
Anybody would be honored to have that name, Benjamin being son of my right hand.
Now the interesting thing that I find about that is that Jacob changes the name from Ben-O-Mai
to Benjamin.
The first king that they have is a guy by the name of Shaul, Saul.
And you know what tribe he's from?
Benjamin.
Do you know, normally, what God wants for a king is he wants somebody who's capable of
shepherding his people.
Do you know what Saul did for a living?
Shepherds.
He was a donkey herder.
He wasn't a shepherd.
The obstinate, and apparently he wasn't very good because he lost his donkeys multiple times.
That's how he found Samuel.
He just went to a random house.
He's like, oh, maybe I'll ask the prophet, where are my donkey from there?
But he was tall and he looked like a warrior.
And so he looked like what you think a king should be.
But like his character, he was from the tribe of Benjamin.
Tribe Benjamin was small.
It was not significant.
If you want your king, it should come from the line of Judah.
I don't think that there's accidents in the text.
I think that those pictures are clearly drawn.
So let's go back and talk about Hagar because I really think this is probably a good place
for us to come back to.
So Hagar is an Egyptian slave.
Now once again, we want to point out that slave doesn't necessarily mean slave in the
same way that it did in the context of the American colonies or European slave trade.
But she was part of the household and any children that she produced with Abraham would
have been considered serfs.
So Ishmael would have been considered Abraham and Sarah's.
Now whether or not Sarah really felt that way, it's pretty clear that she did not.
So I know when this happened, this is before the name change.
Correct.
So you have Abraham and Sarai.
And there's actually argument in the text on that of since there was a name change that
happened, does that actually nullify Ishmael as the firstborn to Abraham?
Because God fundamentally changed Abraham's identity from Abraham to Abraham.
And so there's actually some power to that.
A little nuance, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to, that's just a good do some reading
on your own.
Well and, but even at that point is Abraham does have, and once he's Abraham, he does
have kids with other women who wants to seridize.
None of them are the kids of promise.
It is only when man and woman worked together that the promise moves forward.
That's what's going on over here over and over again.
Now if you're not familiar with the story of Hagar and Ishmael, it's Genesis 15 on,
but there's some in that area, they talk about a lot of different things, but essentially
it's Sarah's idea.
She says, Hey, why don't you sleep with Hagar and produce a child for me because clearly
I'm barren.
Right?
Once again, she doesn't ask God.
She talks to Abraham and says, Hey, why don't we solve this this way?
And then of course Hagar produces right away and has Ishmael.
And then Sarah mistreats Hagar because she has Ishmael and she's jealous, which is just
unfortunate.
Yeah.
It's an unfortunate thing in the story.
So not surprisingly, Hagar can't, doesn't really like it and leaves and she's going
and she's wandering in the desert.
It says that she's got Ishmael with her and it says that she doesn't really know where
to like, she's not going to be able to make it.
And realizes that she's basically like, this is it.
So she puts the kid down and then retreats about a bows shot distance away.
Okay.
It's just a weird note in the, in the story.
And it says that she's there and she's, and she is on the ground.
And then it says that God hears the cry of Ishmael, the, the Zedekah that he, that the
cry of the baby, he doesn't hear Hagar.
He sees, hears Ishmael.
Then he comes to Hagar.
He says, Hey, what's going on?
And you know, she explains it.
And he says, if you go back, this is what I'm going to do through your line.
Ishmael is the son of Abraham.
Yeah.
I'm going to, I'm going to do this, this, and this.
Like yesterday there's going to be like, he's going to have war with him, but he's also
going to have a line.
He's going to have a, have a nation.
And but I'm going to take care of you Hagar, because even though Abraham and Sarah screwed
this up, I'm still going to take care of the promise.
I'm still going to fulfill the covenant.
I'm going to, I'm going to make sure that things are taken care of on your, your part.
And Hagar, the Egyptian slave who is not a follower of Yahweh says, now I understand
that you're the God who sees me.
That is significant.
One of the first people to recognize in the Bible that God sees him is not only not a
Hebrew, it's a woman, right?
Slave woman.
A slave woman.
There's somebody who is not used to being seen and says, Oh God, you see me.
Which I think is a, is a message of huge encouragement.
By the way, for women today, when you are serving God and you don't feel seen, God sees
you.
Yes.
Right.
Not just women, men too.
Like if you're, if God is calling you and all this, you're not feeling seen, God sees
you and he's, he's working his work through you.
So trust him.
Now the reason I think that's interesting is it says that about the Boz shot is it says
that Ishmael grows up to be an archer.
So Isaac's mother laughs and his name becomes he laughs.
Ishmael, his mother sets him down about a Boz shot away.
He becomes an archer.
How old was Ishmael at this time?
I mean, young enough that he's crying.
So I mean, it was somewhere between one and three, I guess.
It was before Isaac was born though, right?
Yeah, it was before Isaac was born.
And Ishmael's quite a bit older than Isaac.
Yeah, he ends up being about 10, 11 years older, somewhere in that range.
Because he's supposed to have Ishmael when he's 90 and he has Isaac when he's 99.
So like we're, we're just sitting like, you know, nine, eight, nine years away, older.
Hagar, Hagar is a hard part of the story because we see God's grace in the midst of the people
of God who didn't look the part in that moment, right?
I did, I do think that we see the faithfulness of God through the whole situation.
Right.
One last connecting piece between Ishmael and Esau, by the way, Ishmael is an archer,
right?
I, who would probably be a hunter in that aspect.
Isaac works the land near the mother's tent.
Esau is a hunter.
Jacob is near the tent once again.
Right?
Patterns that come up over and over again.
Sarah doesn't want Ishmael to get an inheritance.
Rebecca doesn't want Jacob to have the blessing.
Right?
These things just come up all over and over again.
And all throughout these stories we're told they're about these men in the stories.
But I think, I think that what we've established over the last 40 minutes, there's actually
quite a bit about the women in these stories.
Yeah.
There's actually almost more about the women in these stories than there is about the men.
Yeah.
And they're a significant portion of the story.
And that's really abnormal for text of this age.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
That there's any stories in here about women at all is crazy.
That the women are named is significant.
Right?
That the women are named and then there's information about them because you can give
a lineage and go, you know, John married Betty and, you know, they had Bob and Bob married
Susan Lee, you know.
But the fact that there's actual information about them and not just lineage information,
but emotional information.
Yeah, we know how they felt.
We know how they prayed.
We know the hardships, you know, in some ways we actually know like physical characteristics
of them because we kind of know physically what Leah looked like and what Rachel looked
like.
And we know that Sarah was attractive enough to appeal to Pharaoh and Abimelek as was Rebecca
in old age.
In old age.
Yeah.
Because I mean, you got to think she was probably like 60, 70, you know.
I mean, so you're 66.
So you went into Egypt and the president of Egypt was like her.
You're like, all right, let's go.
I'd be a little surprised.
Yeah.
You'd be like, Les, did you tell your mom your sister?
Yeah.
The women of promise, there's a lot of God is working through men and women together
and it's happening.
And in a couple of weeks, we're going to be talking about the lineage of Jesus.
And in the lineage in Matthew, it happens frequently that Matthew mentions the women
that are part of the story.
There's Rahab, there's Ruth, there's Bathsheba, right?
Like these stories where the people are like, oh, we can't talk about that.
But all throughout the Bible, there's these stories of women and they're incredibly compelling.
And we read over them so quickly without taking time to actually put them into context or
we read them in our modern context and we don't take time to recognize how revolutionary
is what they're talking about.
Right.
In our last Q&A, somebody said, why is the Bible so anti-women?
I said, it's not.
No.
Far from it.
It's actually very pro-women.
And when you put it in its proper context, you recognize that God is elevating both sides
of the humanity spectrum.
It's not just pro-women.
It's more than that.
It's pro-God working through women who are in the lowest class of life, who are the most,
who feel the most hopeless, most helpless, who don't live in a way that's dignified or
don't live in a way that's even culturally acceptable in the day and age that they're
living in.
And so God's not only putting value on the women of promise, which is what we're talking
about today, but he's also putting value on the women who were degraded.
And so to say that the Bible is anti-women is to say that you don't actually have a grasp
of what's going on in scripture.
And culturally, you have to understand the culture of that time and what God did, which
was not culturally savvy or accepted, and what he did and who he recognized and how
he elevated them.
I always think it's funny when we think we figure things out, God shakes it and puts
it out.
And he's like, yeah, that's not what I'm doing at all.
And he has fun doing it.
He does.
You know he does.
He does.
Oh, I can't.
It's like we're always moving further into what God is doing.
One of the crazy things that I think about eternity is God is so infinite that we're
going to be living through eternity on earth, having an earth, right, and with him, and
we're never going to reach the bounds of what it means to be with him.
My brain can't even comprehend that because, well, it's hard for me to comprehend anything
of that magnitude.
Infinite doesn't make sense to me because I think our mind is stuck in such a finite
place.
We're three dimensions.
One of the things I always talk about with people is we're like, oh, well, God works
exactly like this.
OK, well, we have an infinite God that we're trying to fit in a finite mind.
So he's trying to give us pictures that are helpful, but let's be honest, we're not going
to get it completely.
And so that's where faith comes in, in trusting the Spirit.
Now next week, by the way, we love having you here.
Hopefully we can get you back on another episode where we're just talking about the Bible.
I like that.
Yeah.
Do you have any final thoughts about women that you want to share before we?
No, just that it, you know, God, Hagar, you know, you are the God that sees.
And if you're a woman out there that feels like you are not seen, God sees you, you know,
and over and over, you know, God sees you.
Yeah.
And yeah, I love that.
So next week, we're going to be stepping into our next section, which is talking about women
leaders in the Old Testament.
So if you want to read ahead of us, we're going to be talking about Miriam.
We're going to be talking about Deborah.
We're going to be talking about Esther.
And we're also going to be talking about a person by the name of Huldah.
And I've said that name a bunch of times and people are like, who are you talking about?
I'll give you a hint, Synchronicles.
That was Les's grandmother's name.
Huldah?
That's so great.
I should have had him on the surface.
But we definitely don't need three guys talking about women.
Well, thank you for joining us today.
Hope you enjoyed the conversation and until next time.
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Love and Context.
We hope you enjoyed this engaging conversation and gained valuable insights into the powerful
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of today's world.
You know, like to the to that point, it's like one more time.
Hold on.
Let off of us.
But I still have to pick it up.
Okay.
I don't have an interpretation for that, by the way.
I'll just have Yannick's people on the board with their own podcast.
I'm just tired of that.