Genesis 29:1-14
The stone at the well
He rolls away a stone that normally waits for every flock to gather, then kisses her and lifts up his voice and weeps. It is the only such scene in Genesis.
People of the Bible
Rachel
Loved from the first day, and the one who kept asking for what she did not have.
Jacob meets Rachel at a well, moves the stone alone, kisses her and weeps, and then works seven years that pass like a few days because of how he felt about her. Everything after that is harder. Her sister is married to him first and has son after son while Rachel has none. She demands children from her husband and is answered angrily. She steals her father’s household gods and sits on them. Joseph is finally born, and she dies giving birth to the second son on the road, naming him son of my sorrow with her last breath.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Rachel
- 01
- 02
Genesis 30:1-8
Give me children or I die
She says it to Jacob, and he answers that he is not God. The rivalry with her sister turns into an arrangement through servants and a naming contest.
- 03
Genesis 31:19-35
Sitting on her father’s gods
Leaving Haran, she takes the household idols and hides them in a camel saddle. Laban searches the tents and she does not get up.
- 04
Genesis 30:22-24
God remembered Rachel
Joseph is born and she names him for more, asking for another son. The text says she was remembered, heard and opened.
- 05
Genesis 35:16-20
The road to Ephrath
The second son comes hard and she does not survive it. She calls him son of my sorrow, his father renames him son of my right hand, and a pillar is set over her grave.
Why it matters
Rachel is the one the story loves and does not spare. Her tomb on the road to Bethlehem becomes a landmark, and centuries later Jeremiah hears her weeping for children who are gone, which Matthew picks up again at the slaughter in Bethlehem. She is the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, and grief in Israel keeps being given her name.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
