Rachel ( ????? ?;; meaning ewe) is a biblical figure famous for its infertility. The site is revered as its burial place (Rachel's Tomb) is one of the holiest sites in Judaism. Rachel was the favorite of both Jacob's wives, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve ancestors of the tribes of Israel. Rachel's father is Laban. Her sister is Leah, Jacob's first wife. Her aunt Rebekah was Jacob's mother.
Video Rachel
Marry Jacob
Rachel was first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 29 when Jacob struck him as he was about to water his father's flock. She is the second daughter of Laban, Rebekah's brother, making Jacob his first cousin. Jacob had traveled a great distance to find Laban. Rebekah had sent her there to escape from her angry twin brother Esau.
During Jacob's stay, he fell in love with Rachel and agreed to work seven years for Laban in exchange for his marriage. On the wedding night, the hooded bride and Jacob do not notice that Leah, Rachel's sister, has replaced Rachel. While "Rachel is beautiful in shape and beautiful", "Leah has soft eyes". Later Jacob meets Laban, who forgives his own trick by insisting that the sister should marry first. She assures Jacob that after the week of her marriage is over, she can take Rachel as a wife too, and work another seven years as payment for her. When God "saw that Leah was not loved, she opened her womb" (Gen 29:31), and she gave birth to four sons.
Rachel, like Sarah and Rebecca, still can not get pregnant. According to Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "Infertility of the matriarchs has two effects: it enhances the drama of the birth of the son that eventually, marks Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph as special, and it emphasizes that pregnancy is an act of God."
Rachel became jealous of Leah and gave Jacob his assistant, Bilha, to be her a successor mother. Bilhah gave birth to two sons named Rahel (Dan and Naphtali). Lea responded by offering her escort, Zilpah, to Jacob, and named and appointed the two sons (Gad and Asher) Zilpa charged. According to some comments, Bilhah and Zilpah are actually sisters of Leah and Rachel. After Leah became pregnant again, Rachel was finally blessed with a son, Joseph, who would be Jacob's favorite child.
Maps Rachel
Rachel's children
The son of Rachel, Joseph, destined to be the leader of the tribes of Israel between seclusion and nationalism. This role is exemplified in the story of Joseph, preparing the way in Egypt for his family's exile there, and in the future figure of 'i Mashiach ben Yosef' (Messiah, the son of Joseph), who, in Jewish view Rabbinik, will fight The apocalyptic Gog and Magog warfare, preparing the way for the kingdom of Mashiach ben David (Messiah, the son of David) and the messianic age.
After the birth of Joseph, Jacob decided to return to the land of Canaan with his family. Fearing that Laban would block him, he escaped with his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and twelve children without telling her father-in-law. Laban pursued her and accused her of stealing her idol. Indeed, Rachel had taken his father's statue, hiding it in his camel's pillow pillows, and sitting on it. Laban had neglected to give her heritage (Gen 31: 14-16). Rachel became a fraudster like her father, her aunt (Rebekah), and her husband.
Not knowing that idols are in the possession of his wife, Jacob expressed condemnation to whoever possessed him: "With whomever ye shall find your god, he shall not live" (Genesis 31:32). Laban went on to find the tents of Jacob and his wives, but when he came to Rachel's tent, he told his father, "Do not let my lord be angry that I can not rise up before you, because the way women are to me" (Genesis 31:35). Laban left him alone, but the curse that Jacob had proclaimed took place shortly thereafter.
Death and burial
Near Ephrath, Rachel had trouble working with her second son, Benjamin. The midwife told her in the middle of the birth that her son was a boy. Before he died, Rachel named her son Ben Oni ("my mourning son"), but Jacob called him Ben Yamin (Benjamin). Rashi explains that Ben Yamin also means "true son" (ie, "south"), since Benjamin is the only son of Jacob born in Canaan, south of Paddan Aram; or it could mean "son of my days", because Benjamin was born in old age Jacob.
Rachel was buried by Jacob on the road to the Euphrates, just outside Bethlehem, and not in the ancestral tomb at Machpelah. Today a site claimed as the Rachel Tomb, located between Bethlehem and the Israeli settlement of Gilo, is visited by tens of thousands of visitors each year. The tomb of Rachel was commanded to be in the ancient city of Zelzah on the land of the Tribe of Benjamin (First Book of Samuel, ch. 10, v. 2).
Additional references in the Bible
- Mordecai, the hero of the Book of Esther, and Queen Esther himself, are the offspring of Rachel through her son Benjamin. The Book of Esther details the lineage of Mordecai as "Mordecai son of Jair, son of Shimi, son of Kish, a man from the right ( ish yemini )" (Esther 2: 5). The appointment of ish yemini refers to its membership in the Benjamin Tribe ( ben yamin , right son). The rabbis commented that Esther's ability to remain silent in Ahasuerus's court, rejected the king's pressure to reveal his ancestors, inherited from his ancestor Rahel, who remained silent even when Laban took Leah to marry Jacob.
- After the tribes of Ephraim and Benjamin were exiled by the Assyrians, Rachel was remembered as the classical mother who mourned and interceded for her children. Jeremiah 31:15, speaks of 'Rachel weeping for her children' (KJV). It is interpreted in Judaism when Rachel cries to end the suffering of his descendants and his exiles after the destruction of the Babylonians of the First Temple in ancient Jerusalem. According to Midrash, Rachel speaks before the Lord: "If I, an ordinary man, is prepared not to embarrass my sister and willing to take rivals into my home, how can You, eternal and loving God, be jealous of idols, have the real existence, brought to your house (the Temple in Jerusalem)? Will You cause my children to be cast into this story? "The Lord accepted his request and promised that, finally, the exile would end and the Jews would return to the land they.
- In the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (part of the New Testament), this reference from Jeremiah is interpreted as a prediction of the Massacre of the Innocent by Herod the Great in his attempt to kill the young Jesus. The prophecy of Jeremis is the inspiration behind the medieval dramatic cycle of the Order of Rachelis, which emphasizes the growth of Jesus.
In Islam
Although not mentioned by name in the Qur'an, Rachel (Arabic: ?????????? ?, R ") is revered in Islam as the wife of Jacob and Joseph's mother, who is often mentioned in the Qur'an as Ya'q? b (Arabic: ???????????? ?) And Y? Suf (Arabic: ????????? ?), Respectively.
References
External links
- Media related to Jacob and Rachel on Wikimedia Commons
- Definition of dictionary ??? in Wiktionary
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments