Genesis 30:22-24 - Exposition

And God remembered Rachel (cf. Genesis 8:1 ; 1 Samuel 1:19 ), and God hearkened to her ,—as to Leah ( Genesis 30:17 )— and opened her womb —as he had previously done to Leah ( Genesis 29:31 ). Rachel's barrenness had not continued so long as either Sarah's or Rebekah's. And she conceived, and bare a son; and said, God hath taken away my reproach —i.e. of sterility. The mandrakes of Leah having proved inefficacious, Rachel at length realizes that children are God's gift, and this thought sufficiently explains the use of the term Elohim. And she called his name Joseph; — יוֹסֵף , either, "he takes away," with allusion to the removal of her reproach, or, "he shall add," with reference to her hope of another son. Perhaps the first thought is not obscurely hinted at, though the second appears' from the ensuing clause to have occupied the greater prominence in Rachel's mind— and said, The Lord —Jehovah; a trace of the Jehovistic pen (Tuch, Bleek, et alii ) ; rather an outcome of the higher spiritual life of Rachel, who had now got emancipated from all such merely human devices as resorting to mandrakes, and was able to recognize her complete dependence for offspring on the sovereign grace of the covenant God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (Hengstenberg, Keil)— shall add to me another son.