“Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son and said, ‘God has taken away my reproach.’ And she called his name Joseph, saying, ‘May the LORD add to me another son!’ As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, ‘Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country.’” (Ge 30:22-25)
It was for Rachel that Jacob came to Laban and served him for twenty years. As we have said before, Jacob’s exile away from the Promised Land is a picture of the long exile of the Jewish people for twenty centuries. Rachel is a picture of the Bride.
Before Jacob left, his father Isaac blessed him and said prophetically to him: “God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples.” (Ge 28:3) “…a company of peoples” can also be translated as “an assembly of nations.” Assembly is the same word that the word church comes from. Jacob was destined to be fruitful and become “a church of many nations” while he was away from the Land.
Paul wrote about Jacob’s descendants: “So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!” (Ro 11:11-12)
It says that God remembered Rachel. This is covenant language. It refers to a fulfillment of a promise because of a covenant. God remembered Rachel and she conceived. She bore a son and called him Joseph. Joseph is a picture of the suffering Messiah, Messiah ben Yoseph. In other words a prophecy of the Messiah’s first coming to suffer and die. In the story of Jacob with Laban, Joseph represents the followers of Messiah ben Yoseph, the assembly from the nations prophesied by Isaac when Jacob left the Land. This destiny destined to in the end reveal the Messiah to Israel just as Joseph was revealed to his brothers as their savior in Egypt.
As soon as Joseph was born Jacob wanted to return back to the Land of Israel. His destiny in the Diaspora had been fulfilled. Prophetically that is where we are today when Jacob’s descendants have begun to return again to Israel. This return will culminate in the final harvest from the nations and the full restoration of Israel. Paul wrote to the Gentile believers in Rome:
“Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob’.” (Ro 11:25-26)
The deliverer, the Messiah, will come from Zion as well as to Zion as it says in the passage in Isaiah 59:20 that Paul is quoting. The descendants of Jacob must be back in the Land then.
There is much more to say about this, but that has to be another time. God bless you today as you study the Scriptures! It is “a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”. (2 Pe 1:19) We need this light today more than ever.
