Rachel dies

When all this happened with Shechem and Dinah, Simeon and Levi killing every male in the city of Shechem, looting the city and taking all the people left there with them. When they run away from the tribes of Canaan in fear, Rachel was pregnant, and this havoc could of course have affected her pregnancy. The huge caravan passed the cite where later Jerusalem would be built and when approaching Ephrath, that is Bethlehem, Rachel gives birth to a son after having a hard labor and she names him Ben-oni, meaning son of my sorrow, then she dies.

Ben-oni is renamed Benjamin

Israel renames his newborn son, Benjamin, the son of my right hand, and on Rachel’s grave; he sets up a pillar of stone. In Bethel Israel built an Alter, and where God met him there, he set a pillar and once again named it Bethel, the house of God. Now when Rachel dies, Israel sets up another pillar. Israel is marking the land his descendants later will conquer.

Ruben sleeps with Jacobs concubine Bilhah

Israel camped outside Ephrath for a while, and there Ruben slept with Israel’s concubine Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, and all which the Bible is commenting is that Israel heard about it. However, we can sense a problem here, Israel’s oldest sons were adults, grown up men ready to marry, however they could not marry pagans with their belief in foreign gods and foreign rites. Israel as we have seen didn’t rule his family as he should, he didn’t look after Dinah properly and he probably didn’t handle his grown-up sons with authority either, causing that Ruben slept with his concubine Bilhah.

Questions

1. Are you depending on the blessings from God?
2. Are you blessed, in what “room” are you Blessed?
3. Where in the Bible do you find Gods promise about your blessing?