Commentaria in Genesim
6. THE LORD HATH JUDGED FOR ME—as if to say: I was with my sister as in a lawsuit and contention: for I contended with her about offspring and fruitfulness, and hitherto, being barren, I was inferior to her, but now I have become superior, and God has adjudged the cause to me, so that I am no longer reckoned and celebrated as barren, but as fruitful and prolific, equally with my sister. Whence she called the son Dan, that is, judgment, or lawsuit, namely, the cause has been adjudged to me by God.
8. GOD HATH COMPARED ME WITH MY SISTER.—The Hebrew is naphtule Elohim niphtalti, which the Chaldee renders, God compared me, and I am compared; the Septuagint, God took me up, and I am compared. But, translating quite word for word: with the wrestlings of God (that is, great and difficult ones: for what is great is said to be God’s) I have wrestled craftily, and prevailed. It is a metaphor taken from wrestlers, who by the interlacing of their limbs twist one another now this way, now that, to overthrow and cast him down; which belongs to craft and cunning rather than to strength and courage. For the root patal signifies to twist, and that craftily, as wrestlers are wont to do slyly and deceitfully: whence a twisted thread is called petil, and a crafty and deceitful man is called niphtal. Rachel says therefore: I have, as it were, contended with Lia for fruitfulness and the glory of offspring, and wrestled with her, and now have craftily overcome her, who bears no more, since in place of myself, barren, I ingeniously and cleverly substituted my fruitful handmaid to my husband: whence she called the son Nephtali, as one might say, wrestling, struggling, and that cunningly and craftily. Whence Josephus interprets Nephtali as artful, that is, sly and cunning; but Oleaster renders involved, which comes to the same: for the cunning are wont to involve and cover their arts.
tuagint and our Interpreter. Whence also Rabbi Solomon renders, a good star is come, or a good planet, as if she said: A star has shone upon me more kindly, and, as Seneca speaks, a gift of flowing Fortune.
Note: the Hebrew Gad properly signifies girded, or ready for battle, namely a soldier or an army; hence it signifies Mars, the god and patron of war; and hence again it signifies fortune. For the Gentiles believed that Mars gave good fortune, victory and spoils to soldiers: and so for Gad, which is in the Hebrew, our Interpreter, Pagninus and the Hebrews render fortune, Isaias 65:11. Whence also the Arabs, according to Aben Ezra, call God Gad: just as the Cimbri and Germans called God God, from the Hebrew Gad, as it seems (although it may rather be thought that God is said from goet, that is, good): for they themselves were warlike, and therefore worshipped as God Mars, Gad, that is, Mars and fortune.
Lia, then, called this son Gad, that is, good fortune, say Theodoret and St. Augustine, perhaps because in the house of Laban her father, a Gentile and idolater, she had often seen Gad, that is, fortune, named, and perhaps worshipped. For many Gentiles worshipped fortune as a god. So the Oedipus of Sophocles, in his prosperity, said: “I indeed count myself the son of Fortune.”
13. THIS IS FOR MY HAPPINESS.—For now I am blessed with a sixth son, now not only from myself but also from my handmaid Zelpha, as my sister Rachel from Bala, I give offspring to my husband; and so by all I shall be proclaimed blessed with numerous offspring: whence she called the son Aser, that is, blessed. The Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, alluded to this when she sang: “All generations shall call me blessed.” For what the Poet sang of Livia, wife of Caesar Augustus, who was the mother of Drusus and of Tiberius Caesar:
No parent is happier than thy mother, who alone by her bearing gave so many blessings in two sons;
this applies far more truly to the one childbearing of the Blessed Virgin.
14. AND RUBEN GOING OUT.—Ruben was then five years old: for all these twelve children, except Benjamin, were born to Jacob of four wives in the second seven years of service, namely in the seven years from the marriage of Rachel and Lia. For Joseph was born last, at the end of this seven years, verse 25. Wherefore, since Lia in the first four years of this seven bore four sons to Jacob, namely the first Ruben, the second Simeon, the third Levi, the fourth Juda, after whom she ceased to bear: it is necessary that Ruben was then already five years old. For after this Lia again in the sixth year bore Issachar, and in the seventh and last year of births bore Zabulon.
MANDRAKES.—In Hebrew it is dudaim, that is, breasts, by which more recent writers understand lilies. But far better and more truly does our Interpreter render mandrakes; for mandrakes have the appearance of breasts. Second, they are fragrant and beautiful. Third, they induce sleep; whence they are given to those who are to be cut by surgeons, that they may not feel the pain of the cutting. Fourth, they are said by many to have the force of a love-philtre, say Dioscorides and Theophrastus. Fifth, they aid fruitfulness: for they bring on the menses, and so purge the womb and prepare it for conception, says Aristotle, book 2 On the Generation of Animals, and Epiphanius in the Physiologus, chapter 4.
You will say: The mandrake is very cold; therefore it hinders conception. So St. Augustine, Against Faustus, book 22, chapter 56, where he thinks that the mandrakes were desired by Rachel not for conception but for the rarity of the fruit and the pleasantness of its smell. Livinus Lemnius answers, in his book On the Herbs of Holy Scripture, chapter 2, that the mandrake, because it is very cold, in cold regions and in cold wombs causes sterility; but in hot and parched ones, such as Judea and Mesopotamia, in which Jacob and Rachel dwelt, it makes for fruitfulness, because it tempers and moistens the heat and dryness of the womb. See more in Dioscorides, book 6, chapter 6, and Matthiolus there.
For these reasons, then, Rachel desired this mandrake, and bought it from Lia, but in vain and without effect: for, as appears from what follows, she remained barren yet three years, after which she was made fruitful, not by the mandrake, but by the power of God, whether natural or supernatural, and bore Joseph.
Tropologically, St. Cyril, book 11: The mandrake, he says, that is, by sleep and by the death of the cross, Christ refreshed, healed and made fruitful the Church. Again, the fragrant mandrake is a symbol of a good name, says St. Augustine above; for this must be sought and procured by everyone.
Philo says that the mandrake sends its roots under the earth, like a human corpse: whence this root is called by Pythagoras anthropomorphon, and by Columella semi-man. Perhaps even in the time of Rachel there were impostors like ours, who from the root of the mandrake (although Matthiolus thinks that they do it not from the mandrake but from bryony), which has the appearance of the thighs and feet of a man, carve little images, in which, by inserting millet seed into very thin cuts, they make little rootlets grow out like human hair, and soon sell them, as though they had been something animate under the earth, which they themselves had drawn out at the risk of their lives beneath the gallows, and which has rare and hidden powers, for example of making a barren woman fruitful; so that from this persuasion Rachel sought them so eagerly.
for the sake of equity, to apportion the nights among the several wives, and since that night was Rachel’s, she cedes her right to Lia for the price of the mandrakes: for by this price Lia seems to herself to buy her husband from her sister for that night, according to the ancient custom, of which I spoke at chapter 29, verse 18. So St. Augustine. And thence she called her child Issachar, as if to say, there is a reward, namely for my mandrakes, which I sold to Rachel, or rather the reward of my charity and liberality, by which I gave my handmaid to my husband, as Lia herself says. Add that properly and simply Issachar is the same as sachar, that is, reward. For the jod added and prefixed to proper names is wont to be heemantic, or formative of the name, as is plain in Ismael, Isaac, Jacob, Jehova, etc. So the Septuagint, St. Jerome, Josephus.