And so the Bible says in verse number 30 of chapter 29,
he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah,
and served with him yet seven other years. And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated,
he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And then we read through that part where
Leah has four sons. Now obviously it takes time to have four sons.
So this is many years that are going by by the time we get to chapter 30 verse one,
where Rachel saw that she bear Jacob no children. But so, you know, probably at least what, about
six to eight years has gone by for Leah to have given birth to four sons. And so she says,
give me children or else I die. Give me children or else I die. Now the main thing I want to point
out here, first of all, is that envy is a sin. Envy is not a righteous attitude to have. It's
the wrong attitude. And so this give me children or else I die. You say, well, she just really
wants to have kids. And I get that because obviously women want to have kids and it's
very difficult for women when they're not able to have children. This is a hard thing for them
to deal with. But what does the Bible say is the problem for Rachel? It's not just necessarily that
she really just wants to hold that little bundle of joy in her arms. The Bible says that she envies
Leah. Okay, she envies Leah. Envy, you know, where bitter envying and strife is, there is confusion
and every evil work, the Bible says. And so envy is obviously a work of the flesh. Envy is a sin.
One of the Ten Commandments commands against envy because it says, thou shalt not covet. What does
covet mean? Well, the Bible defines it for us in the book of Romans. The apostle Paul says,
I had not known envy, but that the law had said, thou shalt not covet. So the command against envy
in scripture is thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife, thou shall not covet thy neighbor's house,
his ox, his ass, his man-servant, his maid-servant, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.
And so when Rachel is coveting Leah's children, that's a sin. She's committing the sin of envy
here. And you know, she ought to just be happy for Leah because think about it. She's the one
who gets the most attention from her husband. She's the favorite. That's obvious to her.
That's obvious to Leah. It's obvious to everyone. So why can't she just be happy with that? Why
does she have to be number one in every area? She's already more beautiful than Leah. So she's
already been dealt a better hand genetically. She looks better than Leah, but then not only that,
her husband loves her more. Her husband gives her more attention and so forth, but yet that's not
enough. She wants to take away from Leah the one thing that Leah has going for her, which is the
fact that she's having sons for Jacob.