When Rachel saw that she was not bearing any children for Jacob, she envied her sister. “Give me children, or I will die!” she said to Jacob.
1. And when Rachel saw. Here Moses begins to relate that Jacob was distracted with domestic strifes. But although the Lord was punishing him, because he had been guilty of no light sin in marrying two wives, and especially sisters; yet the chastisement was paternal; and God himself, seeing that he is wont mercifully to pardon his own people, restrained in some degree his hand.
We have here the bad consequences of that strange marriage which Jacob made with the two sisters. Here is, I. An unhappy disagreement between him and Rachel (Gen 30:1, Gen 30:2), occasioned, not so much by her own barrenness as by her sister's fruitfulness.
Commenting on Genesis 30:1-13
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children,.... In the space of three or four years after marriage, and when her sister Leah had had four sons: Rachel envied her sister; the honour she had of bearing children, and the pleasure in nursing and bringing them up, when she lay under the reproach of barrenness: or, "she emulated her sisters" (z); was desirous...