Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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(1.) He acknowledges the hand of God in the affliction which he was a sharer with her in: He hath withheld the fruit of the womb. Note, Whatever we want, it is God that withholds it, a sovereign Lord, most wise, holy, and just, that may do what he will with his own, and is debtor to no man, that never did, nor ever can do, any wrong to any of his creatures. The keys of the clouds, of the heart, of the grave, and of the womb, are four keys which God had in his hand, and which (the rabbin say) he entrusts neither with angels nor seraphim. See Re 3:7, Job 11:10, 12:14.
(2.) He acknowledges his own inability to alter what God had appointed: "Am I in God's stead? What! dost thou make a god of me?" Deos qui rogat ille facit--He to whom we offer supplications is to us a god. Note,
[1.] There is no creature that is, or can be, to us, in God's stead. God may be to us instead of any creature, as the sun instead of the moon and stars; but the moon and all the stars will not be to us instead of the sun. No creature's wisdom, power, and love, will be to us instead of God's.
[2.] It is therefore our sin and folly to place any creature in God's stead, and to place that confidence in any creature which is to be placed in God only.
3 And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall
bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.
At the persuasion of Rachel, he took Bilhah her handmaid to wife, that, according to the usage of those times, his children by her might be adopted and owned as her mistress's children, Ge 30:3-8, &c. She would rather have children by reputation than none at all, children that she might fancy to be her own, and call her own, though they were not so. One would think her own sister's children were nearer akin to her than her maid's, and she might with more satisfaction have made them her own if she had so pleased; but (so natural is it for us all to be fond of power) children that she had a right to rule were more desirable to her than children that she had more reason