You cannot live by bread alone, or for that matter water alone! The “Husbandman” provides the bread and the “Vine” the water.
The Father is the “Husbandman” and the Son is the “Good Shepherd”. In the case of Isaac, he was the “husbandman” and Jacob, or “Israel”, the “shepherd”. “Sheep” in scripture, are figuratively men. Rachel was bringing the sheep to be watered at the well. Jacob came to procure a wife for himself. He saw Rachel bringing in the sheep. It was love at first sight! That introduces today’s commentary:
1 Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east. 2 And he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, there were three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks: and a great stone was upon the well's mouth. 3 And thither were all the flocks gathered: and they rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the sheep, and put the stone again upon the well's mouth in his place… 7 And he said, “Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together: water ye the sheep, and go and feed them.” 8 And they said, “We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; then we water the sheep.” (Gen 29:1-3,7-8)
The “people of the east” has a double-meaning in that context. They were eastward of Canaan and were the people aforetime — before Abraham settled in Canaan. They were Abraham’s relation by his brother, Haran, and were not Canaanites.
Likewise, Jacob was east of Jacob’s Stone where he dreamed about the ladder to heaven. He left his home in the Promised Land to venture out unto the world. Some of his last words had been, “So that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God” (Gen 28:21). Jacob as well said, I shall again return to Paradise! He went out to find a bride for himself of his own kind (relation).
In this story, Jacob was symbolic of the Messiah going unto the world to
find a bride and to build a Church. Of course, not a Church of stone and cedar
like the Temple, but an invisible “House”
built on the foundation of God. That
foundation was that he would return to the ladder to heaven and bring with him
his bride.
Jacob’s ladder is symbolic of the Holy Cross and Bethel the “House of God.” In a previous commentary, I made the case that Bethel was neither a house nor in the present-day city of Bethel, and that neither was it the place where the Temple would be built. It is Calvary, and God’s “House” is the celestial dome and the place of the ladder, where there is access to the heavens. I believe Bethel was Calvary, or Calvariae Locus in the Latin. There was where Jesus ostensibly brought in the “sheep” and gave them “Living Water”.
Jacob went to get his bride just as the Bridegroom did for His “Bride” — the Church. The “House of God” would never be a building but a nation. Jacob was “Israel” and the first Spiritual Temple where God would build the “House of Israel”. That was why Jacob (renamed Israel) went outside his Paradise, and that was to bring in the sheep.
In his dream, Jacob had been told to bring in the sheep:
13 I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; 14 And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. (Gen 28-13-14)
So, with that promise from God, Jacob went out to fulfill the promise. God, like Adam long before, as much as commanded Jacob to multiply. Adam was to build the House of God with Adam’s kind. He failed God, so God tried it again with Shem and his brothers. Ham failed God! It would not be the House of Ham but the House of Shem!
God called that house, “tents”. [i] Of course, neither were they truly “tents” but places of worship of God. God was never a tent builder nor a builder of houses. He was always building the invisible Church. (It is more than coincidence that Paul built the foundation of the Church, and that he was a tentmake.)
Israel (Jacob) was the foundation of the spiritual Church, to wit: The “Household of God” is the Church, and that “building” is, “Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephes 2:20-21). Jacob went eastward to bring his bride to safety near the ladder to heaven, and to this day Jews seek burial at the Mount of Olives Cemetery to be near the access “door” to heaven.
Jacob was to multiply with Rachel. They were the new “Adam” and “Eve”, and symbolically Jesus and the Church. In fact, Jesus, as the second Adam, fulfilled those symbolizations, and the Church was “the mother of all living” as with Eve. [ii] Not only that, but Rachel would have been the mother of all the living, but Laban deceived Jacob. “Living” is filled with the Breath of God. [iii]
Just as with Sarah and Rebekah, Rachel was barren as well. [iv] But God came through! “God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb” *Gen 30:22). Of all twelve of the children of Israel, Rachel had only two children herself: Joseph and Benjamin. Rachel’s sons were fourteen in all [v] because Joseph had two sons and Benjamin the remainder. Her sons’ sons were hers as well because Israel adopted them as his own.
Because Leah and Rachel were full sisters and their concubines, half-sisters to them, then all of Israel’s seed “planted” by God and Jacob were many, and they were all of Abraham’s seed of his father.
In effect, Israel, unlike Adam, was “the father of all living” but Rachel was not! God built the House Israel with all those “lively stones” regardless!
But, “While he (Jacob) yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep; for she kept them” (Gen 29:9). Likewise, Rachel would be the keeper of all the sheep of Jacob’s House. Leah’s children would be as if her own as would the children of Bilhah and Zilpah. When anyone thinks of the wife of Jacob, that first thought is Rachel because she was the one that Jacob loved. Likewise, she was the wife who was barren that God made fertile. Furthermore, she was mother of the son who preserved the House of Jacob, “Joseph” by name.
The “sheep” from chapter twenty-nine have been identified. They are the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from Jacob’s several wives. The “House of Israel” is identified as the “sheep” that Rachel cared for.
In a previous commentary, the First Temple was identified as the House of Solomon and the priesthood. The First Church is now identified as the House of Israel and the “sheep” within it as the children that Rachel brought to Jacob.
When Jacob first looked there were only three flock of sheep. [vi] Those three flocks represent the children of Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah. Those three flocks were waiting to be watered. Then the stone of the well was rolled back, and those sheep were watered. Wait a moment! Here comes Rachel; she was bringing in all the “sheep” — her own children as well!
When it was time to water the sheep again, it was time to eat. When that time came, there came Rachel with her sheep to be watered and fed. But Jacob waited, “And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother” (Gen 29:10).
Somehow Jacob got the message; perhaps that only Rachel was the true heir of Laban for she was the daughter that brought Laban’s sheep.
Laban is a type of Satan. He deceived Jacob many times, commencing with Leah deposing Rachel as Jacob’s love. Laban broke his promise, and by deceit, Jacob knew Leah in the dark of the night. Leah was not the “mother of all living” that would make up the Church. Rachel was meant to be.
By the law of primogeniture, first sons were to be the legitimate heirs of the father. God always chose second sons whenever they were alive. In the case that second sons died, such as with Abel, successive sons were chosen.
Jacob was not the heir to Isaac by the law of primogeniture, and neither was Isaac the rightful heir of Abraham. Likewise, Abraham was not the rightful heir of Terah, his father, but because Haran had died, Abraham was the heir using the Law of God.
Thus, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were ordained by God to be His heirs, and that is why the Abrahamic Covenant was renewed with those generations. As God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Church that was built on their foundation makes Christians heirs to God’s Estate.
The topic today is whose “cattle” or herd of “sheep” would drink from the well and be fed. The three cattle of sheep that was there in the beginning drank of the water, but they would not be fed until all Laban’s sheep drank. Then the stone covering the well was rolled back for all to drink and be fed.
The other sheep, representing Leah’s, Zilpah’s, and Milhah’s children would drink, but Rachels drink and be fed with them at feeding time. Jacob was ecstatic when he saw Rachel bringing in the sheep: “And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept” (Gen 29:11).
Jacob was required to work for Rachel to be his bride. To become the “mother of the living Church”, so to speak. However, Laban, as with the Serpent, deceived Jacob. Leah’s children would also be the Church. Then God opened the wombs of all the women, and they bared children in the place of Rachel and Jacob.
In the end, when all the children (the sheep) were born, the stone covered the well was rolled back and all could drink of the well and eat their fodder. Hence, the Church consists of any who would go in to drink of the water and eat! If for Rachel’s children alone, then only Joseph and Benjamin would be the heirs of God. They grew into fourteen heirs. For God to keep His Covenant, Abraham would need more patriarchs than Joseph and Benjamin. He would need all the sheep of Jacob to make the House of Israel, and “The First Church”!
The martyr, Stephen, reviewed the watering at the well, very well: “And He gave him the covenant of circumcision: and so, Abraham begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs” (Acts 7:8)
Jacob, as “Israel” was the father of the Church, as the second seed of Abraham, and the second seed of Jacob. They would be the fathers of the second seed of God, called “Jesus”; Adam being the first seed and prodigal Son; the heir who spend the “inheritance” before the time of the Father suffering death.
Now what does the “well” represent? Perhaps, the tomb of Jesus with its stone. Or possibly, Jesus as the “stone that the builders rejected” [vii]
Of course, the tomb was the “House of Jesus” who the Jews rejected. Just what was in the tomb of Jesus? The Body of the Messiah! He is “The Bread of Life” and, “He that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).
Well, Rachel brought Laban’s other sheep that would be the antecedents of Jacob’s mottled sheep. Those with brown spots were his by his covenant with Laban. In other words, Laban was of the Wicked One just like Cain. His “sheep” would become Jacob’s just as his daughters would bare Jacob wives.
Now is the time for amplification: “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
The three groups of sheep plus one, are the “whosoever” and even included wicked Laban’s sheep. Rachel symbolically, by bringing in Laban’s sheep, was bringing in herself and Laban’s other three daughters. If Jacob had only seen the three herds of sheep drink, then “whosoever” would not include Rachel’s children who not only drank but ate substance.
The tomb of Jesus was for His Body — the very Body of God! The Holy Cross was for the Holy Spirit of God. It was the fountain of “Living Water” where flowed water and blood from the Belly of God.
As with the Crucifixion, going to the Cross was one thing and going to the tomb another thing. Only the women came to the tomb to honor the Body of the Messiah. The apostles were hiding out in a locked room. They all came to the Cross and drank of its “waters” but they did not go to the tomb to see the Body of Christ.
They, part of the foundation of the Church, [viii] did not come to see the building of the Church in that tomb. There laid the “Cornerstone” that the Galilean’s (eleven of the apostles) rejected.
All the apostles but one, Judas, were Galileans. They were of the tribes of Jacob but were not of the tribes of Judas and Benjamin. Because they were “spotted”, not full-blooded Jews (Judeans), they were the children of Jacob’s sheep.
It came to past that all the sheep drank, but the spotted “sheep” came to the well to eat and drink. The seed of Canaan, Judas of Iscariot, came to drink at “The Last Supper” but never stayed to eat of the real Body of Christ. The true water was at the Cross, not in the Upper Room, but he went to drink at the Gate to Hell in the Valley of Gehenna.
Of course, Rachel bringing in the sheep may foreshadow many events in the time of Christ as well as the Apocalypse, but consider that the Church was built for all the “sheep”, not just some “sheep”.
Where was the well? In Haran, not in Canaan’s land. None of Canaan’s sheep were there to drink or eat.
The “Baal” of the Canaanites to this day is Allah of Islam. In him is no Living Water nor Bread of Life. The stone to the “well” of Living Waters is not open to those of that faith unless they change wells and tombs. Their Dome of the Rock covers the Well of Lost Souls, and the Foundation Stone is the Rock that the Builder rejected in favor of His Son!
Finally, Peter ran for the Tomb to see Jesus gone. John, “the beloved,” outran Peter. Finally, two of the apostles came to the Tomb to witness the Resurrection. They had gone to the well to “drink,” but finally they came to the Tomb to “eat” of the Body of Christ.
(picture credit: Dulwich Picture Gallery; "Jacob and Rachel at the Well")
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