Curses and Blessings

Curses and Blessings

Posted on May 5, 2008

In allowing the incidents of Gen 35:18 to be recorded in the scriptures, the Holy Spirit teaches us that curses (cursed names) should and can be reversed by a blessing (blessed name).

We see how an innocent child, born to Rachael, could have be doomed to a life of sorrow by virtue of the cursed name (Benoni = son of my sorrow) given by his mother, had the father not come in immediately to change the curse into a blessing (Benjamin = son of my favoured right hand of power).

Rachael was the beautiful daughter of the manipulative Laban, who Jacob spent another seven years of hard labour to marry, after Laban has deceived him to have the elder sister Laban. Beautiful though she was, Rachael was a nag (Gen. 30:1), contentious (Gen. 30:8), a thief/ idolater (Gen. 31:19), deceptive and (Gen. 31:34-35). But worse of all, she was of such a wicked heart that at the point of death, she sentenced her innocent baby to a life of curse, naming him Benoni, a son of sorrow.

Was the innocent baby responsible for Rachael’s death? I do not think so.  By her words to her husband Jacob in Gen. 30:1 “…Give me children or else I die”, she had sentenced her self to death. No man can give children; only God does, so since Jacob could not have given her children, the only option remaining according to her words was to die. And so God gave her, not just a child, but children, and immediately she died! May we not be ensnared by our own words.  Amen.

Thank God for Jacob who immediately reversed Rachael’s deathbed curse. Parents, when a partner curses, let the other immediately bless. Otherwise, the effects might linger on the child like it did on Jabez, before he in his adult age, cried out to God.

Dr Tayo Babalobi

tbabalobi@christonline