Right from the start Naphtali was associated with struggling. He was born to Bilhah, Rachel’s maidservant, but it was Rachel who named him “My struggle,” because – she explained in Genesis 30:8 – “I have had a great struggle with my sister (Leah), and I have won.”
So Naphtali got stuck with that name, and all because Rachel was jealous of her sister having so many children (1), and thinking she’d scored a victory over Leah by having two children of her own. But there was also a prophetic side to Naphtali having such a name, because Jesus would later set up his home base in Capernaum, in the land that Naphtali’s descendants inherited, and the struggle he would then go through.
He willingly brought that struggle on himself too, because he left his hometown of “Nazareth and lived in Capernaum” instead, Matthew 4:13, which Isaiah had described as a pitifully lost land where “the people were living in darkness, and in the shadow of death” (15-16). And the evidence of that soon became apparent in Mark 1:21-24, when Jesus began teaching in Capernaum and was immediately confronted by a man “possessed by an evil spirit” that accused Jesus of “coming to destroy us” – “us” meaning there were many more demons in people in that area too, which Jesus “also drove out” (34, 39).
And that’s how Jesus’ struggle in the lost land of Naphtali began. For us it would be like starting from scratch with a person who’s had a horrible life, terrible childhood, having had all kinds of nutty ideas pumped into his head by people who either knew nothing about God or had some really weird religious ideas about him. Where on earth do you start?
It’s encouraging to know, then, that even when people are “living in darkness” it’s possible for them to “see a great light,” and in their minds “a light dawns,” Matthew 4:16, because that’s what happened when Jesus began to teach in that area. And it’s amazing how quickly thousands of people responded. They were Galileans too, viewed as “Gentile” rejects (Matthew 4:15), the lowest of the low.
But these were the people Jesus spent most of his time with, because to him the struggle was worth it. He came to teach (Mark 1:38), because his teaching had the power to “remove the gloom for those who were in distress” (Isaiah 9:1). Which brings to mind the blessing that Jacob gave his son Naphtali in Genesis 49:21, that predicted “The lovely ministry of Jesus”….(next blog)
