Genesis 35:18

Ben-oni. The birth of Benjamin marked the fulfillment of Rachel’s expressed wish in the naming of Joseph, that God would give her another son (see on ch. 30:24). As she lay dying in childbirth she named this son Ben-oni, “son of my pain” or “son of my misfortune.” Under the circumstances, from her point of view, it was a most appropriate name.

Benjamin. Literally, “son of the right hand.” Yamin, “right,” connotes happiness and prosperity, and in Arabic, good fortune as well. A true optimist, Jacob felt that his youngest son should have a name expressing courage and hope, a name that would ever remind him of the joy that came to his heart at the birth of his 12th son rather than his sorrow at the loss of Rachel. The one compensated, in part, for the loss of the other.

Her soul was in departing. The idea that Moses here speaks of some immaterial but conscious part of Rachel, which presumably winged its flight to Paradise at the moment of her death, is without Scriptural foundation. To read such meaning into the text would set it at variance with many other specific statements of Scripture which plainly teach that consciousness ceases completely at death (see Ps. 146:4; Eccl. 9:5, 6, 10; etc.). One of the primary meanings of the word nephesh, “soul,” is “life,” as it is translated 119 times (Gen. 9:4, 5; Job 2:4, 6; etc.), or “breath,” as it is rendered in Job 41:21. Genesis 9:5 speaks about the “blood of your lives [nephesh],” which makes it clear that the nephesh has blood, and that the blood is essential to its existence. The nephesh could not, therefore, possibly be an immaterial entity. In Gen. 1:20, 30 the brute creation is said to have a nephesh, “life.” The possession of a nephesh, then, gives man nothing more than all forms of animal life possess. Certainly no one would wish to claim that at death the “souls” of amoebae, mollusks, and apes go flitting their way to heaven. In fact, in Eccl. 3:19 it is specifically stated that both animals and men have the same “breath,” ruach, and that at death the same thing happens to both of them. According to Ps. 146:4 two things happen to a man when he dies:

(1) His “breath,” ruach, leaves his body.

(2) “His thoughts perish.” The text under consideration is a simple statement of the fact that Rachel, in her last moments of consciousness and with her last fleeting breath, gave her son the name Ben-oni.

She died. Rachel had cried to her husband, “Give me children, or else I die” (ch. 30:1). Now both came at once.