Genesis 30:14 Meaning Reuben Went in the Days of Wheat

The mandrake root, shaped like a small human body, is the deep generative force in a person, the old fertility power that lets spirit take form in flesh, and the contest over it between the 2 wives is a contest inside one consciousness. Leah is the outer, active life engaged with the world and its labors, while Rachel is the inner, longing life that yearns to conceive and has stayed barren, and each faculty grasps for the same root of creative power. The wheat harvest is the season of ripeness, the point where what was sown in the body comes to fruit, and that is exactly when the potent root surfaces in the open ground of the self. Reuben, the first fruit, is the one who finds it, because it is the earliest gathering that brings the deep force up out of the field.

What unfolds is the whole self negotiating with itself over its own power to create. The active side already holds it, the yearning side pleads for it, and both are movements within a single person reaching for life.

Mandrakes: the deep generative root in a person, the human-shaped power of fertility that lets spirit take form in the body Field: the open ground of the self where sown energies rise to the surface Wheat harvest: the season of ripeness, the point where what was planted in the body comes to fruit