It was not one or the other, but both. And Jacob’s last boy would be the feistiest of them all!
Rachel gives this lesson its title in her own words, taken from Genesis 30:1, “Give me children, or else I die!” That’s long before she bore her first son, Joseph (v 24). Almost prophetically, she gave him a name meaning, “The Lord shall add to me another son.” Many years have passed. The whole household is now wending its way south, when Rachel gets another son. Here’s how it happened. They would have just passed Salem, later Jerusalem, on their left. Skirting the Hinnom Valley, it was only a few miles’ walk to the outskirts of Bethlehem, or Ephrath, as it was known then. Then, just north of the soon-to-be famous town, by the side of the road, Rachel—no longer a young woman—went into “hard labor” (35:16, KJV). No sanitary hospital conditions for her, no attending physician, no epidural. Every valiant mother goes into the Valley of the Shadow of Death to bear her young, and proves again the words spoken by the Lord, recorded in Genesis 3:16, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children.” Sadly Rachel would not come out of that valley. We read the plaintive account, “And so it was, as her soul was departing (for she died), that she called his name Ben-Oni; but his father called him Benjamin” (35:18). The boy with two names (meaning “son of my sorrow” and “son of my right hand”) pictures for us another Son, linked to Rachel in Matthew 2. Jesus had an earthly mother but no earthly father. She saw as far as the cross and was pierced with sorrow (Lk 2:35). But His heavenly Father (He has no heavenly mother) saw beyond to the glory, and declares Him to be the Son of His Right Hand (Ps 110:1)! And He was born in an outside place at Bethlehem, too!