regarding twins can be seen in the story of Tamar and Judah in Genesis 38. Because Judah failed in his promise to secure a husband for his widowed daughter-in-law Tamar, she disguised herself as a harlot and sat at a roadside, waiting for Judah to pass.
Judah failed to recognize his daughter-in-law behind her disguise, and went in to her. The result of this union was a set of twins, one of whom became the ancestor of King David and, later, Jesus. Is this a case of the two ideals at the time of conception finding expression? Cayce states in the following Life reading that Tamar’s purposes were in keeping with God’s will. Apparently Judah’s were only for self-indulgence:
Before that we find the entity was in that now known as or called the Palestine land, during those days when the sons of Jacob sought for companions; and to one of the sons of Judah (Er) the entity, Tamar, became the companion.
Owing to the willfulness and the sin of Er, he was taken.14 There was the command or the seeking that there be the fulfillment of the law of the day; and Judah—in an unknown way—failing, yet the entity sought for that as would keep the issue of the body, and went in unto her own father-in-law; and bore two sons, one becoming then later the father of the fathers of Joseph and Mary—the parents of the Master.
There the entity was condemned, yes; yet her purposes, her desires were reckoned with by the God of mercy as being in keeping with His will and His ways.
Hence there is brought into the experience of the entity again the joys of knowing the Lord hath given, “Thy will, my will, are one with the Creative Forces.”
And there is reckoned through the ages, then, that ye became as one that chose to do above the ways of men when the voice of man rose above thine own sex.
Hence in the experience, judgments are not taken away—if the entity will trust rather in the Lord than in the judgment of men, or the children of men.
For God is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow—yea, forever; and they that come unto Him in humbleness of heart, seeking to know His face and His way, may indeed find Him.
1436-2
This Life reading (1436-2) is one of the most interesting of all the Life readings in the Cayce files. In her next incarnation, Cayce states she was “the woman taken in adultery.” (John 8:3-11) A remarkable similarity can be discerned in these two events when viewed in this connection.
Jacob’s First-Born
The following extract is from a Life reading in which a thirteen-year-old child was told that following an incarnation with Lamech (Genesis 4:19) he had been Reuben, the first-born child of Jacob and Leah.
Before that we find the entity was among the first–born of Jacob and Leah, and making for the expressions that in the beginning brought much that was in accord with the callings into an activity where these might have brought the blessings upon the activities in the sojourn. Yet when the desires of the flesh entered, and the associations with those things and about those peoples that had been as an expression of intolerance to those peoples, the entity made for the associations that brought disorder, discontent within those of its own household and those of its people in that experience and that expression.
These made for again those activities that have brought in the present the necessity of the awareness of the spiritual awakening within—the expression and experience of the entity.
693-3
As a youth, Reuben was a promising child. As he grew older, influences around him began to stimulate and awaken desires and emotions that were a portion of his former incarnation (from the time of Lamech). In Genesis 35:22, it is written he had sexual relationships with Bilhah, his father’s concubine.
The deep affront that Jacob felt this to be is evidenced in Genesis 49, when the dying Jacob delivered his final words to his twelve sons. He cursed Reuben for defiling his bed, and prophesied he would never have pre–eminence. Reuben was “unstable as water.”
Edgar Cayce’s Life reading for 693 shows how prophetic Jacob’s words were. The record shows a pattern of deteriorating expressions throughout his incarnations. In the present life the child bore the heavy karmic burden of a severe form of epilepsy with multiple seizures, partial paralysis, and, in a broken home, was the bed–ridden dependent of a mother who did not want him.
Joseph and Benjamin: Sons of Jacob and Rachel
Jacob labored seven years to wed Rachel, and was deceived by her father, Laban, who married him to his eldest daughter, Leah. Jacob contracted for another seven years and married Rachel. While Leah and his two concubines delivered ten sons, Rachel was barren. The long delay strengthened their love. When Rachel finally conceived, their first child was Joseph, the first physical incarnation of the soul who had been Adam, Enoch, and Melchizedek.
. . . the same soul-entity who in those periods of the strength and yet the weakness of Jacob in his love for Rachel was their first-born Joseph.
5023-2
A child of Love! A child of love—the most hopeful of all experiences of any that may come into a material existence; and to some in the earth that most dreaded, that most feared.
5755-1
The following discusses Joseph, and is a continuation of the discourse on the effects of the attitudes of parents on their unborn child. Apparently the superior attitude Joseph evidenced toward his brothers (Genesis 37) stemmed from the dominant mood of Rachel throughout her pregnancy.
Then, with Jacob and Rachel we have the material love, and those natures in which the characteristics of material love were thwarted. Yet in the very conception of same—though under stress (for there is held here by the mother the desire to outshine, as it might be poorly said)—we find a goodly child, one with all the attributes of the spiritual-minded individual; partaking of both the father and the mother in the seeking for a channel through which God might be manifested in the earth. And yet the entity had those physical attributes that brought into the experience of individuals those things that were reflected in the mind, in the movements and activities of the mother throughout the periods of gestation—when the entity had grown to manhood.
281-48
The reading also describes the variation between Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin, and supplies the additional note that Benjamin was later Saul, first King of Israel. Reading 5148-2 indicates the same soul had also been Seth, the third child of Adam and Eve.
Also from the same attitude taken by those parents when the second son, Benjamin, was conceived—what were the varying characteristics here? The material love was just as great, the satisfying of material desire was completely fulfilled; yet it lacked that desire to bring such as was wholly a channel through which the spiritual was to be made manifest. But it was a channel that eventually
