Rachel had watched her sister enter the wedding canopy and had not envied her — not then. But when the children came, one after another from Leah's womb, Rachel's patience broke. "And Rachel saw that she had not borne children to Jacob and she envied her sister" (Genesis 30:1). Not resentment of Leah's beauty or Jacob's affection — resentment of her good deeds.
The rabbis read this as the holiest form of envy. Rachel said, privately, "If I am not righteous like her, the Holy One, blessed be He, will not give me children." She was not jealous of Leah's fertility. She was jealous of her virtue, believing that virtue was the cause of the fertility she herself lacked. The midrash praises this — envy directed at someone's spiritual achievements is the only envy the rabbis approved of.
"And God remembered Rachel" (Genesis 30:22). The word "remembered" is loaded here, as it always is in Genesis — it implies a prior concern, a sustained attention, a moment of decision. God had not forgotten Rachel. He had been watching her faith through the years of barrenness: the years of watching Leah name her sons, the years of borrowing her own maidservant to produce surrogate children, the years of prayer. And in the fullness of time, He opened her womb. Joseph was born. And from that birth came the entire Egyptian chapter of Israel's story.