Rachel finally bore a son. She named him Joseph, from the Hebrew asaph, "to gather away" (Genesis 30:23). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan turns her naming into a prophecy about a river crossing three centuries in the future.
Rachel says: The Lord hath gathered off my reproach. Her infertility, which had been like a public shame, has been taken away by her son's birth. But the Targum completes the sentence with a surprising historical echo. Even as Jehoshua the son of Joseph will gather off the reproach of Mizraim from the sons of Israel, and will circumcise them beyond Jardena.
Rachel sees Joshua. She sees the descendant of her newborn son — Joshua son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, of the house of Joseph — standing on the far bank of the Jordan after the crossing (Joshua 5:2–9). She sees Joshua taking flint knives and circumcising the generation of Israelites born in the wilderness. She hears the Lord say, This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you (Joshua 5:9).
That rolling away in Joshua is the same Hebrew root as the gathering away in Rachel's naming. The two moments are linked across centuries by a single verb. Rachel's personal reproach being lifted at a birth prefigures the national reproach being lifted at a river.
Joseph's descendants will finish the story Rachel begins. The viceroy of Egypt (Joseph) will save the family. The conqueror of Canaan (Joshua) will free the nation from the shame of slavery. Both are Rachel's. Both are named implicitly in the single word asaph she speaks over her firstborn's cradle.
The takeaway: Rachel's first word as a mother was a prophecy of national redemption. The reproach of one woman foreshadowed the reproach-lifting of a nation.