Leah had four sons. Rachel had none. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 30:1 preserves the raw edge of her suffering.
Rachel was envious of her sister. The Aramaic does not hide the word. Envy is the right word for what Rachel felt — not petty jealousy over new clothes, but the consuming ache of a childless woman watching her sister's tent fill with boys. Leah's four sons were not abstract. They were running in and out of the house. Rachel saw them every day.
So she said to Jacob, Pray before the Lord that He give me children. Notice — she is not asking Jacob to give her children. She is asking him to pray. Rachel knows that fertility comes from Heaven, not from a husband. She is asking the patriarch to intercede.
And then the threshold: if not, my life I shall reckon as the dead. In the Aramaic this is a statement of identity, not a threat. Rachel is saying that a life without children is, to her, already a kind of death. She is not suicidal. She is heartbroken.
The Talmud (Nedarim 64b) will later say that four types of people are considered as if dead: the poor, the leper, the blind, and the childless. Rachel knows this taxonomy in her bones. Her words are the first statement of that principle in Jewish history.
Jacob will respond angrily. But Rachel's cry will be heard in heaven, and her two sons — Joseph and Benjamin — will eventually come. The pain of Genesis 30:1 is the soil out of which the viceroy of Egypt will grow.
The takeaway: the loudest prayers of the Hebrew Bible are often the angriest. Rachel pleaded in envy, and Heaven answered.