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Leah –
Jacob’s Wife – Wikipedia
Leah
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Leah
לֵאָה
Born Paddan Aram,
Aram-Naharaim
(present-day Harran, Turkey)
Died Canaan
(present-day Israel)
Spouse Jacob
Children
Reuben
Simeon
Levi
Judah
Issachar
Zebulun
Dinah
Father Laban
Relatives
Leah[a] (/ˈliːə/) appears in the Hebrew
Bible as one of the two wives of the Israelite patriarch Jacob. She was Jacob's
first wife, and the elder sister of his second (and favored) wife Rachel. Jacob
is tricked into marrying Leah by her father, Laban, and subsequently marries
Rachel. The narrative states that Leah was "hated" by Jacob or at any
rate loved less than her sister.
Leah is the mother of Jacob's first son Reuben. She has
three more sons, namely Simeon, Levi and Judah, but does not bear another son
until Rachel offers her a night with Jacob in exchange for some mandrake root (דודאים,
dûdâ'îm). Leah gives birth to two more sons after this, Issachar and Zebulun,
and to Jacob's only daughter, Dinah.
Name
Leah may mean "wild cow", a title also associated
with ancient goddesses like Inana, Urash, and Nanshe.[6] Scott Noegel says
there is an irony involving Laban's flocks within this detail, one is on
generative acts. Herein also lies a subtle pun on Leah's name, which occurs again
in Genesis 29:23.Give me my wife for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to
her (Hebrew: אליה, romanized: ëléah, lit. '(on)to
her'; Gen 29:21).
Biblical narrative
Overview
Leah first appears in the Book of Genesis, in Genesis 29,
which describes her as the daughter of Laban and the elder sister of Rachel,
and is said to not compare to Rachel's physical beauty and that she has tender
eyes.[b] Earlier passages in the Book of Genesis give some background on her
father's family, noting that through him, she is the niece of Rebecca, who is
the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau, and the granddaughter of
Bethuel, and rabbinic literature goes even further, with the Book of Jasher
claiming Leah and Rachel were twins and recording her mother's name as Adinah
and her brothers' names as Beor, Alub, and Murash. Rabbinical literature
contradicts itself on whether Leah and Rachel were half-siblings to Zilpah and
Bilhah, two sisters who would serve as mistresses to Leah's future husband,
Jacob, and whose children she and Rachel would raise as their own, as one
source[which?] lists them as being daughters of Laban, but not his wife Adinah,
and another lists them as being the daughters of Rotheus, a man who was close
to Laban but not related to him. If Zilpah and Bilhah were indeed half-sisters
of Leah, this would make Leah's adoptive sons, Gad and Asher, and Rachel's
adoptive sons, Dan and Naphtali, her nephews. According to Genesis 28:2, the
family resided in Paddan Aram, an area believed to correspond with the
historical Upper Mesopotamia.
Before Leah and Rachel enter the narrative, Genesis
recounts how Jacob, aided by his mother, Rebecca, deceived his elderly father
Isaac into giving him the blessing intended for his twin brother Esau. Fearing
Esau’s retaliation, Jacob fled to Haran, where he met his maternal uncle Laban
and Laban’s daughters. Genesis describes Rachel as beautiful, while Leah is
said only to have "weary", "tired", or "tender"
eyes.[b] Jacob agreed to work for Laban for seven years in order to marry
Rachel. At the end of this period, however, Laban substituted Leah for Rachel
at the wedding, explaining that local custom required the elder daughter to
marry first. Jacob married Rachel after completing the week-long celebration of
his marriage to Leah and agreed to work another seven years for Laban. Genesis
states that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah; when God saw that Leah was
unloved, he enabled her to conceive, while Rachel remained childless.
Despite Rachel's infertility, Jacob still favored Rachel
over her. He also favored Rachel's sons, Joseph and Benjamin, over Leah's, and
made no attempts to hide that from her or his other children. According to 1
Chronicles 5:1, Jacob took the firstborn's birthright, which entitles a
firstborn to a larger inheritance in Jewish law, from Reuben, his oldest son,
to Joseph, who was his second-youngest son, and, in Genesis 33:2, when he is
confronted by Esau, puts Leah, along with Zilpah and Bilhah and all of their
sons, in front of himself, Rachel, and Joseph, to be used as something of a
buffer or a shield to protect himself in the event the confrontation turned
violent.
Appearance
The Torah introduces Leah by describing her with the
phrase, "Leah had tender eyes" (Biblical Hebrew: ועיני
לאה רכות) (Genesis 29:17). It is
argued as to whether the adjective "tender" (רכות)
should be taken to mean "delicate and soft" or rather
"weary" or "weak".
The commentary of Rashi cites a Rabbinic interpretation of
how Leah's eyes became weak. According to this story, Leah was destined to
marry Jacob's older twin brother, Esau. In the Rabbinic mind, the two brothers
are polar opposites; Jacob being a God-fearing scholar and Esau being a hunter
who also indulges in idolatry and adultery. But people were saying, "Laban
has two daughters and his sister, Rebekah, has two sons. The older daughter
(Leah) will marry the older son (Esau), and the younger daughter (Rachel) will
marry the younger son (Jacob)." Hearing this, Leah spent most of her time
weeping and praying to God to change her destined mate. Thus the Torah
describes her eyes as "soft" from weeping. God hearkens to Leah's
tears and prayers and allows her to marry Jacob even before Rachel does.
Marriage to Jacob
Leah becomes Jacob's wife through a deception on the part
of her father, Laban. In the Biblical account, Jacob is dispatched to the
hometown of Laban—the brother of his mother Rebekah—to avoid being killed by
his brother Esau, and to find a wife. Out by the well, he encounters Laban's
younger daughter Rachel tending her father's sheep, and decides to marry her.
Laban is willing to give Rachel's hand to Jacob as long as he works seven years
for her.
On the wedding night, however, Laban switches Leah for
Rachel. Later Laban claims that it is uncustomary to give the younger daughter
away in marriage before the older one (Genesis 29:16–30). Laban offers to give
Rachel to Jacob in marriage in return for another seven years of work (Genesis
29:27). Jacob accepts the offer and marries Rachel after the week-long
celebration of his marriage to Leah.
Motherhood
Leah was the mother of six of Jacob's sons, including his
first four (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah), and later two more (Issachar and
Zebulun), and a daughter (Dinah). According to the scriptures, God saw that
Leah was "unloved" and opened her womb as consolation. Through her
sons Levi and Judah, she is thus the matriarch of both the priestly (Levite)
and royal (Judahite) tribes in Israel.
Seeing that she was unable to conceive, Rachel offered her
handmaid Bilhah to Jacob, and named and raised the two sons (Dan and Naphtali)
that Bilhah gave birth to. Leah responded by offering her handmaid Zilpah to
Jacob, and named and raised the two sons (Gad and Asher) that Zilpah gave birth
to. According to some commentaries, Bilhah and Zilpah are actually half-sisters
of Leah and Rachel.
One day, Leah's firstborn son Reuben returned from the
field with mandrakes for his mother. Leah had not conceived for a while, and
the plant, whose roots resemble the human body, was thought to be an aid to
fertility. Frustrated that she was not able to conceive at all, Rachel offered
to trade her night with their husband with Leah in return for the mandrakes.
Leah agreed, and that night she slept with Jacob and conceived Issachar.
Afterwards she gave birth to Zebulun and to a daughter, Dinah. After that, God
remembered Rachel and gave her two sons, Joseph and Benjamin.
Rivalry with Rachel
On a homiletical level, the classic Chassidic texts explain
the sisters' rivalry as more than marital jealousy. Each woman desired to grow
spiritually in her avodat HaShem (service of God), and therefore sought
closeness to the tzadik (Jacob) who is God's personal emissary in this world.
By marrying Jacob and bearing his sons, who would be raised in the tzadik's
home and continue his mission into the next generation (indeed, all 12 sons
became tzadikim in their own right and formed the foundation of the Nation of
Israel), they would develop an even closer relationship to God. Therefore, Leah
and Rachel each wanted to have as many of those sons as possible, going so far
as to offer their handmaids as proxies to Jacob so they could have a share in
the upbringing of their handmaids' sons, too.
Each woman also continually questioned whether she was
doing enough in her personal efforts toward increased spirituality, and would
use the other's example to spur herself on. Rachel envied Leah's tearful
prayers, by which she merited to marry the tzaddik and bear six of his twelve
sons.The Talmud (Megillah 13b) says that Rachel revealed to Leah the secret
signs which she and Jacob had devised to identify the veiled bride, because
they both suspected Laban would pull such a trick.
Death and burial
Leah died some time before Jacob (according to Genesis
49:31). She is thought to be buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron
alongside Jacob. This cave also houses the graves of Abraham and Sarah, and
Isaac and Rebekah.
Medieval Christian symbolism
In medieval Christian symbolism, Rachel was taken as a
symbol of the contemplative (monastic) Christian life, and Leah as a symbol of
the active (non-monastic) life Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio includes a dream of
Rachel and Leah, which inspired illustrations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and
others:
"... in my dream, I seemed to see a woman
both young and fair; along a plain she gathered
flowers, and even as she sang, she said:
Whoever asks my name, know that I'm Leah,
and I apply my lovely hands to fashion
a garland of the flowers I have gathered."