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Concept
Leah
Summary
Leah (ˈleɪ.ə; ˈliːə) appears in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two wives of the Biblical patriarch Jacob. Leah was Jacob's first wife, and the older sister of his second (and favored) wife Rachel. She 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.
Leah first appears in the Book of Genesis, in Genesis 29, which describes her as the daughter of Laban and the older sister of Rachel, and is said to not compare to Rachel's physical beauty and that she has tender eyes. 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 or not 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 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.
Prior to her and Rachel's mentioning, the Book of Genesis details how their first cousin and future husband, Jacob, with the help of his mother, Rebecca, willfully deceives his dying father, Isaac, into giving him his twin brother Esau's birthright.
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