Leah #37

Leah is the older daughter of Laban, the first wife of Jacob, and the mother of six of the twelve tribes of Israel. Her story, told in Genesis 29 to 35 and 49, is one of the Bible’s most sympathetic portraits of a woman who is overlooked by her husband but noticed by God.

Biblical Significance

Genesis introduces Leah with a short and puzzling description. Her eyes were “weak” or “tender,” while her sister Rachel was “beautiful and well favoured” (Genesis 29:16-17). The Hebrew word for “weak” is debated, and translators have rendered it as delicate, tender, or lacking in luster. When Jacob agrees to work seven years for Rachel, Laban gives him Leah on the wedding night instead, and Jacob discovers the substitution only in the morning (Genesis 29:21-25). He then marries Rachel as well and works another seven years, and the text states plainly that “he loved also Rachel more than Leah” (Genesis 29:30).

The narrator says that “the LORD saw that Leah was hated” and opened her womb. She bears Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, and the names she chooses reveal her longing for her husband’s love. At Reuben’s birth she says, “Now my husband will love me,” and after the birth of Levi, “Now this time will my husband be joined unto me.” At Judah’s birth, her tone changes: “Now will I praise the LORD” (Genesis 29:31-35). She later bears Issachar and Zebulun and a daughter, Dinah (Genesis 30:14-21).

Legacy

Leah’s sons include Levi, the ancestor of Israel’s priests, and Judah, from whom King David and, in the New Testament genealogies, Jesus descend. Through Judah, the line of David runs from Leah rather than Rachel, a reversal that has struck many readers. Rachel’s sons Joseph and Benjamin have their own place in Israel’s story, but both the Davidic line and the priestly line come from the unloved wife.

At the end of his life, Jacob asks to be buried with his ancestors in the cave of Machpelah, in the field near Mamre, and remarks that “there I buried Leah” (Genesis 49:29-31). Leah is therefore laid in the family tomb with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah, while Rachel is buried on the road to Ephrath. In the book of Ruth, the elders of Bethlehem pray that the bride will be “like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel” (Ruth 4:11). Leah is often read as an example of God’s attention to those who are unloved and of his purposes working through them.