Leah

Genesis 29:16-34:1; 35:23, 26; 46:5, 14, 18; 49:13; Ruth 4:11

  • Genesis 29:16-17 Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was graceful and beautiful.

  • Genesis 29:21-25 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife [Rachel] that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.) When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?”

  • Ruth 4:11 Then all the people who were at the gate, along with the elders, said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel…”

“Laban Engages Jacob” from Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Charles Foster, 1897. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Leah is the sister of Rachel, the wife of Jacob, and the mother to Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. Leah is probably best known for her rivalry with her sister. Both women married Jacob, and Rachel was the obvious favorite. However, something remarkable happens to Leah: God intervenes on her behalf. 

Leah’s story begins when Jacob meets Rachel and immediately falls in love. Leah and Rachel’s father Laban, also Jacob’s uncle, arranges a deal. Jacob will work for seven years for Rachel’s hand. He does, but the night of the wedding, Laban swaps Leah, the older sister, for Rachel. So Jacob works seven more years to marry his chosen sister. God enters this familial drama when God notices Leah’s plight. God “opened her womb” in contrast to Rachel who “was barren” (Genesis 29:31).

Leah bears four sons in quick succession. Rachel, envious of her sister, gives her slave Bilhah to Jacob as a surrogate. Bilhah has two sons with Jacob. In retaliation, Leah gives her slave Zilpah to Jacob, and Zilpah also has two sons. The two sisters come to a truce when Leah gives Rachel mandrakes (believed to increase fertility) in exchange for a night with Jacob. God once more heeds Leah, and Leah has two more sons and a daughter with Jacob. Then, and only then, does God remember Rachel, who finally has a biological son of her own. 

While Jacob preferred Rachel in life, he requests to be joined with Leah in death. In Genesis 49:29-33, he asks to be buried at her burial site at Machpelah along with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah, not in Bethlehem with Rachel. The two sisters are memorialized in the Book of Ruth as the women “who built up the house of Israel” (Ruth 4:11).

  • Leah’s name means “cow or “ewe.” Cows were a symbol of fertility in ancient Mesopotamia, so the name hints at Leah’s fertility.

  • Leah’s eyes are called “soft.” This might mean she had cow eyes, befitting her name. One rabbinical commentary speculates Leah, thinking she’d have to marry Esau, cried so much she injured her eyes.

  • Leah is the foremother of two important Israelite tribes—Judah, the tribe of King David, and Levi, the priestly tribe.

  • Leah and Rachel aren’t always at odds. The two sisters advise Jacob to leave their father’s household, because Laban withholds their bride wealth (Genesis 31:3-15). Notably, Leah and Rachel’s united complaint about their father is “a remarkably critical statement by women about their treatment and status” (“Genesis” by Susan Niditch in The Women’s Bible Commentary).