Leah Archives - A Bible A Day

Leah, like her younger sister, Rachel, is an interesting character. While Rachel is most attractive, Leah isn’t. It’s Rachel Jacob wants to marry, but Rachel’s father pawns off Leah on Jacob instead.

When Jacob complains, he’s given Rachel too. So the two sisters go from vying for their father’s attention to competing with one another for their husband’s time.

Jacob loves Rachel but not Leah—though not so much that he won’t sleep with her. Because she’s unloved, God blesses her with children. First there’s Reuben, then Simeon, followed by Levi and Judah.

Later, in a most unusual story, Leah gives Rachel some mandrakes, a plant believed to have magical powers, in exchange for a night with their joint husband. Leah gets pregnant again and has Issachar and later Zebulun. After that she has Dinah.

Rachel is jealous of her older sister. As the sisters compete for Jacob’s attention, they introduce their handmaids into the marriage bed. Both maids produce two sons for Jacob.

After all this, Rachel has Joseph, and much later she dies giving birth to Benjamin. At last, it seems, Leah will not need to compete with her sister for Jacob’s attention. But the reminder of Rachel forever looms, with Jacob showing favoritism to Rachel’s sons, Joseph and Benjamin, over Leah’s.

Leah is pawned off by her father to marry a man who doesn’t want her, but God cares for her, blessing her with many children and a long life.

Family relationships are sometimes unfair and can cause hurt. Do we work to make things easier for our family or more difficult?

[Discover more about Leah in Genesis 29–30, Genesis 35:16–19, Genesis 37:3, and Genesis 42:4.]

Learn about other biblical women in Women of the Bible, available in audiobook, e-book, paperback, and hardcover.

A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.

In Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, a reoccurring theme is Jacob’s twelve sons. What isn’t apparent from Dreamcoat is many of the sons were half brothers. Jacob was indeed the father of all, but there were four different moms.

Here is how this convoluted family tree happened:

Jacob fell in love with Rachel (his uncle’s daughter, that is, his first cousin). Since he had no dowry, he agreed to work for his uncle seven years for her hand in marriage.

The morning after the wedding, he discovered that his veiled bride was actually Leah, Rachel’s older sister. He had been duped by his Uncle Laban. After protesting, Laban also gives Jacob Rachel’s hand in exchange for another seven years of labor.

Leah begins having children (six sons in all), but Rachel is childless — so she has her husband sleep with their maid, Bilhah, to produce children in her stead; Bilhah has two sons. In an escalating competition, Leah follows suit, giving her maid, Zilpah, to sleep with Jacob; Zilpah also has two sons.

Finally, Rachel gets pregnant and has Joseph. As the first-born of Jacob’s favorite wife, Joseph is doted upon by his father; hence he is given the infamous coat of many colors, thereby earning the wrath of his brothers.

Later, Rachel also gives birth to Benjamin, the youngest of the twelve; sadly Rachel dies in childbirth.

Although the nation of Israel is launched through these twelve sons, Jacob’s family life is a lesson of everything not to do.

[See Genesis, chapters 27 through 29.]