Christian Pure

Leah in the Bible: Jacob’s First Wife, and What Her Name Means

Christian Pure Team

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Summary

  • Leah was Laban’s elder daughter and Jacob’s first wife; Laban gave her to Jacob in place of her younger sister Rachel, saying it was not done “to give the younger before the firstborn” (Genesis 29:26).
  • Her Hebrew name, Le’ah, is usually explained as “weary” or as “wild cow”; Genesis explains each of her sons’ names but never her own.
  • She bore six sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun, and a daughter, Dinah, and she named Gad and Asher, the two sons her maid Zilpah bore.
  • Jacob “loved also Rachel more than Leah,” but the LORD saw that Leah was unloved and “opened her womb” (Genesis 29:30–31).
  • Moses and Aaron come from her son Levi, and David and Jesus from her son Judah (Exodus 6:16–20; Matthew 1:2–6).
  • She is buried in the cave of Machpelah with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, where Jacob asked to be buried too (Genesis 49:29–31).
  • Augustine read Leah as the active life and Rachel as the contemplative life, and Dante’s dream of the sisters in the Purgatorio carries the same pairing.

Leah was Jacob’s first wife, given to him by her father’s trick in place of her younger sister, Rachel. Her Hebrew name, Le’ah, is usually explained as “weary” or as “wild cow”; Genesis itself never says what it means. She bore six of Jacob’s twelve sons, Levi and Judah among them, and a daughter, Dinah. Hers is the story of a woman loved less, and Genesis does not soften it. It also says that the LORD saw her. The son…

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Bibliography (Click to show)
  • King James Version: Genesis 27:43; 29:16–35; 30:1–24; 31:14–15; 33:2; 35:19; 47:28; 49:10, 49:29–31; Exodus 6:16–20; Deuteronomy 10:8, 21:15; Ruth 4:11; Matthew 1:2–6; Hebrews 7:14, BibleGateway.
  • Genesis 29:16 in the Luther 1545, Schlachter 2000, Reina-Valera 1960, Almeida Revista e Corrigida, Almeida Atualizada, NVI, NVT, CEI, Nuova Riveduta 2006, Louis Segond 1910, Bible du Semeur, Russian Synodal and Vulgate Bibles, BibleGateway.
  • Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), entry לֵאָה, with James Strong, Exhaustive Concordance (1890), Hebrew 3812, Bible Hub.
  • Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “Leah: Bible,” Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org.
  • Tamar Kadari, “Leah: Midrash and Aggadah,” Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org.
  • Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean 22.52–58, tr. Richard Stothert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 4 (1887), New Advent.
  • Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, canto 27, lines 97–108, tr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867), Project Gutenberg.

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