The Lost Matriarch: Finding Leah in the Bible and Midrash

Preface

ix preface Why a book about Leah? Other biblical heroines perform more impressive deeds and deliver more memorable speeches than Leah. After Deborah leads the Israelites in a grand battle against the Canaanites, she commemorates her victory in a song of praise to God (Judg. 4:4–5:31). Hannah resolutely corrects the mistaken accusations of the priest and later expresses her thanks for the birth of Samuel in a song of prayer (1 Sam. 1:1–2:10). And in the Apocrypha, Judith saves the Israelites by killing the Assyrian general Holophernes, memorializing her victory in a song of glory to God (Jdt. 8:1–16:25). But the Bible does not describe any great victories for Leah, and she doesn’t deliver any impressive prayer-songs. It is true that Leah is a member of that exclusive club of biblical heroines whom we remember as our Matriarchs. In contrast with how the Bible describes the other Matriarchs, however, the text remains stubbornly mute about Leah’s words and deeds. Those other Matriarchs are shown living brave and memorable lives of action and initiative, performing acts that change their families as well as the destiny of the Jewish people: Sarah protects her son by demanding the removal of his half brother Ishmael, a proposal expressly ratified by God (Gen. 21:9–13). Rebekah in turn intervenes for Jacob, her favorite son, by orchestrating Isaac’s blessing ceremony so that it will be for the benefit of Jacob and ultimately for the Children of Israel (Gen. 27:5–17). And Leah’s sister, Rachel, forcefully assumes responsibility over her own life and her posterity when she res- x Preface olutely seeks to bear the children initially denied to her (Gen. 30:1–8, 14–15, 24). But the Bible describes very few of Leah’s qualities, recounts very few of her actions, and quotes even fewer of her statements. As a consequence, her position in the remembrance and affection of people throughout history seems slight in comparison with the popular regard for other biblical Matriarchs and heroines . To the extent that Leah is remembered by the people, this seems attributable more to reverence for her illustrious descendants than any appreciation or even awareness of her personal qualities. Leah has become our Lost Matriarch. All these points certainly seem to present an impressive list of reasons for not devoting an entire book to Leah. But those very reasons are what compelled me to search for her—the silent woman who essentially lost her place as a great Matriarch. Because so little about her appears in the biblical text, I felt I had to seek out the fuller story of her life elsewhere. We have all heard that the Bible is the best-read book in history . But that is not so. It may be the most widely read book in Western civilization, but it is probably also the worst-read book in the history of literature. The principal reason it is so hard to read the Bible as literature, I believe, is because of our culture ’s widespread reverence for the book. Many people view it as a God-written or God-inspired work, and this presumption makes it difficult to read the Bible critically in the same manner that we read other books. And unlike the way we were introduced to other great world literature, many of us first learned to read the Bible as young children, instructed by religious-school teachers or our parents. Once a child has been introduced to the Bible via simplified Bible stories that are presented by an authority figure as being historically, literally, (and, for some, divinely) true, it is very difficult to return to it later and read it with fresh adult eyes. As I began this search for Leah, it soon became obvious that I was far from the first to seek her. Fascinating clues to the con- Preface xi cealed story of her life can be found throughout that great body of inventive and thought-provoking traditional Jewish rabbinic and literary commentary on the biblical narrative called midrash (from the Hebrew root for “search out,” “seek,” “investigate”). The term “midrash” means different things in different contexts . It can refer to a literary form of explanation or elaboration of specific verses of the Hebrew Bible (exegesis) using a traditional process of close textual examination. But it can also refer to...