Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis

Leah and Rachel—Founders of the House of Israel

325 Part 5 1 Rachel and Leah are mentioned in Ruth 4:11 as the two women who founded the house of Israel. Leah and Rachel— Founders of the House of Israel Introduction The matriarchs, Leah and Rachel,1 with their two maids Zilpah and Bilhah, were the mothers of the twelve sons of Jacob who became the twelve tribes of Israel. Their story is found in Genesis 29–35. Leah and Rachel were the daughters of Laban, the brother of Rebekah. “Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored” (Gen. 29:17). Jacob fell in love with Rachel, the younger daughter, and agreed to work for seven years for her hand in marriage. On the wedding day, Laban switched his daughters, and Jacob inadvertently married the older, Leah. Jacob agreed to work for seven more years for the hand of Rachel. Leah had four sons, filling the childless Rachel with envy. Her words to Jacob, “Give me children or I die!,” foreshadowed her death years later following the birth of a second son. Like Sarah, Rachel tried to solve her infertility problem by giving her maid, Bilhah, to Jacob. Leah similarly gave her maid Zilpah to Jacob. Jacob’s four wives bore twelve sons and a daughter, Dinah. Jacob asked Laban for permission to leave for his own country with his wives and children but Laban resisted, acknowledging that he had been blessed because of Jacob’s presence. Jacob set up a scheme to increase his flocks and became exceedingly prosperous. The Lord directed Jacob to return to the Promised Land. His wives agreed to leave their father’s household. Laban pursued them and searched unsuccessfully for the household gods, which Rachel had stolen.The family stopped for a while near Shechem, where 326 Let Her Speak for Herself Leah’s daughter, Dinah, was raped. The family then left that area and moved toward Isaac’s household. Onroute, Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin and was buried on the way to Ephrath (Bethlehem). Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb to perpetuate her memory. Leah’s death is not recorded, but her burial site was the Cave of Machpelah, where Jacob was also buried (Gen. 49:31).2 In writing on Leah and Rachel, women interpreters confronted a long and complex narrative that focused on Jacob. Leah and Rachel and their maids were relatively flat, or undeveloped characters.3 Rachel’s character was more complex than the others, though, and as Northrop Frye observed, Rachel became “the typical wife of Jacob or Israel and hence . . . the symbolic mother of Israel (Matthew 2:18).”4 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, “The characteristics of these two sisters, Leah and Rachel, are less vividly given than those of any of the patriarchal women. Sarah, Hagar, and Rebekah are all sharply defined characters, in and of themselves; but of Leah and Rachel almost all that can be said is that they were Jacob’s wives, and mothers of the twelve tribes of Israel.” Because the text did not present Leah and Rachel as fully developed figures, the women interpreters looked for other ways to flesh out the personalities of Leah and Rachel. They searched for hints in the text and behind the text. Then they drew upon their imaginations and experiences as daughters and wives, and as readers and (in some cases) writers of romantic literature. Their commitment to the importance of families, especially mothers, for character development led them to look for clues about the sisters’ personalities in the character and names of their children. They found further information on the personalities of Leah and Rachel in Jacob’s relationship with his wives, the two women’s prayers, and even in their obituaries, as Rachel’s death was recorded and Leah’s was not. Their culturally conditioned assumptions about the qualities women were expected to display (piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity) provided a further set of interpretive guidelines for under- standing and evaluating the wives of Jacob. Assumptions about the nature of scripture as inspired, or in the case of Stanton and Colby, ‘uninspired,’ also 2 Rachel is mentioned in Jeremiah 31:15: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because her children are no more.” This image of Rachel weeping is applied in Matthew 2:18 to Herod’s slaughter of the innocent children of Bethlehem. 3 Literary critics usually distinguish between flat and round...