Bilhah
Bilhah (בִּלְהָה "unworried",
The
Bilhah is said to be buried in the Tomb of the Matriarchs in Tiberias.
In the Books of Chronicles, Shimei's brothers were said to have lived in a town called Bilhah and surrounding territories prior to the reign of David.[10]
Reuben's adultery with Bilhah
Some rabbinical commentators interpreted the story differently, saying that Reuben's disruption of Bilhah's and Jacob's beds was not through sex with Bilhah. As long as Rachel was alive, say these commentators, Jacob kept her bed in his tent. When Rachel died, Jacob moved Bilhah's bed into his tent, who had been mentored by Rachel, to retain a closeness to his favourite wife. However, Reuben, Leah's eldest, felt that this move slighted his mother, who was also a primary wife, and so he moved his mother's bed into Jacob's tent and removed or overturned Bilhah's. This invasion of Jacob's privacy was viewed so gravely that the Bible equates it with adultery, and lost Reuben his first-born right to a double inheritance.[13][14]
In popular culture
- In the novels , Bilhah and Zilpah are half-sisters of Leah and Rachel by different mothers, following the Talmudic tradition.
- In Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction novel The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic society depicted cites the relationship between Bilhah, Rachel and Jacob as the scriptural basis for the role of handmaids as surrogates to high-ranking men and their infertile wives.[15]
References
- ISBN 978-1-58640-314-0.
- ^ Genesis 30:3–5
- ^ Genesis 30:6–8, 35:25
- ^ "The Testament of Naphtali" (1:9) as translated in The Forgotten Books of Eden by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr. [1]
- ^ "The Testament of Naphtali" (1:11) as translated in The Forgotten Books of Eden by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr. [2]
- ^ Rabbi Eliezer (1916). "Chapter 36". Pirke De Rabbi Eliezer. Translated by Friedlander, Gerald (1916 translation ed.). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Turner & Co. Ltd. p. 271-272.
- ^ Ginzberg, Louis (1909) The Legends of the Jews, Volume I, Chapter VI: Jacob, at sacred-texts.com
- Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, xxxvi.
- ^ Reiss, Moshe; Zucker, David J. (2014). "Co-opting the Secondary Matriarchs". Brill.
- ^ 1 Chronicles 4:27–29
- ^ Genesis 35:22
- ^ Genesis 49:4
- ISBN 978-965-229-342-8.
- OCLC 1162008537.
- ^ "10 Things You Didn't Know About 'The Handmaid's Tale'". 4 May 2017.