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.[6]
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.[9][10]
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.[11]
References
Notes
- ^ For the etymology, see Holman 2007, p. 49
- ^ The Testament of Naphtali 1:9 as translated in Platt, Jr. 2010
- ^ The Testament of Naphtali 1:11 as translated in Platt, Jr. 2010
- Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, xxxvi.
Citations
- ^ Genesis 30:3–5
- ^ Genesis 30:6–8, 35:25
- ^ Rabbi Eliezer 1916, pp. 271–272.
- ^ Ginzberg 1909.
- ^ Reiss & Zucker 2014, pp. 307–314.
- ^ 1 Chronicles 4:27–29
- ^ Genesis 35:22
- ^ Genesis 49:4
- ^ Drazin & Wagner 2006, p. 239.
- ^ Fraade 2011, p. 423.
- ^ Vineyard 2017.
Sources
- Drazin, Israel; Wagner, Stanley M. (2006). Israel Drazin (ed.). Onkelos on the Torah: Be-reshit. Gefen Publishing House Ltd. ISBN 978-965-229-342-8.
- Fraade, Steven (2011). Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages. BRILL. OCLC 1162008537.
- Ginzberg, Louis (1909). "VI: Jacob". The Legends of the Jews. Vol. I.
- Holman (2007). Holman Illustrated Pocket Bible Dictionary. B&H Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-58640-314-0.
- Rabbi Eliezer (1916). "Chapter 36". Pirke De Rabbi Eliezer. Translated by Friedlander, Gerald (1916 translation ed.). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Turner & Co. Ltd.
- Reiss, Moshe; Zucker, David J. (2014). "Co-opting the Secondary Matriarchs". Biblical Interpretation. 22 (3): 307–324. .
- Platt, Jr., Rutherford H. (2010). The Forgotten Books of Eden. ISBN 1451590792.
- Vineyard, Jennifer (4 May 2017). "10 Things You Didn't Know About 'The Handmaid's Tale'". elle.com.
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