Leah appears in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two wives of the Biblical patriarch Jacob.
16 Facts About Leah
2.
Leah was Jacob's first wife, and the older sister of his second wife Rachel.
3.
Leah has three more sons, namely Simeon, Levi and Judah, but does not bear another son until Rachel offers her a night with Jacob in exchange for some mandrake root.
4.
Leah gives birth to two more sons after this, Issachar and Zebulun, and to Jacob's only daughter, Dinah.
5.
Leah first appears in the Book of Genesis, in Genesis 29, which describes her as the daughter of Laban and the older sister of Rachel, and is said to not compare to Rachel's physical beauty and that she has tender eyes.
6.
Leah favored Rachel's sons, Joseph and Benjamin, over Leah's, and made no attempts to hide that from her or his other children.
7.
The Torah introduces Leah by describing her with the phrase, "Leah had tender eyes".
8.
The commentary of Rashi cites a Rabbinic interpretation of how Leah's eyes became weak.
9.
Leah becomes Jacob's wife through a deception on the part of her father, Laban.
10.
Leah was the mother of six of Jacob's sons, including his first four, and later two more, and a daughter.
11.
Leah responded by offering her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob, and named and raised the two sons that Zilpah gave birth to.
12.
One day, Leah's firstborn son Reuben returned from the field with mandrakes for his mother.
13.
Leah had not conceived for a while, and the plant, whose roots resemble the human body, was thought to be an aid to fertility.
14.
Leah agreed, and that night she slept with Jacob and conceived Issachar.
15.
Leah is thought to be buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron alongside Jacob.
16.
Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio includes a dream of Rachel and Leah, which inspired illustrations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others:.