Overview
Leah first appears in the Book of Genesis, in Genesis 29, which describes her as the daughter of Laban and the elder sister of Rachel, and is said to not compare to Rachel's physical beauty and that she has tender eyes. Earlier passages in the Book of Genesis give some background on her father's family, noting that through him, she is the niece of Rebecca, who is the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau, and the granddaughter of Bethuel, and rabbinic literature goes even further, with the Book of Jasher claiming Leah and Rachel were twins and recording her mother's name as Adinah and her brothers' names as Beor, Alub, and Murash. Rabbinical literature contradicts itself on whether Leah and Rachel were half-siblings to Zilpah and Bilhah, two sisters who would serve as mistresses to Leah's future husband, Jacob, and whose children she and Rachel would raise as their own, as one source lists them as being daughters of Laban, but not his wife Adinah, and another lists them as being the daughters of Rotheus, a man who was close to Laban but not related to him. If Zilpah and Bilhah were indeed half-sisters of Leah, this would make Leah's adoptive sons, Gad and Asher, and Rachel's adoptive sons, Dan and Naphtali, her nephews. According to Genesis 28:2, the family resided in Paddan Aram, an area believed to correspond with the historical Upper Mesopotamia.
Before Leah and Rachel enter the narrative, Genesis recounts how Jacob, aided by his mother, Rebecca, deceived his elderly father Isaac into giving him the blessing intended for his twin brother Esau. Fearing Esau’s retaliation, Jacob fled to Haran, where he met his maternal uncle Laban and Laban’s daughters. Genesis describes Rachel as beautiful, while Leah is said only to have "weary", "tired", or "tender" eyes. Jacob agreed to work for Laban for seven years in order to marry Rachel. At the end of this period, however, Laban substituted Leah for Rachel at the wedding, explaining that local custom required the elder daughter to marry first. Jacob married Rachel after completing the week-long celebration of his marriage to Leah and agreed to work another seven years for Laban. Genesis states that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah; when God saw that Leah was unloved, he enabled her to conceive, while Rachel remained childless.
Despite Rachel's infertility, Jacob still favored Rachel over her. He also favored Rachel's sons, Joseph and Benjamin, over Leah's, and made no attempts to hide that from her or his other children. According to 1 Chronicles 5:1, Jacob took the firstborn's birthright, which entitles a firstborn to a larger inheritance in Jewish law, from Reuben, his oldest son, to Joseph, who was his second-youngest son, and, in Genesis 33:2, when he is confronted by Esau, puts Leah, along with Zilpah and Bilhah and all of their sons, in front of himself, Rachel, and Joseph, to be used as something of a buffer or a shield to protect himself in the event the confrontation turned violent.
