Biblion Bible Commentary
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Yahweh saw that Leah was hated
Genesis 29:31-35
31 Yahweh saw that Leah was hated, and he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. · WEB
The unwanted wife is the one God acts for, and the names of her first four sons trace a woman giving up on being loved.
Yahweh saw that Leah was hated, and he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.
The word is strong and the English translations soften it variously — hated, unloved, less loved. The Hebrew is comparative in force and the situation is plain enough without adjudicating the term: one sister is loved and the other is not, and everyone in the tent knows which.
What God does about it is the point of the paragraph. He saw, and he acted, and he acted for the woman nobody chose. This is the same verb used of Hagar's God at a spring in the desert — the God who sees — and it is used here of a wife who was substituted into a marriage by her father and resented in it by her husband.
The four names that follow are a small autobiography, and reading them in order is the most affecting thing in the chapter.
Reuben, which sounds like see, a son: Because Yahweh has looked at my affliction; for now my husband will love me. She names her first child for her hope that a baby will change how Jacob feels.
Simeon, which sounds like heard: Because Yahweh has heard that I am hated, he has therefore given me this son also. She uses the word herself. She is under no illusion about her position and says it out loud in a child's name.
Levi, which sounds like joined: Now this time my husband will be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons. Three sons. Still counting, still hoping that the arithmetic will finally do it.
And then the fourth, and something has changed. Judah, which sounds like praise: This time I will praise Yahweh.
There is no mention of Jacob. No hope attached, no reason given, no expectation that anything will improve. The three previous names were all about a husband who was not coming; this one is about God alone. Whatever happened between the third son and the fourth, Leah stopped naming her children after her marriage.
Then she stopped bearing.
The outcome is worth stating plainly, because the book does not state it here and states it everywhere afterward. The son of the unloved wife, named for praise by a woman who had given up on being loved, is the one through whom the scepter comes Genesis 49:10 — the tribe of David, and the line the New Testament traces to Christ Matthew 1:2–3. Rachel is the wife Jacob loved and worked fourteen years for, and Joseph her son gets more chapters than anyone in Genesis. The messianic line runs through Leah.
And Leah is buried in the cave at Machpelah with Abraham, Isaac and Rebekah Genesis 49:31. Rachel is buried by a road. Genesis never says a word about the reversal; it simply records where everyone ended up.
settled What this mark means