Footnote 4 – Rachel and Leah

The Book of Jubilees, an apocryphal Jewish work, gives us a different picture of Jacob’s relation to Leah. “And Leah his wife died in the fourth year of the second week of the forty-fifth jubilee, and he buried her in the double cave near Rebecca his mother, to the left of Sarah, his father’s mother. And all her sons and his sons came to mourn over Leah his wife with him, and to comfort him regarding her… For he love her exceedingly after Rachel her sister died; for she was perfect and upright in all her ways and honored Jacob, and all the days that she lived with him he did not hear from her mouth a harsh word, for she was gentle and peaceable and upright and honorable. And he remembered all her deeds which she had done during her life, and he lamented her exceedingly; for he loved her with all his heart and with all his soul” (Jubilees 36:21–24),”