RACHEL (Heb. Rāḥēl). - Wife of the patriarch Jacob (v.). At the suggestion of his mother Rebecca (Gen. 27:46), Jacob goes to Mesopotamia to choose a woman from his own kin. Having reached "the land of the Easterners" (ibid. 29:1), near Haran (ibid. 29:4), Jacob meets R., daughter of Laban (v.), brother of Rebecca, and therefore his cousin.
The meeting at the well, where the young woman used to lead her flock to water, is described idyllically (ibid. 29:10-12). Jacob, having asked for R. in marriage, since he could not offer a gift to his future father-in-law according to the marriage customs of the time, declares himself willing to serve him for seven years. But Laban, wishing first to settle his elder daughter Leah, substitutes her for R. at night, and Jacob is forced to remain another seven years in order to have his beloved R. as well (ibid. 29:15-18). While Jacob spends his seven years in Laban's house, Leah, set aside by her husband, she takes revenge by mocking her sister's barrenness. From the biblical account emerges the idea that R.'s sterility was willed by God to punish Jacob's unjust preference. The young R. is somewhat consoled, because her servant Bilhah bears her two sons, Dan (v.) and Naphtali (v.), whom she can consider her own sons according to a right sanctioned also by the Code of Hammurabi; she also has recourse to aphrodisiac substances (ibid. 30, 14-15). In the end God is moved to pity and "opens the womb" of R., who becomes the mother of Joseph (ibid. 30, 22-24).
When Jacob departs from Mesopotamia, R. cannot bring herself to part from the statuettes of the household gods (ibid. 31, 34-35). On the entry into Palestine, R. with her son still appears as Jacob's favorite, and he assigns her the safest place in the caravan (ibid. 33, 2). R. dies giving birth to her second-born, Benjamin (v.), during the journey between Bethel and Ephrath, that is, in the vicinity of Ramah (cf. 1 Sam. 10, 2; Jer. 31, 15) and not at Bethlehem, as the current text has it following a very ancient gloss (Gen. 35, 19). This gloss, together with the tradition of a tomb near Bethlehem, led the Evangelist to apply to the massacre of the Innocents the poignant verse of Jeremiah (Mt. 2, 18).
Angelo Penna