There I Buried Leah

The family had left Laban behind and returned to Canaan. Later, they set out from Bethel. While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth, and her labor was difficult. The journey stopped short of the place ahead.

During her severe labor, the midwife spoke to her. “Do not be afraid, for you are having another son.” At Joseph’s birth, Rachel had asked the LORD to add another son. Now another son was being born, and Rachel was dying.

With her last breath, she named the child Ben-oni. His father called him Benjamin. The account preserves both names, the one his mother gave as she died and the one his father gave him. Rachel did not live to raise the second son she had asked for.

She died and was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. Jacob set a pillar over her grave. The account points to it as the marker of Rachel’s tomb, standing there to its own day. Her burial place was beside the road on which the family had been traveling.

Leah is not given a speech in this passage. The telling does not describe her response to her sister’s death, or place words between her and Jacob afterward. Rachel’s death is recorded through the labor, the child’s names, the burial, and the pillar. What Leah said or did remains outside the account.

Decades later, Jacob was in Egypt, nearing his own death. His sons were with him when he gave instructions about his burial. He named a place in Canaan, away from the bed where he was dying. He wanted them to take him to the burial ground of his family.

“I am about to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite.” He gave them the location: Machpelah, near Mamre, in Canaan. He also named the purchase by which Abraham had acquired the field as a burial site.

Jacob’s instructions were particular. There was a field and a cave, a former owner and a purchase, a place his sons could identify. Abraham and Sarah were buried there, and Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob named the people already in the cave before asking to be laid with them.

Leah was there too. Her death has no scene here like Rachel’s death on the road. There is no recorded final word from her, no description of her burial as it happened. Instead, Jacob’s instructions disclose what he had done: he had buried her in the family cave.

When he finished instructing his sons, Jacob pulled his feet into the bed and breathed his last. The account says he was gathered to his people. He had told his sons where his body was to go, and the place he named was where Leah already lay.

The burial instruction does not supply the answer once sought in Leah’s words over Reuben, Simeon, and Levi. Jacob does not say here when or whether his love changed, and the account gives Leah no final speech to settle it. It gives her a place in the cave he names for himself.

Her name comes at the end of his account of those buried there. “There Abraham and his wife Sarah are buried, there Isaac and his wife Rebekah are buried, and there I buried Leah.”