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Bilhah (בִּלְהָה "faltering; bashful", Standard Hebrew ''Bilha'', Tiberian Hebrew ''Bilhâ'') is a person mentioned in the Book of Genesis. describes her as Laban's handmaid, who was given to Rachel to be her handmaid on Rachel's marriage to Jacob. When Rachel failed to have children, Rachel gave Bilhah to Jacob "to wife" to bear him children. () Bilhah gave birth to two sons, who Rachel claimed as her own and named Dan and Naphtali. (, ) (the use in the Torah of the prefix "to", as in "took to wife", may indicate that the wife is a concubine or inferior wife).〔(Women, similar to wives ) from vadimcherny.org〕 expressly calls Bilhah Jacob's concubine, a pilegesh.) The Testament of Naftali, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, says that Bilhah and Zilpah's father was named Ahotay. He was taken into captivity but redeemed by Laban, Rachel and Leah's father, who gave Ahotay a wife named Hannah, who was their mother. Rabbinic sources (Midrash Raba, and elsewhere), on the other hand, state that Bilhah and Zilpah were also Laban's daughters, through his concubines,〔Ginzberg, Louis (1909) (''The Legends of the Jews'' ), Volume I, Chapter VI: Jacob, at (sacred-texts.com )〕 making them half-sisters to Rachel and Leah. (See also, Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, xxxvi.) Bilhah is said to be buried in the Tomb of the Matriarchs in Tiberias. In the Book of Chronicles, Shimei's brothers were said to have lived in a town called Bilhah and surrounding territories prior to the reign of David. ==Reuben's adultery with Bilhah== Reuben was Jacob's (Israel) eldest son with Leah. says "And it was during the stay of Israel in that land, and Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel heard..."〔Genesis 35:22, this is from Wikisource translation, but King James and all other translations are essentially identical.〕 As a result of this adultery, he lost the respect of his father, as says: "Turbulent as the waters, you will no longer excel, for you went up onto your father’s bed, onto my couch and defiled it." However, Rashi, an 11th-century commentator, interprets the story differently. He suggests that, as long as Rachel was alive, Jacob kept his bed in her tent and visited the other wives in theirs. When Rachel died, Jacob moved his bed into the tent of Bilhah, who had been mentored by Rachel, to retain a closeness to his favourite wife. However, Reuben, Leah's eldest, felt that this move slighted his mother, who was also a primary wife, and so he moved Jacob's bed into his mother's tent. This invasion of Jacob's privacy was viewed so gravely that the Bible equates it with adultery, and lost Reuben his first-born right to a double inheritance.〔, ; 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bilhah」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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