Genesis 30:7

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid, conceived again, and bore Jacob a second son.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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בִּלְהָ֖ה

Bilhâh

H1090

“Bilhah”

Noun, Proper

Appears 11× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 29:29

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H1089

TWOT: None

Bilhah = "troubled" - Rachel's handmaid whom she gave to Jacob as a concubine, mother to two of Jacob's children, Dan and Naphtali (noun proper feminine) - a city in Simeon (noun proper locative)

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

9: words
9: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is בִּלְהָ֖ה Bilhah H1090 — appearing just 11 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

בִּלְהָ֖ה Bilhah H1090 occurs in 11 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
5 nouns
1 adjective
1 adverb

Verb forms

וַתַּ֣הַר Qal · Sequential Imperfect
וַתֵּ֕לֶד Qal · Sequential Imperfect

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 11 words from the Hebrew and 14 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 9 Hebrew tokens and 13 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Genesis 30:7 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַתַּ֣הַר ע֔וֹד וַתֵּ֕לֶד בִּלְהָ֖ה שִׁפְחַ֣ת רָחֵ֑ל בֵּ֥ן שֵׁנִ֖י לְיַעֲקֹֽב

Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid, conceived again, and bore Jacob a second son.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Genesis 30:7 Septuagint · lemma form

καί συνλαμβάνω ἔτι βαλλα ὁ παιδίσκη ραχηλ καί τίκτω υἱός δεύτερος ὁ ἰακώβ

And Balla, Rachel's maid, conceived yet again, and bore a second son to Jacob.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וְעַדִּיאַת עוֹד וִילִידַת בִּלְהָה אַמְתָא דְרָחֵל בָּר תִּנְיָן לְיַעֲקֹב

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וְאִתְעַבָּרַת תּוּב וִילֵידַת בִּלְהָה אַמְתָא דְרָחֵל בַּר תִּנְיַין לְיַעֲקב

And Bilhah the handmaid of Leah conceived again and bare a second son to Jakob.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Genesis 30:7 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

30:7-8 The name Naphtali is related to the clause I have struggled hard (Hebrew naptule ’elohim niptalti, “I have struggled the struggles of God”).

John Gill's Exposition

And Rachel said, with great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister,.... Or, "with the wrestlings of God" (a), wrestling and striving in prayer with God; being vehement and importunate in her petitions to him, that she might have children as well as her sister: some render it, "I used the craftinesses of God", or "great craftiness with my sisters" (b); by giving her maid Bilhah to her husband, and having children by her:

and I have prevailed; as she strove in her desires and prayers to have another child before her sister had; in that she prevailed, or she was succeeded in her desires, she had children as she wished to have:

and she called his name Naphtali; which signifies "my wrestling", being a child she had been striving and wrestling for: these two sons of Bilhah were born, as say the Jews, Dan on the twenty ninth day of Elul or August, and lived one hundred and twenty seven years; Naphtali on the fifth of Tisri or September, and lived one hundred and thirty three years.

(a) "luctationibus Dei", Montanus, Vatablus, Drusius, Cartwright. (b) "Calliditatibus Dei, Oleaster, astutiis Dei", Schmidt.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The Pulpit Commentary

Vers. 7, 8. And Bilhah Rachel"s maid conceived again, and bare Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, literally, wrestlings of God have I wrestled with my sister , meaning, by "wrestlings of Elohim;" not great wrestlings in rivalry, with Leah (A.V Vatablus, Ainsworth, Rosenm Calvin), nor wrestlings in the cause of God, as being unwilling to leave the founding of the nation to her sister alone (Knobel), but wrestlings with God in prayer (Delitzsch, Lange, Murphy, Kalisch), wrestlings regarding Elohim and his grace (Hengstenberg, Keil), in which she at the same time contended with her sister, to whom apparently that grace had been hitherto restrictedand I have prevailed (scarcely in the sense of achieving a victory over Leah, who had already borne four sons, but in the sense of drawing the Divine favor, though only indirectly, towards herself): and she called his name Naphtali i.e. "My Wrestling."

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

unfoldingWord translationNotes

Door43 World Missions Community

Bilhah ... conceived again

"Bilhah ... became pregnant again"

bore Jacob a second son

"gave birth to a second son for Jacob"

With mighty wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister

The phrase "wrestlings have I wrestled" is an idiom used for emphasis. It is also a metaphor that speaks of Rachel's attempts to have a child like her sister as if she were having a physical fight with Leah. AT: "I have had a great struggle to have children like my older sister, Leah" (See: Idiom and Metaphor)

have prevailed

"I have won" or "I have succeeded"

called his name Naphtali

Translators may also add a footnote that says "The name Naphtali means 'my struggle.'"

translationWords

servant

Rachel

Naphtali

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Genesis, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 9 words (9 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Bilhâh (“Bilhah”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word Bilhâh carries the sense “Bilhah.” How does it shape the verse?
Genesis 29:29 shares the word «Bilhah» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
The verb «וַתַּ֣הַר» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Tyndale Open Study Notes and John Gill's Exposition read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 13 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 7 words in this verse.
9 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.