One other person, place or group in the registry answers to the name Bilhah. Every Bilhah in the Bible
- verses
- 10
- first named
- Genesis 29:29
- last named
- 1 Chronicles 7:13
- period
- the Patriarchs
- role
- Woman
Description
Who was Bilhah?
Bilhah was the maidservant of Rachel, concubine of Israel (or 'Jacob') (Gen. 29:29). When Rachel found herself unable to conceive, she gave Bilhah to Jacob as a concubine to bear children on her behalf, following the custom of the time (Gen. 30:3-4). Bilhah gave birth to two sons, Dan and Naphtali (Gen. 30:5-8), who became the ancestors of two of the twelve tribes of Israel. Later, Jacob's firstborn son, Reuben, slept with Bilhah, an act that greatly displeased Jacob (Gen. 35:22). Despite this incident, Bilhah is still mentioned among the members of Jacob's family who went to Egypt during the famine (Gen. 46:25). Her sons, Dan and Naphtali, are listed among the seventy members of Jacob's household (Gen. 46:23-25). Bilhah's story highlights the complex family dynamics in Jacob's household and the importance of childbearing in ancient Israelite society. Her sons' inclusion in the twelve tribes of Israel underscores God's providence in fulfilling His promise to make a great nation from Jacob's descendants.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Places
Where this happens
A person is placed by the events they take part in, and an event has to clear three things to place them: it must say where it happened, that place must be one the gazetteer can put a coordinate on, and the verse must report it rather than foretell, command or ask it. Nothing anchored here clears all three. Where the text names a setting no gazetteer surveys — a vineyard, a palace, a plot of ground — it is left off rather than guessed at; where a place is named only in a prophecy, the map does not draw what was said to be coming as though it had happened; and a place reached only through a relation is not inherited, because standing beside somebody is not being somewhere.
No verse Atlas has read as a report puts this person anywhere.
Not read yet
The pattern
Where Bilhah is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
10 verses across 2 of 66 books; 64 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (9) and 1 Chronicles (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 10, across 2 books.
Onward
Where this page goes
Not the direct relations above — these are one hop further out, ranked so that a rare shared connection outweighs a common one. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
Chapter by chapter
Atlas's reading of each chapter this person appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources