'HATED' — literally, from sane, 'to hate'; but Hebrew uses it for the LESS-loved of two, so 'unloved' catches the sense: 'Jehovah saw that Leah was senuah, and opened her womb' (29:31, 33). The same idiom governs a real law — the man with a loved wife and a 'hated' (unloved) one may not deny the unloved wife's firstborn his double portion (Deuteronomy 21:15-17), the exact situation this chapter sets up. The heart of it: God SIDES WITH THE UNLOVED. Rachel is adored and barren; Leah is unloved and fruitful — and from unloved Leah come Levi (the priesthood) and Judah (the kings, and the Messiah). ⭐ The forward claim above is paid at Deuteronomy 21:15-17, and the law turns out to be written in BOTH of this chapter's descriptions. Senuah stands in seven verses of the Hebrew Bible: three are that Deuteronomy law, two are Isaiah 60:15 and Proverbs 30:23 (neither yet on these pages), where it describes a city and a wife in a proverb, and the remaining two are 29:31 and 29:33 here, both of Leah. And the other wife of this household is yefat to'ar, beautiful in form (29:17, of Rachel) — which is the same phrase Deuteronomy 21:11 gives the captive woman four verses earlier in that chapter. ⚠ Half the shelf will no longer print 'hated', and the softening happens in the revisions on both shelves at once. The NWT 1984 keeps 'the other hated' and its 2013 revision moves to 'the unloved one'; the TNM 1987 keeps «la odiada» and its 2019 revision moves to «la menos amada». The KJV, ASV, Geneva and Douay all keep 'hated', and so do both Reina-Valeras with «aborrecida». Each revision is more accurate about the feeling and less accurate about the word — and the word is the point, because it is the one Genesis used of Leah. → first discussed at Gen 29:31