Laban's elder daughter, and the unloved wife — married to Jacob by her father's night-time trick in place of Rachel, the sister Jacob actually loved (29:23-25). The narrator marks her from the start with the ambiguous 'weak / tender eyes' (rakkot), set against Rachel's beauty; and God marks her with a tenderness of his own: 'Jehovah saw that Leah was HATED, and opened her womb' (29:31). She becomes the great mother of Israel — six of the twelve tribes are hers, and each son's name is a small cry of her longing to be loved (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah…). The unloved wife bears the two most consequential sons of all: LEVI, father of the priesthood, and JUDAH, father of the kings and of the Messiah. She is buried beside Jacob at Machpelah (49:31) — not the wife he chose, but the wife in the ancestral tomb.