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Bible Dictionaries
Bilhah
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or 1. Rachel's handmaid (Genesis 29:29). Rachel having no children gave Bilhah to her husband Jacob, who by the latter had two sons, Dan and Naphtali (Genesis 30:1-8; Genesis 35:25; Genesis 46:25; 1 Chronicles 7:13). Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, defiled her, and was therefore deprived of the birthright, which was given to the sons of Joseph (Genesis 35:22; Genesis 49:4; 1 Chronicles 5:1). Blunt says, so vivid was the desire for the promised Redeemer, that "the wife provoked, instead of resenting, the faithlessness of her husband, the mother taught her own child deceit, daughters deliberately worked their own and their fathers' shame, and the daughter-in-law courted the incestuous bed, and to be childless was a by-word" (Genesis 16:2; Genesis 30:3; Genesis 30:9; Genesis 25:23; Genesis 27:13; Genesis 19:31; Genesis 38:14).
2. A Simeonite town (1 Chronicles 4:29), named also Baalah or Balah (Joshua 19:3).
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Bilhah'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/b/bilhah.html. 1949.
