Zilpah

Zilpah was a woman in Genesis who bears children to Jacob on behalf of Leah. She becomes the mother of Gad and Asher and is included in the household traditions explaining the origins of Israel’s tribes.

Zilpah appears only briefly in Genesis, and the text provides almost no independent information about her life beyond her place in Jacob’s household. Through her sons Gad and Asher, however, she is incorporated into the genealogical structure through which the biblical narrative explains the origins of two Israelite tribes. Later interpretation has therefore focused less on biography than on household hierarchy, motherhood and the status of servant-women in the patriarchal stories.

In Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, The novel follows Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah through marriage, motherhood, rivalry and household ritual, making the women’s tent a centre of memory, birth and female community.