Is Reuben’s Rape of Bilha Fake News?

I Chronicles.5.1-2

Fake M2 news, politically based bad-mouthing in the biblical book, romantic tragedy or sex scandal?

Did Reuben have sex with Bilha, the third mother of his father’s children? Was it consensual?

And is that why he lost his firstborn rights of rulership to Joseph - and to Judah?

This is an old and maybe made up story, maybe meant to justify why one tribe took over from another in some ancient power struggle whose origins we will never really know.

This tale of domestic infidelity in the Jacob & Sons family is already familiar from Genesis. It was whispered as family shame around the campfires, eventually written down, and makes a comeback here as Chronicles lists the lineage of the tribes living east of the Jordan river and why Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, was not awarded firstborn inheritance rights.

Instead - the two sons of Joseph - who was the firstborn to Rachel, second wife, not to Leah, first wife, will get that privilege instead, ruling over the tribes of the north. But even that doesn’t matter much to this author - it will be Leah’s fourth son, Judah, whose leadership matters here most. This is after all the book written by the Judeans to justify their rule.

Confused? Whatever actually happened or not the purpose of this narrative is clear. We may never know the truth. But there are several strands of suggestions and speculations that both support or challenge the authors’ agenda.

Chapter 5 begins with direct references to earlier texts in Genesis that were clearly familiar to the author/editor team of Chronicles. They do a lot of explaining here - which is unusual. Some translators chose to add brackets to most of these verses, indicating the layers that may have been added later as glossary, driving home the narrative of who’s the rightful heir in this long lost battle for succession:

וּבְנֵ֨י רְאוּבֵ֥ן בְּכֽוֹר־יִשְׂרָאֵל֮ כִּ֣י ה֣וּא הַבְּכוֹר֒ וּֽבְחַלְּלוֹ֙ יְצוּעֵ֣י אָבִ֔יו נִתְּנָה֙ בְּכֹ֣רָת֔וֹ לִבְנֵ֥י יוֹסֵ֖ף בֶּן־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֹ֥א לְהִתְיַחֵ֖שׂ לַבְּכֹרָֽה׃

כִּ֤י יְהוּדָה֙ גָּבַ֣ר בְּאֶחָ֔יו וּלְנָגִ֖יד מִמֶּ֑נּוּ וְהַבְּכֹרָ֖ה לְיוֹסֵֽף׃

The sons of Reuben the first-born of Israel.

He was the first-born; but when he defiled his father’s bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph son of Israel, so he is not reckoned as first-born in the genealogy; though Judah became more powerful than his brothers and a leader came from him, yet the birthright belonged to Joseph.

I Chronicles.5.1-2

This text does not specify what ‘defiled his father’s bed’ means - assuming that the reader already knows what went down. It is referencing two different passages in Genesis:

The first is the short verse that alludes to the sex-crime:

“While Israel stayed in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine” (Gen.35:22)

And the second is from Jacob’s deathbed final words to his sons - starting with this harsh message for his disgraced firstborn:

“Reuben: Unstable as water, you shall excel no longer;

For when you mounted your father’s bed,

You brought disgrace—my couch he mounted!” (Gen. 49:4)

Over the generations, many scholars have tried to pry open this narrative, coming up with backstories and justifications. I have not yet found any that give Bilha’s version a voice. But in some midrashic and rabbinic traditions both Leah and Reuben have a lot to say.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berachot, Rabbi Elazar imagines Leah’s vindication and possible justification of her firstborn son’s actions, referring not just his sexual misconduct but also to the ways he later stood up for his younger half brother Joseph. This imagined text, quoting these verses from our chapter, brings up the tensions between older/younger inheritance tensions that are what so much of the biblical battles are all about.

It is a passionate protecting mother’s monologue - supporting her son (almost) no matter what:

“Leah said: See [re’u] the difference between my son [beni] and the son of my father-in-law, Esau, son of Isaac. Even though Esau knowingly sold his birthright to his brother Jacob, it is still told of him: “And Esau hated Jacob”.

Despite having sold his birthright, he refused to relinquish it.

While my son, Reuben, even though Joseph took his birthright from him by force, as it is written: “And the sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel, for he was the firstborn; but, since he defiled his father’s bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph, son of Israel” (I Chronicles 5:1). Nevertheless, he was not jealous of him, as it is written when Joseph’s brothers sought to kill him: “And Reuben heard and he saved him from their hands, saying ‘Let us not take his life’”.

There’s there’s this text that didn’t make it into the biblical canon : The Second Temple era book, circa 2nd century BCE, called The Testaments of the Twelve Tribal Patriarchs. It includes elaborate additions to the stories of the tribes of Israel, imagined as death-bed last will and testament for each of the original sons of Jacob.

Here’s what this triggering and sexually explicit text imagines Ruben saying to his children, gathered around his bed before he dies:

“I defiled the bed of my father Jacob…And I tell you that the Lord smote me with a sore plague in my loins for seven months; and had not my father Jacob prayed for me to the Lord, the Lord would have destroyed me. …after this I repented for seven years before the Lord. And I did not drink wine or eat meat, and I ate no pleasant food; but I mourned over my sin, for it was great, such as had not been in Israel…

For had I not seen Bilhah bathing in a covered place, I had not fallen into this great iniquity. For my mind taking in the thought of the woman’s nakedness, suffered me not to sleep until I had wrought the abominable thing. For while Jacob our father had gone to Isaac his father, when we were in Eder, near to Ephrath in Bethlehem, Bilhah became drunk and was asleep uncovered in her chamber. Having therefore gone in and beheld nakedness, I wrought the impiety without her perceiving it, and leaving her sleeping I departed. And forthwith an angel of God revealed to my father concerning my impiety, and he came and mourned over me, and touched her no more…”

Wow - that’s a whole lot more details than anything we’ve got in the Torah. Whoever wrote this testament text may have wanted the readers to have pity on Reuben, push a more pious/puritanical perspective, and possibly excuse what feels like domestic abuse and possible rape? Whatever the story - the narrative that Jacob’s firstborn son was pushed out for wrongdoings and a more powerful Judah took over is firmly established in the collective family lore. It’s left for us the critical readers not to take this story at face value, to question the author’s agenda and make meaning of this narrative in ways that speak to our moral and ethical stands, even when that means protest.

Dr. Shani Tzoref writes that stories like these, with wide open gaps, invite us to offer, as our ancestors have, more creative and critical readings:

“What “really happened” is less important for a religious reader than the lessons to be learned, and the conversations about these lessons. In such “trigger” texts, gaps are an important part of the story, generating valuable theological and moral discussion. The literal gap in the Reuben and Bilhah story serves to remind us that our role as readers and transmitters is to fully engage the text and its possibilities, to pay attention to what is there, and what is not, and to consider together how we might fill in what is missing.”

The rest of the chapter tells us more of what happened to the tribes across generations of wars and exiles, continuing the carefully curated historiography of Israel and Judah, leaving us to ponder and wonder which of the silenced voices and narratives we want to lift up, honor, hear, and heal.

Image: Reuben and his brothers by Colijn de Coter, ca. 1500, fragment of a painting in the National Museum in Warsaw

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