Naphtali

According to the Book of Genesis, Naphtali ( /ˈnæftəlaɪ/; Hebrew: נַפְתָּלִי, Modern Naftali Tiberian Nap̄tālî ; "My struggle") was the second son of Jacob with Bilhah. He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Naphtali. However, some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation.^[1]

Name

The text of the Torah argues that the name of Naphtali refers to the struggle between Rachel and Leah for the favours of Jacob; Bilhah was the handmaid of Rachel, who had thought herself to be infertile, and had persuaded Jacob to have a child with Bilhah as a proxy for having one with herself.

Biblical references

The Biblical account shows Bilhah's status as a handmaid change to an actual wife of Jacob Genesis 30:4. Her handmaid status is regarded by some biblical scholars as indicating that the authors saw the tribe of Naphtali as being not of entirely Israelite origin;^[2] this may have been the result of a typographic error, as the names of Naphtali and Issachar appear to have changed places elsewhere in the text,^[3] and the birth narrative of Naphtali and Issachar is regarded by textual scholars as having been spliced together from its sources in a manner which has highly corrupted the narrative.^[1][4]

According to the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Naphtali was a swift runner, though this appears to have been inferred from the Blessing of Jacob, which equates Naphtali to a hind.^[2] However, Biblical scholars believe this to actually be a description of the tribe of Naphtali, particularly since textual scholars regard the Blessing of Jacob as having been written long after the tribe settled permanently in Canaan.^[1][2]

Naphtali's family

According to Genesis 46:24, Naphtali had four sons: Jahzeel, Guni, Jezer, and Shillem. The name of his wife/wives are not given. He and his family migrated to Egypt,^[5] with the rest of the clan where they remained until the Exodus.

According to the apocryphal Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, he died aged 137 and was buried in Egypt.^[6]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Peake's commentary on the Bible
2. ^ ^{a b c} Jewish Encyclopedia
3. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia: Tribe of Issachar
4. ^ Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?
5. ^ Genesis 46:24
6. ^  "Nephtali". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 

• This article incorporates text from Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), a publication now in the public domain.