Rachel

Rachel was the younger daughter of Laban and the great love of Jacob's life. Jacob worked seven years for her, and the text says they "seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her." After being given Leah by deception on his wedding night, he worked another seven years for Rachel. She was beautiful and beloved, but God had closed her womb while Leah bore children. In anguish she demanded of Jacob, "Give me children, or I shall die." Eventually God remembered her and she conceived Joseph.

Rachel died on the road near Bethlehem giving birth to her second son, calling him Ben-Oni ("son of my sorrow") with her dying breath. Jacob named him Benjamin ("son of my right hand") and set a pillar over her tomb. She is the only matriarch not buried at Machpelah. Her tomb outside Bethlehem became a landmark. Jeremiah 31:15 hears "Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more" — a lament over the exiles passing her tomb on the way to Babylon. Matthew 2:18 applies the same verse to Herod's slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem, linking her grief to the birth of Jesus in the town where she died.