Discovery BoxGenesis 30:9-14 
Context30:9 When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she gave 1 her servant Zilpah to Jacob as a wife. 30:10 Soon Leah’s servant Zilpah gave Jacob a son. 2 30:11 Leah said, “How fortunate!” 3 So she named him Gad. 4
30:12 Then Leah’s servant Zilpah gave Jacob another son. 5 30:13 Leah said, “How happy I am, 6 for women 7 will call me happy!” So she named him Asher. 8
30:14 At the time 9 of the wheat harvest Reuben went out and found some mandrake plants 10 in a field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”
1 tn Heb “she took her servant Zilpah and gave her.” The verbs “took” and “gave” are treated as a hendiadys in the translation: “she gave.”
2 tn Heb “and Zilpah, the servant of Leah, bore for Jacob a son.”
3 tc The statement in the Kethib (consonantal text) appears to mean literally “with good fortune,” if one takes the initial בְּ (bet) as a preposition indicating accompaniment. The Qere (marginal reading) means “good fortune has arrived.”
4 sn The name Gad (גָּד, gad) means “good fortune.” The name reflects Leah’s feeling that good fortune has come her way, as expressed in her statement recorded earlier in the verse.
5 tn Heb “and Zilpah, the servant of Leah, bore a second son for Jacob.”
6 tn The Hebrew statement apparently means “with my happiness.”
7 tn Heb “daughters.”
8 sn The name Asher (אָשֶׁר, ’asher) apparently means “happy one.” The name plays on the words used in the statement which appears earlier in the verse. Both the Hebrew noun and verb translated “happy” and “call me happy,” respectively, are derived from the same root as the name Asher.
9 tn Heb “during the days.”
10 sn Mandrake plants were popularly believed to be an aphrodisiac in the culture of the time.
