Lives of Scripture

Asher was the second son born to Zilpah, Leah's maidservant, during the years Jacob's wives competed to give him children (Genesis 30:12-13). At his birth Leah declared, "Happy am I! For women will call me happy," and named him Asher -- "happy" or "blessed" -- reflecting her own vindication in a household marked by rivalry between her and her sister Rachel. Asher is listed among the sons who went down to Egypt with Jacob (Genesis 46:17) and among the twelve tribal ancestors counted in Israel's wilderness census (Numbers 1:13; 26:44-47). Near his death, Jacob pronounced blessings over each son; of Asher he said, "his food shall be rich, and he will yield royal dainties" (Genesis 49:20), foreseeing that his descendants' territory would be especially fertile. That territory, allotted after the conquest along the fertile coastal region near Phoenicia (Joshua 19:24-31), fulfilled the blessing -- among the most agriculturally rich land given to any tribe, though also one that struggled to fully drive out its Canaanite neighbors (Judges 1:31-32). Scripture records no individual deeds of Asher himself beyond his birth and his father's blessing; his story belongs to the larger account of how rivalry, sorrow, and unexpected joy among Jacob's wives produced the twelve tribes God would build into a nation.