Lives of Scripture

Naphtali was the sixth son of Jacob, born to Bilhah, the maidservant Rachel had given to Jacob as a wife after her own struggle with infertility (Genesis 30:1-8). At his birth, Rachel declared, 'With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed,' and named him Naphtali, meaning roughly 'my wrestling' (30:8) -- a name that memorializes the painful rivalry between Rachel and her sister Leah over children and Jacob's affection, one of Genesis's more honest portraits of family dysfunction among the patriarchs. Naphtali is later listed among the sons who journeyed with Jacob's family into Egypt during the famine (46:24) and among those born to Jacob before his return to Canaan (35:25). Near the end of his life, Jacob gathered his sons to pronounce blessings over each; of Naphtali he said simply, 'Naphtali is a doe let loose, he gives beautiful words' (49:21) -- a brief, evocative image whose precise meaning (swiftness, freedom, or eloquence) has been variously understood but which, unlike the blessings given to some of his brothers, carries no rebuke or judgment. Naphtali's descendants became one of the twelve tribes of Israel, allotted territory in the northern hill country of Canaan (Joshua 19:32-39), a region later associated with the judge and prophetess Deborah's call to Barak (Judges 4:6) and, centuries later, with the beginning of Jesus's Galilean ministry (Matthew 4:13-16, quoting Isaiah 9:1-2's prophecy naming 'the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali').