Rachel eventually grows quiet in her barren state, and Jacob stops calling for her at night. Sensing her distress, Rachel’s youngest sister, Bilhah, asks Rachel to allow her to go to Jacob so that she might bear a son in Rachel’s name. Rachel agrees and Bilhah, who learns pleasure in her husband’s body, becomes pregnant. The two women enjoy the pains of pregnancy together, and with Rachel as support, Bilhah gives birth to Dan. But soon after Dan’s birth, Rachel again falls into despair, and with Leah nursing, no one is able to keep Jacob’s bed. Leah asks Zilpah to finally look upon her duty. Jacob calls for Zilpah on many nights, trying to bring her to see the sweetness in their coupling, and Zilpah is grateful when she finally becomes pregnant and is spared of further duty. Zilpah prays for a girl child to whom she can tell all her stories, but when she gives birth to male twins Gad and Asher, she still looks upon them with a mother’s love. Zilpah’s labor was most difficult, and the sisters and Inna believed that she would surely die in the wake of her babies. After several days in the red tent, Zilpah recovers and goes to Jacob to beg for her life—he never calls her to his bed again. Shortly after, Leah also bears twin boys, making Jacob the father of ten sons.

Once his sons are old enough, Jacob takes them into the hills and tells the boys stories about his father, Isaac. The boys shudder at the power of the god El and are frightened by the thought of their grandfather being prepared for sacrifice by his father, Abram. The boys adore their father, and they do not notice Jacob’s growing dislike for Laban, their maternal grandfather, who still owns much of the family’s wealth. Leah, Zilpah, Rachel, and Bilhah also hate their father and are disgusted by Laban’s treatment of his slave woman Ruti. She has already bore Laban two sons, but Laban beats and rapes her routinely. The sisters, however, scorn Ruti, seeing her as the mother of the sons who are in competition with their own sons. But one night, Ruti seeks Rachel’s help to abort a new child growing inside her. Keeping the men ignorant, the women take Ruti into the red tent and perform the abortion, which is never talked about again in the camp. When Leah realizes that she is once again pregnant, she is sullen because her body has been ravaged by having had so many babies, and she asks her sister to perform an abortion for her too. Rachel refuses and predicts that this child will be a girl. Nine months later, Leah gives birth to Dinah, and the baby girl is the delight of her mother and aunts, who immediately begin whispering stories to her. In this happiness, Rachel finally conceives. After a hard, life-threatening labor, she gives birth to her first son, Joseph.