Commentaire sur La Genèse 29:24

ללאה בתו שפחה. for his daughter Leah as a maidservant. Why did the Torah have to mention that Leah was Laban's daughter? Surely we know this by now! If it was sufficient to write: "Laban gave her her his maidservant Zilpah," why did the Torah have to add "to Leah his daughter" at the end of the same verse? Besides, why did the Torah write שפחה, maidservant, instead of לשפחה, as a maidservant?

ויתן לבן לה את זלפה שפחתו, when she was led under the wedding canopy Lavan gave her this handmaid to be her personal maid.

Er war sehr vorsichtig, er gab sie nicht Jakob, gab sie ausdrücklich Lea zum Eigentum. Es ist dies auch für später nicht unwichtig; denn wenn später Jakob auch sie geheiratet, so konnte das, da sie eine Hörige der Lea war, nur in Folge einer Initiative der Frau geschehen sein.

את זלפה שפחתו, “his servant-maid Zilpah.” Why is Lavan’s daughter called his “servant maid” here? It was customary in those days to refer to the offspring of one’s concubines as “servants,” to distinguish their status from the offspring of one’s wives. (Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 36)

את זלפה שפחתו, “his servantmaid Zilpah;” how could the Torah describe them as servantmaids when they were actually Lavan’s daughters? (Compare B’reshit rabbah 74,13) We must therefore assume that the Torah used the terminology of the people at that time who described their daughters born by concubines as their servantmaids.

We must explain this by referring to the tradition that Zilpah and Bilhah respectively had been inherited by Rachel and Leah from their mother. This is what the Torah meant by the words "to Leah his daughter a maidservant." The Torah merely points out that the maidservant was Leah's personal property because she had inherited her from her mother. The Torah emphasises בתו, to hint that Leah had acquired this maidservant because she was Laban's daughter and the maidservant had been part of the marriage settlement, כתובה, of her mother; Leah had not purchased the maidservant in some other way. This is also why the Torah needed to write ויתן לבן, that Laban gave. Otherwise Laban's name did not need to be repeated here again as we know of whom the Torah was speaking. The Torah wanted us to know that Laban did not give his daughter a gift in the usual sense of the word.