The younger daughter of Laban.  She was possessed of much personal beauty, and Jacob fell in love with her, after a romantic scene at a well near Haran, in Mesopotamia, where she was watering her flock.  He served her mercenary father seven years as her price, and then, being cheated by the substitution of the elder sister, Leah, who was much less highly favoured, served another seven for the younger maiden, the only one who had gained his affections.  He married her also (Gen. xxix. 1-30), and she became the mother of Joseph (xxx. 22-25) and Benjamin, dying when the latter was born (xxxv. 16-18).  She was buried a little to the north of Ephrath, the future Bethlehem, her sorrowing husband erecting a pillar to mark the spot where she lay (19, 20).  When the people of Judah were about to be carried into captivity to Babylon, and again when Herod slew the infants in Bethlehem, Rachel was poetically described as weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they were not (Jer. xxxi. 15; Matt. ii. 16-18). [Rahel.]. (The Sunday School Teacher's Bible Manual, Hunter, 1894).