According to the Book of Genesis, Naphtali (icon; ) was the second son of Jacob

Jacob

Jacob "heel" or "leg-puller"), also later known as Israel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur'an was the third patriarch of the Hebrew people with whom God made a covenant, and ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his descendants.In the...

 with Bilhah

Bilhah

In the Book of Genesis, Bilhah is Rachel's handmaid who becomes a wife of Jacob and bears him two sons, Dan and Naphtali....

. He was the founder of the Israelite

Israelite

According to the Bible the Israelites were a Hebrew-speaking people of the Ancient Near East who inhabited the Land of Canaan during the monarchic period .The word "Israelite" derives from the Biblical Hebrew ישראל...

 Tribe of Naphtali

Tribe of Naphtali

The Tribe of Naphtali was one of the Tribes of Israel.Following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes after about 1200 BCE, Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes...

. However, some Biblical scholars

Biblical criticism

Biblical criticism is the scholarly "study and investigation of Biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work...

 view this as postdiction, an eponym

Eponym

An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

ous metaphor

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

 providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation.

Name

The text of the Torah

Torah

Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...

 argues that the name of Naphtali refers to the struggle between Rachel

Rachel

Rachel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, is a prophet and the favorite wife of Jacob, one of the three Biblical Patriarchs, and mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She was the daughter of Laban and the younger sister of Leah, Jacob's first wife...

 and Leah

Leah

Leah , as described in the Hebrew Bible, is the first of the two concurrent wives of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob and mother of six of sons whose descendants became the Twelve Tribes of Israel, along with at least one daughter, Dinah. She is the daughter of Laban and the older sister of Rachel, whom...

 for the favours of Jacob; Bilhah was the handmaid of Rachel, who had thought herself to be infertile, and had persuaded Jacob to have a child with Bilhah as a proxy for having one with herself.

Biblical references

The Biblical account shows Bilhah's status as a handmaid change to an actual wife of Jacob Genesis 30:4. Her handmaid status is regarded by some biblical scholars

Biblical criticism

Biblical criticism is the scholarly "study and investigation of Biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work...

 as indicating that the authors saw the tribe of Naphtali as being not of entirely Israelite origin; this may have been the result of a typographic error, as the names of Naphtali and Issachar

Issachar

Issachar/Yissachar was, according to the Book of Genesis, a son of Jacob and Leah , and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Issachar; however some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite...

appear to have changed places elsewhere in the text, and the birth narrative of Naphtali and Issachar is regarded by textual scholars

Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...

 as having been spliced together from its sources

Documentary hypothesis

The documentary hypothesis , holds that the Pentateuch was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors...

 in a manner which has highly corrupted the narrative.

According to the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is a western targum of the Torah from the land of Israel . Its correct title is Targum Yerushalmi , which is how it was known in medieval times...

, Naphtali was a swift runner, though this appears to have been inferred from the Blessing of Jacob

Blessing of Jacob

The Blessing of Jacob is a poem that appears in Genesis at . Jacob had twelve sons, each of whom is mentioned.The poem presents an opinion of the merits and attributes of each of the Tribes of Israel, and so can be compared with the Blessing of Moses, which has the same theme...

, which equates Naphtali to a hind

Red Deer

The red deer is one of the largest deer species. Depending on taxonomy, the red deer inhabits most of Europe, the Caucasus Mountains region, Asia Minor, parts of western Asia, and central Asia. It also inhabits the Atlas Mountains region between Morocco and Tunisia in northwestern Africa, being...

. However, Biblical scholars believe this to actually be a description of the tribe of Naphtali, particularly since textual scholars regard the Blessing of Jacob as having been written long after the tribe settled permanently in Canaan.

Naphtali's family

According to , Naphtali had four sons: Jahzeel, Guni, Jezer, and Shillem. The name of his wife/wives are not given. He and his family migrated to Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, with the rest of the clan where they remained until the Exodus

The Exodus

The Exodus is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible.Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in the wilderness...

.

According to the apocryphal Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, he died aged 137 and was buried in Egypt.