Levi

Etymology

From the Hebrew root 'lavah' (לָוָה), meaning to join or to be attached. Leah named him saying, 'Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.'

Who they were

Levi's story has two acts. In Genesis, he was Jacob and Leah's third son, named from Leah's desperate hope for her husband's love. His most dramatic appearance is in Genesis 34, where he and his brother Simeon slaughtered the men of Shechem in revenge for the assault on their sister Dinah — an act of such violence that Jacob condemned it on his deathbed: 'their swords are weapons of violence.' Yet this tribe of violent origins was transformed. God chose the Levites as the priestly tribe — the ones who would carry the ark, teach the law, and mediate between God and Israel. They received no territorial inheritance; God himself was their inheritance. Moses and Aaron were both Levites. The name appears again in the New Testament as the original name of the tax collector Matthew, whom Jesus called from his booth with two words: 'Follow me.' The trajectory from violence to priesthood to discipleship makes Levi one of the Bible's most dramatic examples of transformation.

Family

Father

Jacob

Mother

Leah

Character qualities

• Fierce loyalty to family
• Capacity for violence
• Tribe transformed by divine calling

Key verse

Deuteronomy 33:10

Where they appear

Themes

Variants & related forms

Levy · Lewi

Related names