We read in Parashat Vayetze of the birth of twelve of Yaakov’s thirteen children – eleven sons, and one daughter. The birth of Dina, Yaakov’s daughter, is mentioned as the last of Leah’s births. After telling of the birth of Zevulun, Leah’s sixth son, the Torah writes, “Afterward she [Leah] gave birth to a daughter, and she named her Dina” (30:21).
The brief account of Dina’s birth differs from that of Yaakov’s other children. In relating the births of Yaakov’s other children, the Torah mentions that the wife conceived and then gave birth (“va-tahar…va-teiled”), whereas in reference to Dina’s birth, the Torah simply states that “afterward she gave birth to Leah.” It is likely that this is the question posed by the Gemara toward the end of Masekhet Berakhot (60a) when it cites this verse and then asks, “What does ve-achar [‘afterward’] mean?” The Gemara raises the question of why the Torah introduces Dina’s birth with this phrase, rather than following the familiar format of “va-tahar…va-teiled.” To answer this question, the Gemara claims that the word “ve-achar” alludes to Leah’s calculations during her pregnancy. Prophetically foreseeing that Yaakov would beget twelve sons, Leah realized that if she bore a seventh son, Rachel would be able to bear only a single son, fewer than Yaakov’s maidservants whom he married and who bore two sons each. Leah therefore prayed that her fetus be transformed from a male to a female. The Torah alters its formulation in describing Dina’s birth to allude to the extraordinary circumstances surrounding her conception and birth.
Ibn Ezra advances a different theory to resolve this question. Commenting to the verse here in Parashat Vayetze, Ibn Ezra cites a view that Dina was Zevulun’s twin. Ibn Ezra elaborates a bit more fully on this theory in his commentary to Sefer Shemot (2:2), where he bases this notion on the Torah’s formulation in describing Dina’s birth. Rather than stating that Leah conceived and then gave birth, as it does with regard to Yaakov’s other children, the Torah simply says that after Zevulun was born, Leah delivered a girl. Ibn Ezra notes that this formulation resembles the description of the births of Esav and Yaakov: “The first one emerged…and he named him Esav. Then his brother emerged…” (25:25-26). In the case of Dina, too, the Torah tells that she was born after the birth of Zevulun, without mentioning her conception, because she was his twin and was conceived at the same time.
Ibn Ezra advances this theory in the context of his discussion concerning the surprising rate of the births of Yaakov’s children. We know that Yaakov spent a total of twenty years with Lavan – the first fourteen of which were spent working in exchange for marrying Leah and Rachel, and the final six were for pay (31:41). We also know that these final six years began after the birth of Yosef (see 30:25), the youngest of Yaakov’s children (except Binyamin, who was born after Yaakov’s return to Canaan). It thus emerges that Leah gave birth to seven children in seven years, a rate that becomes particularly startling considering the Torah’s account of Leah’s inability to conceive for some time after the birth of Yehuda (see 29:35, 30:9). The rapid rate becomes somewhat less surprising if we bring the number of Leah’s pregnancies down from seven to six, by claiming that Dina and Zevulun were conceived together. (See Rav Karmiel Cohen’s brief article on the subject at http://ybm.org.il/Hebrew/LessonArticle.aspx?item=1985.)