Page "Tribe of Zebulun" Paragraph 3

According to the Torah, the tribe consisted of descendants of Zebulun, the sixth son of Jacob and Leah, from whom it took its name.

Some Biblical scholars, however, view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation.

With Leah as a matriarch, Biblical scholars believe the tribe to have been regarded by the text's authors as a part of the original Israelite confederation.