Seder 35: Gen 38---Who Did Jacob's Sons Marry?

 For Abraham, it was very important that Isaac marry a woman in Abraham's clan (Gen 24).  For Isaac and his wife Rebekah, it was important that her son Jacob marry someone from that same clan (Gen 28:1-2).  

But the book of Genesis never raises the subject of who Jacob's twelve sons were supposed to marry.   There are at least a couple of reasons why this apparently ceased to be an issue.  For one thing, Jacob and his father-in-law Laban had parted on less-than-amicable terms (Gen 31:51-54), so Jacob would not have been likely to send any of his sons back to Haran in search of wives.  

Also, by this point the identity of the covenant family may have become well enough established that assimilation into the surrounding Canaanite culture was no longer such a danger---at least after the destruction of Shechem.  Jacob's family was not absorbed into Shechem, but it's possible that some of the women captured from Shechem (Gen 34:29) married sons of Jacob.

We are given information about the wives of three of those sons.  Judah married the daughter of a Canaanite named Shua (Gen 38:2).  We are not told her name, and she is referred to in 1 Chron 2:3 simply as Bath-shua ("daughter of Shua").  Simeon also married a Canaanite (Gen 46:10), and Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest (Gen 41:45). 

Ancient readers of Genesis were curious and concerned about the lack of information given on this subject.  Some sought to fill in the gaps.  For example, the book of Jubilees (second century BC) lists names of wives of Jacob's sons in verses 20-21 of chapter 34:

"And after Joseph perished, the sons of Jacob took unto themselves wives. The name of Reuben's wife is 'Ada; and the name of Simeon's wife is 'Adlba'a, a Canaanite; and the name of Levi's wife is Melka, of the daughters of Aram, of the seed of the sons of Terah; and the name of Judah's wife, Betasu'el, a Canaanite; and the name of Issachar's wife, Hezaqa: and the name of Zabulon's wife, Ni'iman; and the name of Dan's wife, 'Egla; and the name of Naphtali's wife, Rasu'u, of Mesopotamia; and the name of Gad's wife, Maka; and the name of Asher's wife, 'Ijona; and the name of Joseph's wife, Asenath, the Egyptian; and the name of Benjamin's wife, 'Ijasaka.  And Simeon repented, and took a second wife from Mesopotamia as his brothers."

Notice that Jubilees, in its desire for Jacob's sons not to have mixed too much with the Canannites, has some of them going back to Haran to marry women from Abraham's clan.