Midrash & the Case of the Missing Daughters

[The plural is used because the verse is referring to] his daughter [Dinah] and his daughter's daughter [Serach bat Asher]

"Daughters" -- his daughters-in-law and daughters of his sons

...A person doesn't hold back from referring to their son-in-law as their "son" and their daughter-in-law as their "daughter". Rebbe Yehudah says, each of the tribes [Yaakov's sons] married their sisters [i.e. twins born with their brothers].

...[the brothers married "Canaanite" wives only in the sense of the gemara in Pesachim 50a, that they were the daughters of merchants. They were not actual Canaanites, but rather] their wives were Egyptians and Ammonites and Moabites and descended from Yishmael and from Keturah. The exception called out by the text is Shaul, Shimon's son -- "Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman" (46:10), but he is the only one. And there is also the midrash (Breishit Rabbah 80:11) that Shimon married Dina, who had been [formerly been] married [forcibly] to a Canaanite [Shechem].

...

For we must dispute the interpretation of Rebbe Yehudah, for they could not have married their [twin] sisters, because the sister of the same mother is forbidden even under the Noahide laws.

And certainly Tamar must have been merely the daughter of one of the inhabitants of the land, and not the daughter of a literal descendant of Canaan. Perish the thought that our Master David, and the Righteous Messiah, may he be revealed to us soon, could come from the seed of Canaan the accursed servant. Instead our Rabbis said (Breishit Rabbat 85:10) that Tamar was the daughter of Shem, who was a priest of El Elyon.

(1) וכל בנותיו, “and all of his daughters;” according to Rabbi Yehudah, twin sisters had been born for Yaakov with the birth of all of his sons. These had been married by their respective half-brothers, sons of different mothers. According to the opinion of Rabbi Nechemyah, all the sons married wives of Canaanite origin. If he were correct, why does the Torah in our verse not speak of “all his daughter-in-law?“ Rabbi Nechemyah, aware of this, would reply, that in the whole world daughters-in-law are referred to as daughters. (B‘reshit Rabbah 84,21) [Naomi, in the Book of Ruth, certainly is not described as calling her daughters-in-law, “daughters.” Ed.] It is difficult to understand Rabbi Nechemyah, as we all know to what length Avraham had gone to prevent Yitzchok from marrying a wife of Canaanite descent. Yitzchok too had commanded Yaakov not to marry a woman of Canaanite descent and had sent him all the way to Charan to avoid such a union. (Genesis 28,1) Nonetheless, Yehudah married a woman of Canaanite descent. (Genesis 38,2 ברת גבר תגרא, (daughter of a business man, according to Onkelos איש כנעני means business man, traveling salesman) Onkelos therefore accepts the view of Rabbi Yehudah, who said that twin daughters were born with all of Yaakov’s sons.) This is also how we have to understand Genesis 46,10: ושאול בן הכנענית, “and Sha-ul, son of a female merchant.” According to Rabbi Nechemyah’s approach to the subject, there is no need for what sound like far fetched solutions to our problem. The word כנעני or כנענית in either of the verses that bothered us, are simply understood as elsewhere in the Bible, as people of Canaanite descent. We do have a problem if we accept Rabbi Yehudah’s interpretation, an interpretation lacking specific sources in the written text. The Talmud, tractate Yumah folio 28, states that Avaraham had voluntarily observed all the commandments in the written and oral Torah, even eyruv tavshilin and yibbum. If these laws were operative prior to the Torah having been revealed at Mount Sinai to the Jewish people, how could Yaakov have married two sisters while the first sister had still been alive? Also, how could any of the sons of Yaakov have married their sisters? We could answer that although these laws were already known by tradition since Avraham’s time, they had not become obligatory until after revealed at Mount Sinai. Our forefathers were free to choose the parts of the commandments they wished to observe voluntarily even they had been privy to them through the Holy Spirit.

(1) יוצאי ירכו מלבד נשי בני יעקב, “his biological descendants aside from the wives of Yaakov’s sons.” According to our sages in Bereshit Rabbah 84,19 where Rabbi Yehudah claimed that a twin sister was born to each one of Yaakov’s sons, the words יוצאי ירכו here are an allusion to the fact that the wives of the sons of Yaakov were each one of those twins. What would be the point of the Torah writing: “apart from the wives of the sons of Yaakov,” if the reference had been to Canaanite women whom the brothers married? Who would ever have thought that Canaanites would have been included in the count? The Torah had to mention that these women were not included in the count of seventy precisely because they were descendants of Yaakov.

(1) כל הנפש הבאה ליעקב EVERY SOUL THAT WAS COMING WITH JACOB — every soul that left Canaan to go to Egypt ...When they came there, they were seventy, for they found Joseph and his two sons there, and Jochebed was added to their number “between the walls”. According to the view of the Rabbi (i. e. R. Jehudah, cf. Genesis Rabbah 84) who stated that with each of Jacob’s sons a twin-sister was born, we must say that these died before they (Jacob and his family) went down to Egypt, because they are not enumerated here. In Vayikra Rabbah 4:6 I found the following: When he left Canaan (cf. Genesis 36:6) Esau’s family consisted of only six (himself and his five sons), and Scripture calls them “the souls of his house” (in the plural) and this is because they worshipped many gods (each serving a different god and having as it were, a different soul or religious feeling). But the family of Jacob when he came to Egypt consisted of seventy and Scripture calls them “soul”, in the singular, because they all served One God.

My mentor, Rabbi Abraham Grigo says that other daughters were born to Jacob, but only Dinah was mentioned because of the affair concerning her; for everywhere in recounting the history of our early generations Scripture mentions only the males and those females to whom some noteworthy event occurred or who were themselves famous in one way or another. It seems to me that Jacob and his sons undoubtedly had other daughters, but they were not included in the count of seventy persons because they married their nephews and cousins, just as Jocheved married Amram; and it says, “aside from the wives of Jacob’s sons” (Gen. 46:26). Hence they were not counted [since they were all included in the "wives of Jacob's sons who were not included in the tally], save for Dinah and Serah, who apparently were mentioned because they were single.

(the Netziv)

(1) His granddaughters. Yocheved and Serach, see Rashi. This would mean, however, that Yaakov’s sons fathered only two daughters. It seems more likely they had many daughters, but only those whose biographies affected the nation are mentioned by name...