Milcah

Who is Milcah?

Milcah was the daughter of Haran and the wife of Nahor in Genesis.

Milcah was a woman of ancient Mesopotamia and an ancestor of the patriarch Jacob. Milcah was born to Haran, who had another daughter, Iscah. This Haran seemed to be different from Haran, Abraham's brother, who had a son, Lot. Haran, Abraham's brother, died in Ur before his father Terah. Milcah married Nahor, another of Abraham’s brothers.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Isaac presumes that the two men with the name Haran are one person. If that is true, then Milcah married to her uncle. Although Leviticus would later outlaw marriages between aunt and nephew, it did not rule out marriage between uncle and niece. The Talmud approved of a man who married his sister’s daughter. And in the Talmud, Rabbi Isaac equates Milcah’s sister Iscah with Sarah, who married Abraham, who was also their uncle. Thus, according to Rabbi Isaac, the two sisters, Milcah and Iscah, married the two brothers, Nahor and Abraham.