Forefather Forefather Reuben

CRITICAL: category corrected from "righteous" to "forefather," per the precedent of Righteous Aaron in an earlier batch. The template artifact in the life-years field, "I-XV century," has been replaced with the correct patriarchal era "c. 18th-17th centuries BC" (contemporary with Jacob and Joseph); he has no individually fixed feast day — commemorated only on the movable Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, among the twelve sons of Jacob.

Reuben was the eldest of the twelve sons of Jacob (Israel), born to Leah, the patriarch's first wife (Genesis 29:32). As firstborn, he was by custom entitled to the birthright and special paternal blessing, but forfeited this status by defiling his father's bed with Bilhah, Jacob's concubine (Genesis 35:22); Jacob's deathbed prophecy (Genesis 49:3-4) explicitly strips Reuben of his preeminence for this act, calling him "unstable as water."

Despite this, Reuben later attempted to protect his younger brother Joseph when the other brothers plotted to kill him out of envy: he proposed instead that Joseph be cast into a dry pit, secretly intending to return and rescue him — a plan thwarted when, in his absence, the brothers sold Joseph into slavery (Genesis 37:21-22, 29-30). He is the ancestor and eponym of the tribe of Reuben, one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, later allotted territory east of the Jordan. He is commemorated liturgically among the Old Testament forefathers as an ancestor in the genealogy leading to Christ.