Benjamin (Arabic: بنيامين Binyamīn) was the last born of Jacob’s twelve male children, and the second and last son of Rachel in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. He was the progenitor of the Israelite tribe of Benjamin. In the Bible unlike Rachel’s first son, Joseph, Benjamin was born in Canaan.

In the Samaritan Pentateuch, Benjamin’s name appears as “Binyaamem” (Hebrew: בנימים, “Son of my days”). In the Qur’an, Benjamin is referred to as a young righteous child who stayed with Jacob when his older brothers plotted against Joseph. Later rabbinic traditions name him as one of the four ancient Israelites who died without sin, the other three being Chileab, Jesse, and Amram.

An often overlooked curiosity is the extremely important role of the tribe of Benjamin in the development of Israel, even as the very model of redemption set forth in the Bible:

The city of Jerusalem was originally assigned to Benjamin (Joshua 18:28, Judges 1:21). The tribe of Benjamin was decimated after the atrocities committed at Gibeah (Judges 19-21), but despite this, a generation later the first king of Israel was of the surviving remnant of Benjamin (1Samuel 9:1). Mordecai, whose adopted daughter Esther helped prevent Israel’s annihilation, was a Benjamite (Esther 2:5). The apostle Paul, author of half of the New Testament, was also from the tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:5).

In addition to Jacob’s son, there are two other men with the name Benjamin in Scripture.
A descendant of the original Benjamin, that is, a son of Bilhan, son of Jediael (1 Chronicles 7:10).
A son of Harim, who had married and probably divorced a foreign woman during Ezra’s purge (Ezra 10:32).