How long were Jacob and Rachel married? For various reasons, I've always wondered how long Jacob and Rachel were married before her death.  Rachel's death (shortly after giving birth to Benjamin) is record in Genesis 35:16-18.  As a result I've always tried to guesstimate the length of their marriage from the age difference between Benjamin and his older brothers, but unless some details are hiding in the original Hebrew that are lost in translation, it doesn't seem to me that there are enough details in Genesis to have any real idea.

Is there anything I'm missing?  Are there any details that make it possible to estimate (with any accuracy) how long Jacob and Rachel were married before her death?
Let us leave aside the age of Jacob, it is possible to deduce the a number of other facts about his chronology.


Following his deception of Esau, Jacob left Beersheba (Gen 28:9) and went to Paddan-aram (Gen 29) and worked for his uncle Laban for 7 years (Gen 29:20) for the hand of Rachel but ended up having to marry Leah as well as Rachel (v27).  As a result, he had to work for another 7 years (v30) for the second wife as well.
Gen 30 describes the birth of the first 11 sons (and 1 daughter, Dinah) of Jacob born in the that second 7 year period.  It was at the end of the second seven year period that Joseph was born (Gen 30:25ff) and that Jacob wanted to leave but was persuaded to stay longer.
Jacob worked a total of 20 years for Laban (Gen 31:38).  At the end of this, Joseph is 6 years old.
At the end of 20 years, Jacob had to deceive Laban (Gen 31:20) and flee for his life and left to return to Beersheba but actually settled in Shechem (Gen 33:18).  At this point, Joseph was the youngest son (Gen 33:2) and the only child of Rachel.
An unknown time later, he moved to Bethel (Gen 35:1).  (This must have been at least 1 year later.)
Later still, the moved to Ephrath (Gen 35:16).  This must have been at least 1 year later.)  It was during the move to Ephrath that Benjamin was born and Rachel died.  This means that it was a minimum of 13 years in Paddan-aram plus at least 2 more years that Jacob was married to Rachel.  That is a minimum of 15 years.  Joseph at this point must have been at least 8 years old.
We also know that by the time Joseph was 17 years old (Gen 37:2) his mother had been dead for some unknown time before.  This was 11 years after leaving Paddan-aram.  If Rachel died just (say) two years before Joseph was 17, that is at the age of (say) 15, then Jacob and Rachel would have been married for 13 years in Paddan-aram plus another 9 years, a total of no more than 22 years.


All this means that Jacob was married to Rachel for some time between about 15 years and 22 years.  The uncertainty arises from the unknown time between Jacob leaving Paddan-aram and arriving in Ephrath which was presumably at least 2 years (with Bethel in between) and when Joseph was 17 years old.

My best guess (that is all) is that they were married for about 18 years on the basis that it was about 5 years between Paddan-aram and Ephrath and about 6 years before Joseph's 17 birthday.  [That is Joseph was about 11 years old when Rachel died??]  But that is a guess.