The name Lailah is the same as the Hebrew word for "night" laylah :wikt:לילה|לילה. The identification of the word "night" as the name of an angel originates with the interpretation of "Rabbi Yochanan" who read "At night and his servants deployed against them and defeated them” as "by night". The noun for "night" in the Semitic languages is derived from the tri-consonantal root: L-Y-L, also found in Arabic laylah "night". The root is also shared with the Hebrew noun liliyt, "night creature", one origin of the Lilith myth. The endinglah is a feminine. Lailah is the only angel with a feminine name and distinctly feminine characteristics.
An angel Layla is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. There is no direct indication of angelic involvement in Abraham's coalition with the kings Chedorlaomer, Tidal, Amraphel and Arioch and their night attack on the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. "Rabbi Yochanan"'s interpretation of "at night" in Genesis 14:14 is usually seen in the context of the Second Temple period with an increased interest in angels and the Jewish angelic hierarchy.
Talmud
In the Babylonian Talmud: Sanhedrin 96a the phrase "And he fought against them, he and his servants, "by night" and smote them." is interpreted by Rabbi Johanan who said "The angel who was appointed to Abraham was named lailah ." Rabbi Isaac the smith also related either God "He", or an angel "he", to the stars fighting against Sisera. Also in the Talmud, the interpretation is found of rabbi Hanina ben Pappa, that Lailah is an angel in charge of conception who takes a drop of semen and places it before God, saying: Lailah chooses a soul from the Garden of Eden and commands it to enter the embryo. Lailah watches over the development in the womb and shows the rewards and punishments available to the individual. Then right before birth, Lailah strikes the newborn above the lip, making it forget what was learned and creating the philtrum. Lailah serves as a guardian angel throughout a person's life and at death, leads the soul into the afterlife. Ellen Frankel notes that God decides the fate of the child when it is conceived and leaves one thing undecided, whether it will be righteous or wicked. allowing it to have free will. According to Howard Schwartz, knowledge is present and then forgotten at birth, much like the Jungian concept of the collective unconscious, and Lailah is the of Lilith, who wastes seed, is not maternal, and is bent on destruction, not creation.
Following Hanina ben Pappa, also according to the Zohar Chadash 68:3 the angel is in charge of conception and pregnancy.
Rabbinical commentary on "night" itself
The word "night" appears hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible and continues to be the subject of rabbinic discussion. The noun layla is a feminine noun in Hebrew, although grammatical gender does not indicate actual gender in Hebrew. Nevertheless, according to Elijah Ben Solomon, the "Vilna Gaon", Talmudist, halachist, and kabbalist, the Hebrew noun laylah is feminine in its very essence, but has the unusual quality of dualism that combines the feminine with masculine character. In the Zohar, comparison is made between leyl and layla "night" is used in reference to the Exodus "to indicate the union which took place on that night between the Masculine and Feminine aspects in the Divine attributes.".
