The book of Genesis is chuck full of stories that we are familiar with.  The final chapters deal with Jacob's sons becoming jealous of their brother Joseph--because he was Isaac's favorite.  Which was because Joseph was Rachel's child.  (As was Benjamin.)  Jacob truly loved and adored Rachel.

You remember this story:  Jacob gave Joseph a coat of many colors and Joseph lorded it over his brothers.  Joseph was spoiled.  But in anger, the 10 of them (Benjamin wasn't with them) threw him in a well, soaked his coat with blood and told Jacob that Joseph must be dead.  But instead, they drug him out of the well and sold him.

Joseph ended up in Egypt and became trusted by Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, to be in charge of his house.  And the next woman of the Bible that is mentioned is Potiphar's wife--who tried every trick in the book to seduce Joseph.  But he said "...can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" And fled.  She grabbed his toga and angry, from being rejected, told her husband that Joseph had tried to defile her and left his robe.  Potiphar threw him in the dungeon--where Joseph stayed many years until Pharaoh himself released him. (Joseph had interpreted Pharaoh's dreams.)

"...Pharaoh took off his ring and put it upon Joseph's hand and made him ruler over all the land of Egypt."  Then Pharaoh gave Joseph a woman named Asenath to be his wife.  Asenath gave Joseph two sons.  Manasseh and Ephraim.  You may remember that years later, when the Israelites fled Egypt and subsequently went into the promised land that those two sons were given equal portions along with Jacob's other sons.

I left out the names of Esau's wives--he had a bunch of them.  Esau is not in the chain of events that are central to the Israelites.  That belongs to Jacob--renamed Israel.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  They are the sons of promise who along with their wives raised up a nation.

These women were the mothers of the nation of Israel. They played an important part of God's story as it unfolded into the coming of Christ.