Genesis 35:8

These verses follow the darkest chapter in the life of Jacob’s family. Jacob had made a tense but peaceful reconciliation with Esau (Genesis 33) and then settled near Shechem. There his daughter Dinah was defiled, and her brothers Simeon and Levi took a brutal revenge on the men of the city (Genesis 34). The family was left disgraced and in danger, and Jacob feared that the Canaanites and the Perizzites would gather against his small household and destroy it (Genesis 34:30). Into that situation God speaks first. He takes the initiative, calls Jacob out of a defiled and dangerous place, and turns the story back to his own promises.

The command is “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there”. “Arise”, qum, calls Jacob to act now. To “go up” is meant literally, since Bethel lies higher than Shechem, and it is also the going up of a worshipper to a holy place. “Dwell there” asks Jacob to settle his household where God had met him.

The name Bêyth-ʼÊl means “house of God”. It joins the Hebrew words for house, bayith, and God, ʼêl. Jacob gave the place that name himself, decades earlier, after he dreamed there of a ladder reaching to heaven, heard God’s promises, and made a vow before going on his way (Genesis 28:10–22). So God sends Jacob back to the very place where their story together began, to remember that meeting and renew what he had promised there.

Jacob passes God’s call on to “his household, and to all that were with him”. The word for household, bayith, takes in the whole family together with the servants and everyone living under Jacob’s authority, and “all that were with him” widens it to anyone else travelling in his company. The command reaches everybody, because the whole camp was going up to meet God, and as its head Jacob answered for its worship.

The first thing he tells them is “Put away the strange gods that are among you”. To put away, çûwr, is to remove, and the strange gods are ʼĕlôhîym nêkâr, “foreign gods”. The word nêkâr means foreign, a foreigner, or the heathen world in general, so these were the gods of other peoples, foreign to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ʼĕlôhîym is the same word that names the true God, where its plural form is a plural of majesty, and here it has its ordinary sense of the gods of the nations.

The command shows that idols had come into Jacob’s own camp. His household had lived among worshippers of many gods from Laban’s house to Shechem, and even families who knew the LORD were tempted to mix his worship with other gods. God claims his people’s worship for himself alone, as the first commandment later says (Exodus 20:3), and Jacob understood that the idols stood between his family and the God they were going to meet.

Israel would hear this call again. Joshua told the tribes to “put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt” and to serve the LORD (Joshua 24:14–15). Samuel told the people, “put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the LORD, and serve him only” (1 Samuel 7:3–4).

Jacob’s second and third commands are “be clean, and change your garments”. The verb ṭâhêr means to be clean or pure, or to cleanse, and the law of Moses later uses it both for ceremonial cleanness and for moral purity. Here it means washing, and the washing goes with a heart made ready to stand before God.

To change, châlaph, with garments, simlâh, is to put on other clothes. A change of clothes often marked a new stage in life: entering a holy place, mourning, or taking up a new standing, as when Joseph shaved and changed his raiment before he came in to Pharaoh. Israel would later be told to cleanse themselves and their garments before God came down at Sinai, and the law of Moses gave this cleansing its full meaning.

The outward actions show what is happening inside. The household puts away its idols, washes off the defilement of Shechem, and puts on clean clothes to go and worship a holy God.

“And let us arise, and go up to Bethel.” The “us” takes in the whole household, since this is a journey the family makes together. Jacob also tells them why he is going: “I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.” This is his testimony, spoken in front of his wives, children and servants, and it teaches them who God is.

Distress, tsârâh, comes from the idea of tightness or a narrow place, and it means trouble and anguish. Jacob’s day of distress was above all his flight from Esau, after Rebekah warned him that his brother planned to kill him (Genesis 27:41–45), and his troubles went on through his hard years with Laban and now the danger after Shechem. In each of them God heard and answered. The way, derek, is a road or path, and also a course of life, and with the verb went, hâlak, it covers every step of Jacob’s travels. God kept his promise of Genesis 28:15 to the letter, and he says the same to his people afterwards: “Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:9).

The household obeys at once. “They gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand”, every one of them, from Rachel with her father’s teraphim to the servants. The gods were “in their hand”, their own possessions, so giving them up was a real surrender.

They also gave up “all their earrings which were in their ears”. The word nezem means an earring or a nose-ring, or a jewel in general. Earrings could be simple ornaments, but these are named beside the foreign gods and handed over with them, so they were probably amulets or charms worn for protection or good fortune and tied to those gods. Taking them out of their ears was a visible, personal act of turning away from the gods they belonged to.

“Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.” The verb ṭâman means to hide by covering over, often by burying, so Jacob put the idols and earrings in the ground and left them behind as the family set out. The gods of the nations stayed in the dust under a tree while the family went up to the house of God. Isaiah looks ahead to a day when people will cast away their idols of silver and gold “to the moles and to the bats” (Isaiah 2:18–20).

“And they journeyed”. The verb nâçaʻ means to pull up tent pegs, and so to set out on a journey. Jacob’s camp packed up and left Shechem for Bethel.

They had every reason to fear the road. Among the peoples of the land an attack like the one on Shechem called for revenge, and the cities round about were strong enough to overwhelm Jacob’s household. “And the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.” The word for terror, chittâh, means fear or dread, and it comes from châthath, to be broken, dismayed or afraid. It is the terror “of God”, ʼĕlôhîym, which means that God himself sent it, and it held back the very cities Jacob had feared. The family that had brought this danger on itself walked through it unharmed.

God did the same for Israel later. He promised to send his fear ahead of them into Canaan (Exodus 23:27), Rahab told the spies how afraid her people were of Israel and its God (Joshua 2:9–11), and dread seized the Philistines while the ark of God was among them (1 Samuel 5:11). A psalm praises God for protecting his anointed ones in their wanderings (Psalm 105:12–15).

“So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel”. The verb bôwʼ is the common word to go or come, and here it marks the end of the journey God commanded. Lûwz, probably meaning “almond tree” or “nut tree”, was the town’s older Canaanite name, and Bethel was the name Jacob had given the place (Genesis 28:19). Giving both names ties the town on the map to the holy place, and Bethel later served as a landmark when the land was divided among the tribes (Joshua 18:13).

“In the land of Canaan” places Jacob back in the land promised to Abraham, just as God had promised at Bethel to bring him again into this land. “He and all the people that were with him” arrived together and safely, the whole company that had put away its idols and washed. God would later tell Israel that he wanted to dwell among them (Exodus 25:8), and here a whole household comes to the house of God.

“And he built there an altar”. To build, bânâh, is to set up or establish, and Jacob does exactly what God asked of him in verse 1. The reason he gives, “because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother”, is the very reason God gave. The verb here is gâlâh, which means to uncover or reveal, so God revealed himself to Jacob there. It shares the English word “appeared” with verse 1, where the verb is râʼâh.

The place where Jacob once arrived alone and afraid became a monument to God’s faithfulness. His altar says with the psalmist, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Psalm 103:2). Straight after this God appears to Jacob again, confirms his new name Israel, and renews the covenant with him (Genesis 35:9–15).

“But Deborah Rebekah’s nurse died”. Dᵉbôwrâh means “bee”. Her title, nurse, translates yânaq, a verb meaning to suck, and in its causative form to give milk, so a nurse was one who suckled and cared for a child. Deborah had cared for Rebekah from her earliest years and probably came with her from Haran when Rebekah went to marry Isaac. Genesis leaves untold how she came to be with Jacob’s household at this time. A nurse in a household like this was a trusted member of the family, often staying with the one she had raised for the rest of her life, and Deborah had served this family for decades.

“She was buried beneath Bethel under an oak”, that is, below the town. Prominent trees made lasting markers for graves, as when the men of Jabesh buried Saul’s bones under a tree. The tree was named ʼAllôwn Bâkûwth, Allonbachuth, “oak of weeping”, from ʼallôwn, oak, and the name tells us how deeply she was mourned. Jacob’s household wept for a servant who stood outside the line of the promise, and Scripture has kept her name.

Her grave lies close to the altar. Even in the chapter of Jacob’s renewal there is loss, and more follows when Rachel dies and is buried on the way to Bethlehem (Genesis 35:19). The faithful service of a humble life is honoured before God. Boaz blesses Ruth with the words “The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust” (Ruth 2:12). “Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he that waiteth on his master shall be honoured” (Proverbs 27:18). Jesus says that whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of his little ones “shall in no wise lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42). He himself came to serve (Mark 10:45), he counts what is done for the least of his brethren as done for him (Matthew 25:40), and he promises the day when God will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:4).

Bethel and its ladder point to Jesus. He told Nathanael that he would see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man (John 1:51), the picture of Jacob’s dream at Bethel, with Jesus himself as the meeting place of heaven and earth. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily (Colossians 2:9), and he spoke of the temple of his own body (John 2:19–21). He is the way to the Father (John 14:6), and through him we have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). Those who belong to him are built together into a dwelling place of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19–22), so that the church is the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16) and the believer’s body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Worship is now offered in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24).

Jacob’s altar looks ahead to the one perfect sacrifice. Christ entered the holy place by his own blood, which cleanses the conscience to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:11–14). He appeared once to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26), and by one offering he has perfected for ever those who are sanctified (Hebrews 10:10–14). He is the Lamb of God, “which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), given because God so loved the world (John 3:16).

The cleansing of Jacob’s household has its fulfilment in Christ as well. Believers “put off the old man with his deeds” and “put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:9–10). God purifies hearts by faith (Acts 15:9) and delivers his people from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13). The idols buried under the oak are a picture of the believer buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4), a new creature for whom old things are passed away (2 Corinthians 5:17).

And the God who “was with me in the way which I went” has come to us in Jesus, Immanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). Jesus promised his disciples that he would be with them always (Matthew 28:20), God has said that he will never leave or forsake his people (Hebrews 13:5), and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever (Hebrews 13:8).

This passage shows God going after a family that had drifted into compromise and worse, and calling it home. He speaks first, and he grounds his call in what he has already done. The God who met Jacob at the start of his journey calls him back to Bethel, and he still calls his people back to their first love after seasons of drift.

His call comes with a cleansing. The strange gods in Jacob’s camp were statues and charms. The things that compete with God in a heart today can be wealth, a career, comfort, a relationship, our own image, or even spiritual pride, and God claims the place they have taken. In Christ he does the cleansing himself, and his people go up to worship him with their idols left behind.

Jacob’s words in verse 3 belong to every believer. God answers in the day of distress, and he is with us in the way which we go, as surely as he was with Jacob. The oak of weeping stands near the altar, because grief is real among God’s people, and God’s faithfulness holds through it until the day he wipes away every tear.