BOOK
BY BOOK BIBLE STUDY
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BIBLE
STUDY LESSON
For
the week beginning Sunday February 17, 2019
JACOB
RETURNS TO BETHEL
Genesis
35:1-15
In Genesis 35 GOD tells Jacob to move on to Bethel as HE had
instructed him earlier, and to settle and build an altar there so that they can
worship HIM. GOD wanted Jacob to remember his vow (Genesis 28:20-22) and return
to the area where his grandfather and father, Abraham and Isaac, had already
established their presence (Beersheba), but instead, he had made unauthorized
stops along the way in Succoth and Shechem, where he resided for long periods
of time. His disobedience to GOD’s instructions can ultimately be blamed for
the rape of his daughter, Dinah by the heathen prince, Shechem, the son of
Hamor, the Hivite.
In verse 2, we see just how far Jacob and
his family had remained outside of the will of GOD. Here, as Jacob calls for a
“sanctification process” to begin, he first has to instruct his family to
“destroy all of their idols”, and household gods. He then instructed them to wash
themselves, and put on clean clothes. Afterwards he told them that they were
moving to Bethel where “the GOD WHO answers his prayers when he is in distress”
has beckoned him to go. And so Jacob collected all of their idols, household
gods, and earrings (which were apparently associated with the idols in some
way), and buried them beneath a tree near Shechem.
Now remember at the end of the last chapter
how Jacob feared that the Canaanites would seek revenge for what his sons had
done to the town of Shechem (the massacre) to avenge the rape of their sister,
Dinah? Here in this chapter we see that it actually had a totally opposite
effect on the surrounding pagan nations.
In fact, in verse 5 of this chapter, we are told that, as soon as Jacob
and his family began to move, it struck great fear over the remaining Canaanite
nations that they might be next, and absolutely no one dared to attack them.
Shortly after arriving in Bethel, Rebekah’s
nurse, Deborah, died. She was buried beneath an oak tree in the valley below
Bethel, and they named the tree “the Oak of Weeping”, because there was much
weeping at the funeral of this old and trusted servant.
Afterwards GOD again appeared to Jacob and
blessed him and declared, “Your name is
no longer Jacob; you will now be called “Israel”. GOD further spoke to
Israel saying, “I AM GOD Almighty.
Multiply and fill the earth! Become a great nation, even many nations. Kings
will be among your descendants! And I will pass on to you the land I gave to
Abraham and Isaac. Yes, I will give it to you and your descendants” (NLT).
Then GOD ascended from the place where HE had spoken to Israel.
GOD’s reference to HIMSELF as “GOD
Almighty” (“EL Sadday”), was also an assurance that HIS promise would be
fulfilled. And so, like he had done about 30 years earlier in this same place,
Jacob built another altar to the LORD as he had promised. And also like he had
done before, he poured wine over it as an offering to GOD, and he anointed it
with olive oil. And once again he dubbed the place “Bethel”, which means “House
of GOD”, because the LORD had, once again, came and spoken to him there.
THE DEATHS
OF RACHEL AND ISAAC
Genesis
35:16-29
In this final segment of Genesis 35, two more transitional deaths
are recorded. First, we see the unexpected passing away of Rachel while giving
birth to Jacob’s last son, Benjamin, and the death of Isaac at the ripe old age
of 180. Along with Deborah, this brought the total to three deaths in this chapter.
When Jacob left Bethel, he traveled on with
his family toward “Ephrath”, which is the same as “Bethlehem”, or
“Bethlehem-Ephratha”. Along the way, however, Rachel, who was pregnant with their
child, began to have labor pains, and so the family had to cease traveling
before they arrived at their destination, which was still quite some distance
away.
After a very difficult delivery, one that
would ultimately cause her death, Rachel gave birth to a son, and with her
dying breath, she named the child “Ben-oni”, which means “son of my sorrow”.
However, after his “favorite” wife’s death, Jacob changed the baby’s name to
“Benjamin”, which means, “son of my right hand”. It was his way of turning the
“sorrow” of the moment, into “triumph” and a brighter outlook for the future.
Ironically, Benjamin would be the only son
of Jacob that was born inside the land of promise. All of his other children
were born in Padan-aram. After Rachel’s death, he buried her there between Bethel
and Bethlehem, and he set up “a stone monument” over her grave that could be
seen for many years to come.
In verse 21, Jacob’s strange reaction of
“silence” upon hearing that his oldest son had had sex with his (concubine)
wife, Bilhah, Rachel’s servant, is exactly the same lack of emotion that he
showed when he heard that his daughter by Leah, “his least favorite wife”, had
been raped by the pagan prince, Shechem.
And so we see here that, even though
Jacob’s immediate promise to GOD to return to Bethel and build the alter was
complete, as was the completion of the births of the twelve progenitors of the
tribes of Israel, the old Jacob is still alive and well, and the struggle with
rebuilding his character is nowhere near complete.
This chapter ends with Jacob’s return to
his father Isaac’s home in Mamre near Kiriath-arba, which would become “Hebron”,
the future “City of David”. While there, Isaac dies and he and his brother Esau
came together again, and buried their father with his ancestors, in the cave on
the plot that was purchased by Abraham, from Ephron at Machpelah, near Mamre.
A Sunday school lesson by,
Larry D. Alexander
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