ETB Genesis 35:1-15

Cedric Chafee
ETB Winter 2024  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented
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Session #8 - p.73 - Renewed
In our increasingly digital world, identity theft has become a major concern. As a result, identity theft protection companies promise to defend our information, monitor for any changes, and provide a guarantee against financial losses. Similarly, when we accept Christ as Savior, He gives us a new identity (2 Cor. 5:17); and He expects us to fulfill our new identity by growing toward spiritual maturity.
Because we all experience lapses in living up to our identity in Christ, we also need times of spiritual renewal. In today’s session, Jacob and his family returned to Bethel to renew their commitment to the Lord. [LifeWay Adults (2024). Explore the Bible: Adult Leader Guide, Spring 2024]
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Understand the Context

Pastor Steve reminded us one evening recently as we studied Chapter 33 and 34 that after the encounter with Esau, Israel went back to be Jacob. He said he would meet Esau in one place but ended up going to another.
Having settled in Shechem, his family experienced a devastating atrocity because of the loose morals of the Canaanites. Shechem, the son of a local chieftain, raped Jacob’s daughter Dinah. Then, he wanted to take her as a wife. Jacob’s sons became infuriated when they learned what had happened to their sister. [ETB:ALG Spr'24]
The loose morals were also in Jacob’s family and they deceitfully conspired against the entire town (instead of just the one family) and plundered the whole settlement after killing all the men.
After chastising his sons for their repulsive behavior, Jacob heard God’s call to return to Bethel, the place where Jacob had dreamed of a stairway reaching from earth to heaven. [ETB:ALG Spr'24]
Our passage text begins with that call to come back into God’s presence.

Explore the Text

Genesis 35:1–4 ESV
1 God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” 2 So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. 3 Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” 4 So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem.
v.1
Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there
Reading this statement without the chapter break would put in better context. Where Jacob’s family was and what they had finished doing was not good. God is telling them to move away from that place and that mentality and go back to the beginning of his faith - back to Bethel. Not only go, but take up residence. Dwell here, in My Presence. Be with Me.
Make an altar there
Not only move and reside, but plan on worshipping Me continually in this place.
Bethel served as a site of patriarchal and later tribal worship of the Lord. Eventually, it became second only to Jerusalem as a religious center. God’s instruction to Jacob at Bethel is the only occasion where the Lord specifically directed a patriarch (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) to build an altar. No explicit mention of an altar appears in Genesis 28, the record of Jacob’s initial arrival at the place he named Bethel. However, Jacob’s vow recorded in 28:20-22 involves a promise of worshiping the Lord at that site. [ETB:ALG Spr'24]
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v.2-3
Put away the foreign gods
Literally “remove the foreign land idols”
The term foreign could also be translated “strange.” These objects should have been strange to God’s people because they were to worship only the one true God. The various people groups of Canaan worshiped idols. In fact, Jacob’s family may have confiscated these idolatrous objects when Jacob’s sons murdered the Shechemites (Gen. 34:24-30). [ETB:ALG Spr'24]
These things did not help them in Shechem and may have contributed to the disastrous situation. Later Moses would record this in another way:
Exodus 20:3–4 “3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
Seeing this same principle being asked of the forefather Israel show the people Moses is with before entering the Promised Land, and us, the consistency of God’s expectations of His worshipers.
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purify yourselves and change your garments
These are essentially the same command repeated twice in different forms. “Purify yourselves” is all one word in the Hebrew.
I am certain you can guess which of the 5 books of the Bible Moses wrote that contains the most usage of the word referring to a ritualistic cleansing. Starts with “Leave” ends with “Us”.
The reason for this ritual cleansing is that they were changing locations and worship. You could say that the family was changing denominations. Jacob tells the family who they are all going to worship now.
the God who answers me
Just knowing that God will answer and commune with you is reason enough to worship but it was deeper than that for Jacob. Same phrasing as in Song 2:10 and when he was striking the deal with Laban for the flocks in Gen 30:33.
Loving response and a legal testimony all with the truth and trustworthiness of God. All of these attributes are wrapped into the name that God give of Himself to Jacob later in the passage.

Perhaps it was because Jacob was so amazed by this that he said, “It’s time to clean up—not so God will call us, but because He has called us.”

That’s what grace does. When I realize how kind and good and benevolent and merciful God is to me day after day after day, it causes me to want to put away my trinkets and toys that are not of Him. Too often, we think, I’ve got to get my life cleaned up and maybe then I can hear God’s voice; maybe then He’ll lead me again. No. God is ready to lead us today right where we are—and because of that we say, “Lord, You’re so good. I don’t want the things of the world any more.”

has been with me wherever I have gone
Savior and Friend, and ever present help in times of trouble and loneliness.
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v.4
they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had
Rachel did not hold back if she still had Laban’s teraphim. All those with Jacob obeyed. That says a lot about how they must have seen a change in Jacob, or realized the seriousness of his request. Not the same kind of responses or attitudes found in Chapter 34 and Shechem.
and the rings that were in their ears

The first people known to have used earrings are the Sumerians, for whom they were magical amulets designed to protect the ear openings from infiltration by evil spirits that were thought to be the cause of disease.

Pagans who wore earrings often had inscriptions on them invoking the protection of their gods

This is probably why the AMP translates this phrase as “their earrings which were [worn as charms against evil] in their ears.”

Ezek. 16:12 distinguishes Heb. ʿāg̱ɩ̂lɩ̂m, ear ornaments, from nezem, a nose ring (Gen. 24:22, 30, 47; Isa. 3:21; Prov. 11:22), but nezem can also refer to earrings (Gen. 35:4; Exod. 32:2–3; Prov. 25:12). In other passages the distinction is not clear, and nezem may have simply referred to any small ring-shaped item of jewelry.

Rings are associated with the manufacture of an idol or cult object (Exod. 32:2–3; Judg. 8:27; Gen. 35:4), and they are among the pieces of jewelry offered for use in God’s tent of meeting (Exod. 35:22).

All this shows how interconnected in the cultural that the gods and the bodily ornamentation were. Getting rid of just some things was not enough everything that was associated with that past needed to be removed. All of this is very much like Paul’s command in the New Testament to “put off” the old ways.
Colossians 3:9 “9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices”
Ephesians 4:22 “22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,”
Looking at our own lives and homes every now and then to remove the reminders of past idols and temptations is a good practice. We try to make it apart of our “spring cleaning” each year. Not only rooting out last years dust but the old ways of life too.
Jacob hid them
Some of the English translations use “Jacob buried them” and I think that fits the cultural connotation better. Like you bury your pets, you “lay them to rest” never to return again. Some culture would see this an the gods who are represented by the idols as being powerless before the burying the items. Jacob was visibly severing all ties with these foreign gods and committing his whole family to the worship of the One God.
Now that the old way is removed, the new way needs to replace it quickly. That’s why Paul also reminds us to “put on” righteousness.
Ephesians 4:23–24 “23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
If we do not have something “holy” to put back in the place of those things we removed, we will fall back into the old habits. It is much more difficult to just stop eating the unhealthy things if we do not have something else that is healthier to munch on in its place. It is easier to resist eating the bad if the stomach already has something else in it, even if it is not the most savory.
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Genesis 35:5–8 ESV
5 And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. 6 And Jacob came to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him, 7 and there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. 8 And Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Allon-bacuth.
he built an altar and called the place El-bethel,

Jacob has his problems indeed. Jacob has all kinds of baggage without question. But through it all, he’s growing because when he comes to Bethel the second time, he no longer calls it Bethel, “the house of God,” but El-Bethel or, “The God of the House of God.” This shows monumental maturity, for Jacob understands that it’s not the house of God that is important, but the God who dwells therein. So, too, it’s not worship that’s important, but the God whom we worship. It’s not the Bible that’s important, but the God of the Bible. You see, the Word is not an end in itself. The goal of Bible study is not to try and gain more intellectual or theological understanding. It’s much more than that. The Word of God is simply a door I go through many times a day to meet the God of the Word.

Ask: How does obedience to God serve as a protection for the believer? (PSG, p. 77)
For Jacob and his family the protection came in the form of fear.
a terror from God
Hebrew does not appear to have prepositions like we do in English so those that we have in our text are inferred by the context by the translator. Some use “from”, others have “of” but in the text it is just “terror God.”
Making this more difficult to accurately translate is that this is the only time in the Old Testament that the Hebrew word for terror is used. It is translated to “phobos” in the Septuagint, which we get our word “Phobia” from.
Although a different Hebrew word is used, there is a similar effect described in the book of Joshua
Joshua 5:1 “1 As soon as all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the people of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts melted and there was no longer any spirit in them because of the people of Israel.”
Like our modern definition for phobias this was not a general fear, it was debilitating and paralyzing. But it was mor than just worldly fear, it was supernatural.
I think it both came “from” God and it was “of” God if any action was taken toward the one He was protecting - Jacob.
This is probably the kind of fear that modern Israel needs once again to stop all the attacks on their people, but they probably would have to do the same “cleansing” that the first Israel did to obtain it.
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Read: Reread Genesis 35:8 “8 And Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Allon-bacuth.” Acknowledge that this verse may seem out of place in this narrative. Explain that the deaths of Deborah and Isaac (Gen. 35:27-29) denote the passing of the previous generation.
I liked J Vernon McGee’s comment on this passage and it ties together some other “loose ends” in Scripture for us, like how did Jacob get news of home while with Laban.
Since Deborah was with Jacob at this time, we assume that Rebekah had already died, and Scripture does not tell us when her death took place. Poor Jacob never saw his mother again. That part is not as tragic as the fact that she never saw him again—she had just sent him away for a little while, you know. The nurse apparently had brought a message of Rebekah’s death and had come to stay with Jacob—and now she dies. Genesis 35:8 (Thru the Bible Commentary, Volumes 1-5: Genesis through Revelation)
Transition: Jacob heard the direction from God, returned to Bethel, and built an altar. From there, he was ready to hear from God again.
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Genesis 35:9–15 ESV
9 God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. 10 And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.” So he called his name Israel. 11 And God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. 12 The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.” 13 Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. 14 And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it. 15 So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him Bethel.
v.9-13
God appeared to Jacob again… and blessed him.
Last week Bill raised a question about the passage last week when the man/angel/Jesus finished the wrestling match and “blessed him.” We wondered what was said. Some scholars seem to associate that blessing with this one as other parts are also repeated. Unlike some of them I do not believe this is “the same blessing”, I believe this is an separate encounter and not a retelling of the same one. I do think that elements of this longer dialogue were probably contained in the brief account in Chapter 32 but those exact words are left out of what Moses was inspired to write.
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no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel
God reminds Jacob that he was not acting like his new name since their wrestling match at Jabbok.
The repetition in Genesis 35 reinforces his new name with a different emphasis. In chapter 32, the change from Jacob “the deceiver” to Israel “the one who prevails with God” called attention to God’s transformation of Jacob’s character. The context of Genesis 35 highlights the national and royal importance of the new name, Israel (see 35:11). [ETB:ALG Spr'24]
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I am God Almighty

Shaddai, Almighty. The word occurs only forty-eight times in the Hebrew Bible, thirty-one times in the book of Job. This is a name for the Lord—the Old Testament people of faith referring to Him as El Shaddai, God Almighty. The term is found in the passages that report God’s promises of fertility, land, and abundance to them, indicating that He, the Almighty, could fulfill His promises (Gen. 17:1; 28:3; 35:11). The Lord appeared to Abraham when he was ninety-nine years old and identified himself as El Shaddai, God Almighty (Gen. 17:1). All three patriarchs knew Him by this name (Gen. 28:1–3; 35:11); as did Joseph (Gen. 48:3; cf. Ex. 6:3)

Ask: What is the significance of God identifying Himself to Jacob as “El-Shaddai” or “God Almighty”? (PSG, p.78)
be fruitful and multiply
Starting with the same commands to Adam for all mankind, than again with Noah after the flood, and finally with each of the patriarchs. God re-establishes both His promises and His expectations for Israel and those who follow Him.
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land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you and … to your offspring after you.
Moses, and those who heard this passage the first time, probably were greatly encouraged by this verse as it was very specifically about them. Unfortunately it would be their children that would eventually see the fulfillment of this very except for Joshua and Caleb.
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Then God went up from him
Thus ends the direct interacts of God with the 3 patriarchs. Not until Moses, will He be “seen” again.
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v.14-15
Ask: How do God’s promises help a person understand His expectations for His people? (PSG, p. 80)
Jacob set up a pillar
This is not the altar that God asked him to build but it may have been it beginning. This is another "memorial stone” like we first read about when Jacob dreamed of the stairway. This appears to be different than the altar he built in verse 6. Some suggest this was a separate encounter on another hilltop close to but not the same one as before. Other seem to think this is a final “summary” statement for the narrative focusing on Israel/Jacob as he becomes a secondary character in the rest of the Genesis account.
I like the imagery one commentator suggested. These three places in our passage represent the future areas in the tabernacle and temple. There is the holy place, the outer courtyard where all a welcome to come and worship, the area around Bethel. Then the inner courtyard is a smaller region represented by the altar that he built, probably of multiple stones. But the holiest place for Jacob was that single stone, that one spot, that he “saw God” and where God “went up” from him.
This Holy of Holies was opened up for all people to enter when Christ died and the veil of separation was torn in two. I like the reverse imagery that suggested that the worship of God is no longer confined to one place on one day but is no available for all people everywhere on the earth, if they come through Christ’s atoning, veil tearing, sacrificial act. God spoke to Jacob in Bethel twice, today we can hear from Him every time we open His word and read the story again.
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Apply the Text

p.81
Believers are to examine their lives for idols. (Me must put away/ put off those things that pull away from God’s ways)
Believers can rest in knowing God provides for His people. (He will always provide something better for us to “put on” if we will rest in Him and wait for it)
Believers can live in light of God’s promises. (When He give us that new way to live and rest in Him it can be a beacon to others, drawing others into His presence and magnifying Him even more.)
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Pray: Close in prayer thanking God for His presence and protection. Praise Him for the hope found in renewed commitments.
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