Genesis 35

Jacob’s whole life up to until Peniel, was defined by the rise of self, of pride and of living according to the flesh or in other words by his own ego and by his own efforts. He knew God existed but he didn’t know God.

What really happened at Peniel was the fall of that self. All that pride and self-assurance, all that “I know best” attitude was shown to be worth nothing.

His self-image and his pride in his own cunningness were pumped up like an over-inflated tyre but that tyre had been punctured and deflated to almost flat. Accordingly, he went down to practically nothing.

But there was another reality that was displayed in chapter 34.

He wasn’t yet walking by faith.

We hear so much today about crisis experiences.

Some gang member or criminal, a soldier under fire in a foxhole or just an average Joe Blow goes through a crisis moment in their life where they realise that that crisis is far beyond their own self-sufficiency, their own self-reliance to cope with. The crisis is so big and impossible that they cry out to God.

We hear this all the time in the form of testimonies and stories.

Some folk even feel that if you don’t have one of these experiences, you just haven’t had an encounter with The Lord.

That’s simply not true. Some people have a wonderful crisis experience, and I’m sure that many of us can turn back to that in our lives. But there are those who either don’t or never mentioned it as being something very important in their lives.

When Jacob came to Peniel, a tremendous life-changing experience happened to him and no matter how fantastic the stories of crisis moments may be I put it to you that few have wrestled physically with God.

And yet, despite this experience of Jacob and despite so many other crisis experiences we see a huge gap between the experience, the realisation of our absolute helplessness, and the future walk through life from that point on.

You see, what chapter 34 teaches us is that no matter how dramatic or how simple the turning point in our life may be, we must learn to walk by faith.

Jacob simply hadn’t learned this yet.

He had had an experience with God but he hadn’t learned to trust him completely. He’d not yet learned to walk by faith.

This is identical to each one of us in our own situations. We may have had a wonderful life-changing experience or we may not have but either way, our walk with God is nothing else but a walk of faith. Maturity as a Christian is not necessarily about how many bible verses we know or how much we think we know about the end of this age, it’s about the degree that we trust God and His promises over our own knowledge and ability. Do we trust Him?

That walk of faith is like being told of a narrow path leading to a rich treasure, but we can’t see that treasure with our natural eyes.

Faith doesn’t contemplate whether or not that treasure’s real, faith knows it’s real. Faith is the evidence and the substance of it we’re told in Hebrews 11:1.

So then, where does that faith to see the treasure come from since we can’t see it with our eyes?

Well, our faith is only as good as the trust we place in the person who told us about the treasure.

If we were told about the treasure by a person who was doing time in prison for fraud, our faith in the treasure’s reality would be very weak and we’d have no interest in trying to get to it.

So many treasure hunts through history have been embarked on based on the word of a conman or trickster.

However, if our Almighty, All-Knowing God told us about it we could easily believe it.

But, what if He also told us that the narrow path to the treasure was long and steep and required us to face many challenges in order to get to the end?

Well many of us may opt out and be happy with what we are and never attempt the journey.

But what if God then told us that the treasure was actually ours already and all we had to do was walk the pathway and lay hold of it? And, then he told us that even though the path was long and steep and challenging, it would not have a single obstacle on it that we couldn’t handle and with every step, He’d be there with us and He’d never leave or forsake us as He does in Hebrews 13:5.

Well then most of us would look at the integrity and the great power of the One telling us and we’d see it as a no lose situation.

We’d begin the journey. We’d fail often, but we’d pick ourselves up and go again because we’d be always looking to the One who spoke to us.

Friends, our treasure is real. It’s our eternal home. It’s a long and steep journey, a process, as we learn to trust God and His Word and walk by faith through the trials of this present world, which try to knock us off the narrow path to the treasure.

Jacob had been reunited with his brother Esau and vowed to follow him home, but as soon as Esau had turned his back and started for home, Jacob took his family the opposite way, down to Shalem. It’s a tragic move.

Jacob was still depending upon his own cleverness, his own resources, and his own fears.

Dinah, his daughter, was raped, and Simeon and Levi, her full brothers, went into the city of Shalem to the prince who was responsible.

Although he wanted to marry her, they murdered him, and the sons of Jacob conducted a terrible slaughter.

When his sons came home, Jacob said, “You’ve made my name to smell among the people of my land.” He was more worried about his name and was more in fear for his life from the surrounding peoples than he was remorseful for the mass killing itself.

The tragic things that took place in chapter 34 were the result of a man who had been walking in the energy of the flesh. There’d been a deflation of self, but there was no faith in God.

After this tragic event, Jacob begins to see the hand of God in his life, and now he makes the decision that he probably should have made beforehand.

Let’s begin at Genesis 35:1,

Then God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother.” 

Now God’s calling this man back to Bethel. After this sad experience, he’s prepared to go. As we’ve said already, he didn’t have faith to move out before, but Jacob now begins to take the spiritual leadership in his home.

Now to verse 2,

And Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments. 

There are several things that Jacob tells his household to do.

First of all, they’re to, quote,  “put away the strange gods that are among you.” We’re almost shocked at this. We recall that when Jacob fled with Rachel and Leah, Rachel slipped out with the family gods.

When Laban caught up with the group and began looking for his gods Rachel sat on them while riding the camel then she just crawled on top of the luggage that was on the camel’s back and sat down because these little images were underneath.

Jacob didn’t know at the time that she’d taken them. He was being honest when he told Laban that the images were not in his entourage at all.

That may have been one of the few times he was truthful with Laban. He really had not known they were there, but he knows now.

Probably we’d all assume that Jacob would get rid of them because he knew of the living and true God. In fact, he had had a personal encounter with Him. But he didn’t get rid of the images, and now we find that his entire family is worshipping these strange gods. For the first time, Jacob is the one to take the spiritual leadership, and he says, “Get rid of these false gods.”

The first thing they have to do, and we must do also, is to put away that which is wrong.

Then Jacob says, “Be clean.”

Most of us take a physical bath or a shower to clean our body and yet there’s often a spiritual uncleanness because there’s no confession of sin, no cleansing.

We need to use the Christian’s bar of soap which is 1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God will always forgive, but we must confess.

“And change your garments,” Jacob says.

In other words, get rid of the old garments. In Scripture “garments” speak of habits.

Do we wear the habits of the Lord or of this world? Can we be detected in business or in school or in the neighbourhood as being a little different for the better or are our habits showing us to be just like, or worse than, the rest of the world?

The day that Jacob went back to Bethel, he started living for God. Up to then, it’s doubtful. Now he says, “Let’s go back to Bethel” and that’s what we must do.

Verse 3,

Then let us arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me in the way which I have gone.” 

Abraham and Isaac had made altars, and now Jacob will make an altar.

He’ll now have a witness for God.

He says of God, “Who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.”

You see, the thing that Jacob remembered is that when he was running away from home as a young man, homesick and lonesome, he’d come to Bethel, and God had been faithful to him.

God had said, “I will be faithful to you.”

The years had gone by, and God certainly had been faithful to him. Now God says, “You’ve got to go back to Bethel. You have to go back to where you started. You have to begin there.”

If we spend our years living a shoddy, shabby Christian life we need to recognise that those years are a waste of time, absolutely a waste of time.

God called the children of Israel to get out of Egypt and into the land of promise.

God appeared to them and told them to go into the land, but they didn’t go in. Forty years they wandered around, and then God appeared to Joshua and said, “Go into the land.” He picked up right where He had left off. They’d wasted forty years. How many people are wasting their lives as Christians?

There’s tremendous spiritual lessons here for us, my friends!

Some of us are just like Jacob, and that’s the reason this applies to us today.

Thank God that He says He is the God of Jacob. I love that becasue if He’ll be the God of Jacob, He’ll be the God of me and you also, and that’s wonderful! This chapter is a great encouragement to us.

Notice that Jacob is assuming authority in his home.

Verse 4 now,

So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods which were in their hands, and the earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree which was by Shechem. 

Now, earrings were associated with worship in that day and there’s a lot said in Scripture about that. The earrings identified them as idolaters, and so they’re going to get rid of them.

“Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree which was by Shechem.” Jacob got rid of them. They’re not stored away—they’re buried. They must be put away because it’s now going to be a new life.

Verses 5 and 6,

And they journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. 

So Jacob came to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. 

This place was called Luz before Jacob changed the name to Bethel, and the people in that day knew it as Luz, not as Bethel. We know it today as Bethel.

Genesis 35 verse 7,

And he built an altar there and called the place El Bethel, because there God appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother.

Beth–el, means “the house of God.” It was the name that Jacob had given to it before.

Now he called it El–Beth–el, which means “God of the house of God.”

This reveals spiritual growth in Jacob’s life.

Now here is a very interesting sidelight:

Verse 8,

Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and she was buried below Bethel under the terebinth tree. So the name of it was called Allon Bachuth.

Since Deborah, Jacob’s mother Rebekah’s nurse was with Jacob at this time, we assume that Rebekah had already died. Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly 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 thought she was just sending him away for a little while.

The nurse more than likely brought the news of Rebekah’s death to Jacob and ends up staying with him and now she dies.

To verse 9 now,

Then God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Padan Aram, and blessed him. 

For all those years God had been trying to deal with Jacob. Now he picks up right where He’d met him when he came to Bethel as a young man.

Those years he spent down there with Uncle Laban, in many ways, were wasted years and yet God used them for His purpose.

We come to Genesis 35:10-11,

And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name.” So He called his name Israel. 

Also God said to him: “I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body. 

“I am God Almighty.” Remember that that is what He had told Abraham.

Verse 12,

The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac I give to you; and to your descendants after you I give this land.” 

The Lord considers that pretty important real estate, by the way.

This is now the third time He’s promised them the land. First to Abraham, then to Isaac, and now to Jacob.

The Lord had to tell each one of these men about it two or three times; in fact, He told Abraham many times.

We move to verses 13 to 15,

Then God went up from him in the place where He talked with him. 

So Jacob set up a pillar in the place where He talked with him, a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink offering on it, and he poured oil on it. 

And Jacob called the name of the place where God spoke with him, Bethel. 

Here we see the first mention of a drink offering in the bible.

The drink offering is found in several places, Exodus 29:40-41, Leviticus 23:13, and Numbers 15:5-7 show that the drink offering was made with wine poured out in sacrifice before the LORD at His altar.

Apparently, the drink offering was poured on the other offerings, and it went up in the steam.

Paul told the Philippians in Philippians 2:17 that he was glad to be poured out like a drink offering on their sacrifice and service of their faith. He also spoke of being poured out as a drink offering in 2 Timothy 4:6.

We’re now at verse 16,

Then they journeyed from Bethel. And when there was but a little distance to go to Ephrath, Rachel labored in childbirth, and she had hard labor. 

Rachel had one son Joseph, but now she has a second son.

Genesis 35:17-18,

Now it came to pass, when she was in hard labor, that the midwife said to her, “Do not fear; you will have this son also.” 

And so it was, as her soul was departing (for she died), that she called his name Ben-Oni; but his father called him Benjamin. 

Rachel calls this little baby Ben-Oni which means ‘son of my sorrow,’ but old Jacob looked down at the baby and in his great sorrow says something like, “I’ve lost my lovely Rachel, and this little fellow looks like her, so I’ll call him Benjamin, ‘son of my right hand.’” Jacob had a special love for the sons of his precious Rachel.

Jacob’s love for Rachel was one of the wonderful things in his life during those years in Padan–aram when there was so much evidence of his scheming and self–seeking.

He loved Rachel, there’s no question about that. He was totally devoted to her. He was willing to do almost anything for her, such as permitting her to keep the images she’d taken from her father.

Would he have had the same understanding for Leah or anyone else for that matter? Probably not.

But he was a soft touch where Rachel was concerned.

She’d given Jacob his son Joseph, and now she gives birth to Benjamin. And it was at the birth of her second son that she died. Benjamin’s life meant her death. It was a great heartbreak to Jacob.

The other ten boys bought Jacob no joy at all.

It’s as if God reminded him every day all day that to have more than one wife was against His will.

However, God will overrule, of course, just as He overrules in our lives and we thank Him for that!

But the facts reveal that God didn’t approve of this plural marriage because, well as a man sows…

This plays out in the treatment which Joseph received later from his half–brothers.

Jacob loved Joseph and Benjamin and, frankly, the other boys were jealous of that.

He shouldn’t have shown such favouritism to Joseph, After all, he’d experienced first-hand the results of partiality in his own home. He’d been the one who his father had more or less pushed aside and he knew the trouble and pain it had caused.

Although we can’t defend Jacob, we can certainly sympathize with him. He’d lost his lovely Rachel, but he had Benjamin.

While it was true that the boy was the son of Rachel’s sorrow, Jacob could not call him Benoni. He was the son of his right hand, his walking stick, his staff, the one he would lean on in his old age. It’s important to recognise this because it’ll help us understand the great sorrow Jacob will go through later on.

All of it will have its roots in Jacob’s sin. God doesn’t approve of the wrong in our lives, my friends. We think we can get by with it, but we won’t get by with it any more than Jacob got by with it.

We’re at verses 19 and 20 now,

So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).

And Jacob set a pillar on her grave, which is the pillar of Rachel’s grave to this day. 

That is, it was there until the time Moses wrote this, but it is also there to this very day.

Verse 21 and 22,

Then Israel journeyed and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder. And it happened, when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine; and Israel heard about it.

Reuben was the firstborn and we might have expected the best conduct from him. We might also expect him to receive the covenant of his fathers. Yet here, he sinned in a thoroughly offensive way against his father and his entire family.

However, we don’t have to wonder about where this sinful conduct came from. In a home so filled with strife, contention, competition, and the pursuit of the flesh, it was almost to be expected.

Through their sin Reuben, Simeon, and Levi seemed to disqualify themselves from the high calling of Abraham’s blessing. It’ll be up to the fourth son, Judah, to bring forth the Messiah.

In the next few verses, we have a listing of the sons of Jacob by his different wives and we’ll skip them as we already listed them in the last chapter.  Of them all, Joseph and Benjamin were the two that were outstanding. The others just didn’t turn out real well. Again, this proves the fact that God doesn’t bless plurality of wives. The family of Jacob should illustrate that to us. Although Uncle Laban was responsible, of course, Jacob went along with it.

To the last verse in Genesis 35:29,

So Isaac breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people, being old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

The death of their father Isaac was probably the only occasion that brought these two boys together in the years following Jacob’s return to the land.

Have you noticed that this chapter is made prominent by death?

First, there’s the death of Deborah, Rebekah’s maid. In this, there’s the suggestion of the death of Rebekah herself. Then there’s the death of lovely Rachel.

Finally, the chapter closes with the death of Isaac.

Next time we’re going to take a last look at Esau but until then my friends may God keep you and comfort you and bless you with His Word.