Genesis 35: 4-7: “And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him. 7 And he built there an altar, and called the place Elbethel: because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother.”
Jacob collected all the strange gods from his family and then hid them under a large tree. We could assume that his intention was to leave them there and not to return for them. This is the best thing to do with strange gods, hide them away and leave them behind. If Jacob had left them out they may have become a snare to someone else who found them so he put them in a safe place so that they wouldn’t be a stumbling block to anyone else either. Everyone in the region had heard about the vengeance that Simeon and Levi had taken on their sister’s attacker and they were afraid. Jacob was afraid that these people would hate him and attack him for the act of vengeance but we see that the opposite happened. How often do we worry about something and lose a lot of sleep but when the time comes things don’t turn out as we thought and we wasted a lot of time on worry? Finally Jacob’s journey was complete for he came back to the place where he had his first dream on the way to his mother’s homeland. He stopped there to worship and thank the Lord for all that He had done for Jacob along the way. He built an altar to offer a sacrifice to the Lord. He called that pace “Elbethel”, which means the God of Bethel. When Jacob left he went in hope but now that he had come back he knew that God is real and reliable. May we all reach that place, by faith, in our lives.
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
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