Connecting Scriptures:  Genesis 31:19 

There are a lot of moving parts to todays reading.  With numerous places to dig in, I want to focus on what stood out to me most today.  It was what God told Jacob and his family to bury and leave behind.  

The family of promise is on the move again, but not because of famine or a better place to graze herds.  It is because of the counter-sin of Jacob’s sons.  We covered in chapter 34 how the avenging spirit of Simeon and Levi was a sinful mishandling of justice.  As a result, what Jacob said about the surrounding inhabitants came true.  They had to leave the area as their reputation, which up to this point was a peaceful one, was now horribly tarnished.  As they are traveling we see the Lord protecting them (as keeping faith with what He promised Jacob) from any retaliation as He caused “a terror” to fall over any place they passed.  

This journey was to re-establish the covenant, take Jacob back to the place he first connected with God, and for God to make clear—you are not Jacob, now you are Israel.  It held a deep call back to “be fruitful and multiply” and an assurance of peoples and lands.  It feels like the turning of a page, one where we would leave our patriarch Jacob as the principle player, and pass the story along to his sons.  Oh!  What rash and unwise hands!

First though, some things have to be left behind.  The interaction Jacob has with God is such that he is compelled to seek holiness for himself and his family.  Perhaps it was the trauma of all that happened in the previous chapter, maybe it was just having God speak directly to him after such a disaster.  Whatever it was, Jacob is shaken to get serious about his next step.  The household gods, who had traveled all the way from Haran, and all that they symbolized had to be put behind them.  Jacob also tells them to “clean up” as it were.  They were all going back to the start with God, they were all going to start anew.  This felt like a call to repentance.  This was a physical and spiritual journey. 

At Bethel, as they have built an altar to God and worshipped him alone for all that they had been brought through, we have a death.  Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse who had traveled with her lady all those years before, and who had probably been a second mother to Jacob, passes.  We are not told when she joined Jacobs party, maybe she had gone back to Haran after Jacob and Esau had grown, and then rejoined Jacob as his family grew and he travels back to the promised land.  We are not told when Rebekah died, only that she obviously had no need for Deborah.  She too, is laid under a tree.  While Deborah was a comfort to Jacob and his family, I believe she represents all those same things God is calling Jacob out and away from.  The deception that was encouraged by his mother, his struggle to make a name for himself and gain wealth, his fear of Esau, his very name.  All of it, had to be buried and wept over and then walked away from.  Not this act or the altars he built to genuinely worship would secure him a smooth life.  No—from here on out, things get pretty rough.  But, at least for Israel, he had made his stand and it was going to be with the God who kept him and held every promise secure in His hands: God Almighty.

Two more devastating deaths.  Rachel and Issac.  But, one last son!  Benjamin, re-named from “son of my sorrow” to “son of my right hand”.  In that changing we can see Israel making a choice to cover his son, the only one born in the land of promise, with authority instead of tears.

Questions for Reflection:

1.  How does God’s faithfulness to Jacob and his entire family, despite their sin and moral failings, offer you hope today?

2.  What is God calling you to set aside, bury, or leave behind in order to worship him fully today?