Saturday, August 1, 2015

Genesis chapter 35

After reading chapter 35:

*After the Dinah episode, God conveniently tells Jacob to move to Bethel. Before they leave, Jacob gathers up all the idols and earrings his household has and buries them under the oak at Shechem. Remember his household now contains all the women and children of Shechem as slaves. The tree is most likely one of the "great trees" that were found near each town. They were where the people of those places went to consult their gods.

*As they pass through the land, nobody bothers them because the "terror of God" was upon them. If this actually happened, it would be more likely they had heard about the massacre and were afraid they would be next. When they got to Bethel, Jacob built an altar. Then Deborah, Rebekah's nurse dies and is buried. What she is doing with them is anybody's guess.

* Verses 9-15 are weirdly redundant and don't seem to fit in the story. There is reiteration of Jacob being named Israel, the promise of the land of Canaan for his descendants, and Jacob naming the place where God talked to him Bethel.

*The storyline continues with verse 16. They are  on the move from Bethel when Rachel gives birth to another son named Benjamin. The birth was difficult and Rachel died. She was buried and Jacob set up a pillar to mark her tomb. They moved on again and while they are in Migdal Eder, Reuben sleeps with his father's concubine Bilhah. Bilhah had been Rachel's slave and was the mother of two of Reuben's brothers, Dan and Naphtali. Here it says she was a concubine, before she was described as a wife.

*Jacob finally reaches his father in Hebron. Isaac had lived 180 years when he dies and Esau and Jacob bury him. The year would be about 1777 B.C.E. , if we attempt to follow biblical chronology.

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