Notes 46: Bethel revisited (35:1-15)

SYNOPSIS: God tells Jacob to go to Bet-el, the place where he had had a vision while fleeing from Esau, and build an altar there. Jacob tells all his family to hand over their foreign gods and any other trinkets, which he buries. Jacob names the altar he builds El-bet-El 'God of the House of God'. An obituary appears for Rachel's nurse Debora who dies and is buried there. God appears to Jacob and tells him he is no longer to be called Jacob, but Israel, and announces himself as El-Shaday, and proceeds to bless Jacob and renew his promise. Jacob sets up a monument and (again) names the place House of God "because God spoke to him there".

• Text of the passage in Nawat

According to the premises of the source critics, multiple tellings of similar events sometimes represent not the repetition of such acts so much as the repetitive telling in variant traditions which later redactors are assumed to have sewn together into the narrative tapestry called Genesis, so we might well wonder how many times "the real Jacob" went to Bethel. After all, when the text says that Jacob went to bed twice, we feel we should ask if he went to bed twice or we are just seeing two variant tellings? And indeed, if Jacob's name was changed to Israel when he was at Penuel and now this will happen at Bethel, does this really mean his name was changed to Israel twice? Nevertheless, it does actually look like Jacob really did go to Bethel twice (as did his grandfather before him). But when?

We have read that Jacob returned from Padan-Aram to Canaan, dealing along the way with Laban, supernatural beings and his estranged brother; then he went to Shechem and stayed there until his sons and daughter were grown up. In the last chapter his family committed an act of war against the local population, and now God tells Jacob to get up (qum, the usual opening formula when God tells people in Genesis to set off for somewhere) and go to Bethel. Taken at face value, then, Jacob and his family's departure to Bethel seems to have happened after the Dinah incident and we assume that the place he is departing from is Shechem. All of that, however, hinges rather critically on the assumption that the text isn't doing one of its habitual switches between sources at this juncture; if it is, then actually, in the source document from which this story of a trip to Bethel came, these things can no longer be automatically assumed, for it might be that as far as the present source is concerned Jacob has just crossed the Jabbok or has just said goodbye to Esau. But that is all speculative and all we really have to go on is the Genesis account as we know it, which places the present journey to Bethel after the Dinah story.


We don't know for sure where Bethel was, but it is believed to have been some nineteen miles south of Shechem. Back in the time of Jacob's grandparents, after Abram arrived in Canaan from Haran, following an initial stay at Shechem, he camped in a place described as being between Bethel and Ai (12:8), and that is the first mention of this name in Genesis; at a later time, he returned to that place (13:3); returning to his altar, he invoked YHWH by name according to one strand of tradition, at least. The next time we hear about Bethel is when Jacob is on the run after duping his father Isaac into blessing the wrong son. At first the place is not named: it is simply where he stopped to spend the night while fleeing to Padan-Aram to get away from Esau's wrath. He went to sleep and had a dream about a staircase going up to heaven, where God appeared. When he awoke he exclaimed (28:19): This is the house of God! (bet el, 'house of El' or 'house of God'). This story implies the existence of a tradition according to which it was Jacob who gave Bethel its name; it is stated that in former times it had been known as Luz. 

Jacob set up as a pillar the stone that he had used as his pillow and promised to return there if God would protect him. Twenty years later when Jacob was about ready to leave Laban's house, God gave him a gentle nudge, telling him in a dream (31:13): I am the God of Bethel where you anointed a pillar and made me a promise. So off Jacob went, with his wives, his children and his flocks, all the way to Canaan... yet he didn't stop at Bethel as far as we know (which is odd). Provided our chronology is in order and not compromised by the combining and switching of sources referred to above, then it is only now, at a considerably later time in Jacob's life, and following another reminder from God who comes to him again and says: Get up and go to Bethel where you have unfinished business (35:1), that he finally goes back to Bethel. (For more help sorting out the geography and sequencing of events, check my post about the places of Genesis.)


This place Bethel, wherever it was, must have been an important centre before, during and after the period when Genesis was written. Following the breakup of David's and Solomon's united kingdom, it constituted an important religious centre in the Kingdom of Israel; later it was destroyed by the king of Judah, Josiah, though it was inhabited again by the time of the Maccabees. Bethel's ritual importance was clearly ancient and great, and must have been surrounded by a great deal of sacred lore, some of which has found its way into Genesis, according to which it constituted a landmark for the young Jacob, on both worldly and spiritual planes, at the time of his outward journey from Canaan, and to which the mature Jacob now returns, perhaps again for a combination of worldly and spiritual reasons. Possibly the worldly reason was to get away from Shechem. Spiritually he must keep his promise to the God-of-the-House-of-God, el bet el.

In any case, the way in which Jacob prepares for the journey to Bethel this time round makes it sound more like a solemn and deliberate pilgrimage than a hectic scramble to get away from someone. He gives instructions to those of his household: 'Rid yourselves of the alien gods in your midst, purify yourselves, and change your clothes' (v. 2). The elohe hannekhar 'foreign gods' might have included the idols that Jacob's wife Rachel had taken from her father Laban's house giving rise to a memorable scene (ch. 31), but there is no compelling reason why that has to be the specific reference here, given how many years have since passed; and note that v. 4 says wayyitt'nu el ya‛aqov et kol elohe hannekhar asher b'yadam 'they gave to Jacob all the alien gods that they had', which doesn't make it sound like this was only about Rachel at all. What it does show is that there were still idols in the family, which is an interesting insight we might otherwise have lacked. Jacob buried them, together with everyone's earrings, under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem (for safekeeping? for some other particular reason? why there?).

That it was a perilous journey is suggested by the remark (v. 5) that God protected them from the cities they passed along their way (perhaps this was necessary on account of what they had done in Shechem?). They reach Bethel, which is referred to as Luz here. Jacob built an altar and called it el bet el because of God's appearance to him there years earlier, thereby finally keeping his promise. However, commentators have noted that the verb of which ha'elohim is the subject in this statement, niglu 'revealed themselves', is plural, as if on the previous occasion the gods had shown themselves to Jacob here. Perhaps these plural elohim refer to the mal'akhim (messengers) whom he saw going up and down the staircase. The trouble now, however, is that this is given as the reason (ki...) why Jacob called this place el bet el (singular: El of the house of El), so how does that work?

The sequence of events is interrupted abruptly by the death of Deborah (only named here), Rebecca's nurse, who must have been very old by then, with a notice about her burial.

Then at v. 9 there occurs a more radical break in the flow of the narrative, which is assumed to originate from the fact that we are changing source documents at this point, since what comes next is completely disjointed if read as a continuation of the same scene or indeed even in the established timeframe: wayyera elohim el ya‛aqov ‛od b'vo'o mippaddan aram wayvárekh oto 'God appeared again to Jacob on his arrival from Paddan-aram, and He blessed him.' According to adepts of the documentary hypothesis, the Elohist has been speaking so far in this chapter, but what follows comes from the Priestly document. Is this an alternative account of what happened to Jacob upon his return to Canaan which does not assume any of the events from Penuel onwards of which we have read?

If we adopt the assumption that this notice of God's new appearance to Jacob at Bethel is not in origin an integral part of the preceding narrative of Jacob's arrival there from Shechem, then we might also note that in what now follows there is no reference to the altar that Jacob supposedly just built and called el bet el. Instead of any of that, we will now find out what God said to Jacob, and after God leaves (v. 13, wayyá‛al me‛alaw elohim bammaqom asher dibber itto 'God parted from him at the spot where He had spoken to him'), Jacob will set up a stone pillar and dedicate it to God who has just spoken to him! And now we read that Jacob gives the place where God has just spoken to him a new name: he decides to call it bet el, Bethel.

Unless Jacob (or the reader) suffers from amnesia, it is difficult indeed to evade the conclusion that there was some mixing of accounts in the process of writing Genesis.

Let's go back to God's appearance to Jacob, because we still haven't talked about what he told him. This consisted of two parts. First of all, God informs Jacob of something that we, the readers, thought we already knew but Jacob, apparently, didn't (though he should have): lo yiqqare shimkha ‛od ya‛aqov ki im yisra'el yihye sh'mékha 'You shall be called Jacob no more, but Israel shall be your name.' The way this verse is worded in full is very emphatic and leaves very little room for any doubt that this was supposed to be "news" to Jacob and not just a reminder of something that Jacob would, supposedly, have known about for many years by now: God begins with the preamble shimkha ya‛aqov 'Your name is Jacob [understood: until now]', and for still more emphasis, the narrator steps in after these words of God to underscore its consequence: wayyiqra et sh'mo yisra'el 'Thus he named him Israel.' (For the first time Jacob was renamed Israel, see ch. 32.)

The other part of Gods message to Jacob on this occasion is the renewal of Abraham's covenant. There is not much new to mention there; on the contrary it is perhaps interesting to note how much there is in common between these instances of covenant making. As in 17:1, God commences by declaring himself to be el shadday. Here the blessing is preceded by a name change, and in ch. 17 it was followed by one (Abram became Abraham). As soon as the blessing is finished, God takes his leave, whereupon (v. 14)) Jacob dedicates a pillar and (v. 15) names the place house of El.