Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

35:16-21 – As Jacob and his considerable household were traveling to their new place to live, “Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour… as her soul was in departing )for she died) that she called his name Ben-oni: but his father called him Benjamin.” This is kind of a sad way to end Rachel’s spot in this story, considering how much Jacob loved her, and surely, even though there was competition, etc, Rachel must have been loved among the rest of the family. It’s ironic that she died giving birth is the ultimate irony after she lamented infertility for so long. The other interesting part of this is that instead of doing whatever he could to make sure Rachel was buried in her spot as the most important women in his life, like burying her in the cave where Abraham buried Sarah, ultimately she “was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem.” She didn’t get the most prestigious burial spot, but even her burial on the side of the road ended up significant, as the Savior was born whe...

35:9-15 - This journey that Jacob is taking his family on is so that they can go from where they were living in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan, which is the land that God had chosen for them to have as their Promised Land. What’s interesting to me is that on the journey, after Jacob crosses into Canaan, God appears to him again, but largely just tells him the stuff that he’s said before. He tells Jacob “thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name.” God reaffirms that he is in fact, “God Almighty,” and commands Israel to “be fruitful and multiply,” and that he will have “a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins,” and this is the same place that God promised to Abraham and Isaac “to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.” This is all stuff that Jacob has heard from God before, so the question becomes, “why did God appear to Jacob here and tell him all this stuff from before?” Tom Bradford...

35:6-8 - All the idols have been buried and the people “purified” at least as much as was possible at the time and Jacob and his clan head out to move to a new land, that of Beth-el, which is the place where Jacob had his first major spiritual encounter with God back when he was fleeing from Esau all those decades ago. When they get there, we get an interesting piece of news and that is that “Deborah Rebekah’s nurse died, and she was buried.” I had to stop here and ask myself, “who is Deborah?” Tom Bradford from the Torah Class reminds us that Deborah was Rebekah’s personal nursemaid who went with her when Eliezer brought her back from her father and Laban’s house to Canaan to marry Isaac. I had completely forgotten about her. And Tom asks a valid question, “why does the Torah even mention Deborah, a seemingly minor player in the grand scope of things?” This is a fair question because most women don’t even get mentioned in the Bible, let alone being named, why name her, why mention her...

35:1-5 - The city in which Hamor, Shechem’s father, was king had been decimated, with all the men killed and all the women, children, animals and valuables stolen and incorporated into Jacob’s camp by his sons. I don’t know if it’s because Jacob’s tribe was going to be targeted for revenge by other surrounding tribes, or if it was just that time, but whatever it was, “God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God.” God also reminds him that this is the same place where he had the vision of the ladder “when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.” The IM suggests that this command to move “was the equivalent of a modern temple,” because it was the place where Jacob felt that God dwelt when he had the vision the first time decades earlier. Interestingly, Jacob responds to this by commanding “his household, and to all that were with him, Put away thy strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change you garments.” Why did...

34:20-26 - All the important men have come to an agreement about what should happen to Dinah, the recently traumatized girl, spoiler alert: no one is recommending healing, comforting, or taking care of her. Shechem (the guy who actually did the raping), Hamor (the rapist’s dad), Jacob (the victim’s apathetic dad), and Jacob’s sons (the victim’s brothers who are furious, though probably not just because she was traumatized, but probably more so because they were embarrassed or ‘dishonored’). They all agree that the guy who did this horrible thing should get to keep his victim as a prize, as long as all the men agree to cut off a part of their penis, honestly fact is stranger than fiction here. The problem now becomes convincing the rest of the men in Hamor’s tribe that cutting off part of their penis is a great thing for them to do, “trust me, the benefits are for everyone, not just my son who gets to keep raping this beautiful girl legally!” The benefits of agreeing to these terms se...

34:1- This is the first time we are introduced to any of Jacob’s female children, which if he had at least 12 boys then surely he had a bunch of daughters too, statistically. Here we meet “Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob.” Dinah goes “out to see the daughters of the land.” There are several inferences that can be made by this statement alone. First is that Dinah was going to meet the pagan girls of an adjacent city and participate in one of their idolatrous festivals, and this is justified by some different interpretations of the original Hebrew words used in this first verse. Second, it has been said that there is no way that Dinah as a young probably teenage girl would have been allowed to go out of the family encampment, and definitely not alone, meaning that her going to see other young women in the area was the ultimate act of rebellion, therefore what did she expect to happen. This is the ancient equivalent of “what was she wearing?” The third inference is ...

I’ve been kind of putting off this next chapter because the content is so heavy and is personal for me on so many levels, that I not only wanted to do it justice, but I also wanted to do some more background research before I got into it and I’m so glad that I did because I got some amazing information. The first reason why this is such a significant chapter for me is because of the location, Shechem, or as later is known Samaria, as in the woman at the well in Samaria that Jesus speaks to. While doing the writing for the chapter of Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well in Samaria, I came across an article that reminded us that this is the same place where Dinah was raped. This is when I started making my own connections, and I know that I’ve talked about it here, but I’m going to do it again. The Samaritan woman had been married 5 times and was currently living with a man who was not her husband, this caused her to be made an outcast in her society, thus why she was drawing w...