Idols - Genesis 35:1-5

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 Jacob’s tribe still have idols? Well, they had just acquired a huge number of new members through the conquest of Hamor’s people, surely they were idolatrous and plus all the stuff they looted would have had many expensive idols with them. Some articles that I read suggest that this was Jacob’s way of trying to hide his own permissiveness toward idolatry from God, which doesn’t really make sense to me because God knows everything. The IM says that this is so that Jacob and his family and servants could “prepare themselves for the experience much as modern Saints prepare themselves. The earrings probably were more than mere jewelry, possible amulets with inscriptions to false gods.” This makes sense and applies the scriptures to us.

The lecturer from the Torah Class made the suggestion that anciently, people believed that not only were there multiple gods for multiple purposes, but that these gods were also only able to govern one specific geographic area. For instance, Laban’s idols were his personal gods that oversaw his household, and that the gods that people worshipped were specific to their location and didn’t have jurisdiction over anywhere else. There was no concept of the omnipotent God. In this instance, Jacob could have taken God’s command to move to Beth-el as God saying, “leave the realm of those gods and come over to the land where I am God.” We all know that there is only one all knowing, all powerful god, but anciently that wasn’t the belief and God had to meet the people where they were, build on their current understanding.

Tom Bradford from the Torah Class says, “People don’t just forget centuries of traditions. Rather, Israel tended to understand Yehoveh within the context of all their long-held beliefs and traditions… He was just added to the mix. Yehoveh was THEIR God… Jacob’s god, Israel’s god… but what happened When THEIR God matched wits and powers with a god for another people or another land? Who Knew? This was constantly on their minds. So, here we are 200 years after Abraham got the call, and STILL Jacob’s doesn’t quite get who God is, and his wives and the others who had made themselves part of his family certainly don’t get it either.

So, as part of an ongoing education process by Yehoveh, we see Jacob saying: Ok, we’re now under the sphere of influence of my God, and we’re going to build an altar to Him; so I don’t want your gods upsetting my God, and besides your gods are useless here in a territory that is outside their primary area of influence anyway. So give them to me, and I’m going to bury them under a tree. Why bury them? Why not smash them, or burn them? Because, this was more a repudiation of their gods than an absolute belief that those gods didn’t exist.” So Jacob’s tribe burying their gods that ruled that land and cleaning and changing their clothes was their way of accepting a new life and a new relationship with a new God, it’s really kind of an interesting concept if you think about it. It seems like the trouble caused by the boys with the surrounding tribes must have played a factor in the timing of the move because “the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of God.”