Of the many things that happen in chapter 35 I’d like to focus mainly on the Lord making Himself known to Jacob.

We don’t know how God called Jacob to return to Bethel, (dream, encounter, vision), we just know that He did and Jacob’s immediate response involved a family-wide cleanup. Remember those teraphim (the household gods) that Rachel stole and hid from Laban? Well, they and all the other ones like them amongst Jacob’s entourage get left behind. Whatever the “earrings” were that got buried with the idols, they were probably connected to pagan worship and not merely accessories. The family even got physically spruced up- a good bath and a fresh change of clothes. It’s like Saturday night baths and putting on your Sunday best to go to meetin’. Jacob is serious about Yahweh now. His prior trip through Bethel when he had the “Jacob’s Ladder” dream? Well… Back then he said,

“If God will be with me and protect me on this way that I am going, and gives me food to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return in peace to the house of my father, then Yahweh will become my God.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭28‬:‭20‬-‭21‬ ‭LEB‬‬

That’s what they used to call “A Foxhole Prayer.” “God, if you’ll just get me out of this mess, I promise I’ll serve You.”

Mmhmm. How many people actually keep those promises?

But Jacob had a life-changing encounter with God. And every day, the limp that he carried reminded him that it was real. He had gained a healthy fear of the Lord. Remember how he and Laban made a covenant?

Laban: “I call on the God of our ancestors—the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of my grandfather Nahor—to serve as a judge between us.”

Jacob: took an oath before the fearsome God of his father, Isaac, to respect the boundary line.” Genesis‬ ‭31‬:‭53‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” The Jacob that returns to Bethel is not the same man. Yahweh met every one of his conditions and Jacob keeps his promise. Yahweh will be his and his family’s exclusive deity. He is serious about this like an electrician is serious around high voltage. Meeting with Yahweh while toting around images of other gods would be like taking your bride on the honeymoon while having pictures of other women in your wallet. If you’re going to belong to Yahweh, you gotta send the other ones packing and delete them from your contacts. That’s what’s happening.

And they did indeed meet with God. Jacob builds his first and, as far as I can tell, only altar at Bethel.

Have you ever revisited a location from your past and marveled at how much has changed since you were there? How different you are? How much has happened in your life since then? And how the eternal Creator is not only present with you at that moment, but is also still back in the past with the you that then was?

(If you do not normally ponder the nature of space-time and how God Almighty is currently present in every bit of it, you’re missing out on a stupendous bit reflection. Highly recommend. Right now as you read this, God is wrestling with Jacob, parting the Red Sea, guiding the stone from David’s sling, in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, and He is already ahead of us at the end defeating wickedness and reigning forever. We’re the ones stuck in time. Omnipresent doesn’t just mean every-where. It includes every-when.) 🧠=🥨

Every time I visit the Bible college where I went to school I have an almost a Dickensian “Ghost of Christmas Past” experience. I see the memories of myself and my classmates. They cannot see me. Little clueless Lacy hasn’t the foggiest idea that I’m there 25 years in the future. But there she is having the time of her life, or feeling lost, or growing, or weeping, or failing, trying again, learning, losing sleep, being quite flawed…

And the Lord is there- in all the whens. He is there- actively present- in the awkward teen stage, the adulting phase, the bits I’d rather forget and the ones I’ll never forget. And right now, (while currently in my cool aunt era 😎), He is with the future me, whatever she may be facing. (I’ll find out when I get there.) And that is tremendously comforting.

I don’t know if Jacob contemplated these kinds of things but it seems to have been on the Lord’s mind. Because He repeats the name change. The Lord isn’t just seeing past or present Jacob. He is seeing future Jacob and that man is definitely not the same man. So he needs a new name: Israel. And this time, though Jacob doesn’t ask, God tells him His name. Well, one of His names: El Shaddai.

It’s usually translated as “God Almighty.” Sometimes it’s just Shaddai, “The Almighty” like in Job 5:17. The team that translated the Lexam English Bible had a footnote that it is more likely to mean “God of the Wilderness.” I don’t know enough Hebrew to have an opinion on that. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon entry begins with “etymology dubious.”

Well, if the etymology is dubious, then I feel justified in at least considering the meanings of the Paleo Hebrew letters and see what happens.

Shaddai is SDY (shin, dalet, yod). Here we go:

Shin – teeth, cut consume, destroy, face, face front/forward

Dalet – door, gate, tent flap, entrance, hang, down, low, lowly (because you have to bend low to go through the tent door), also move/movement (like a door or gate on hinges or tent flap in the wind)

Yod – hand, arm, make, do, grasp, power, authority, help, work

Put em together.

We could have: consume/destroy the gate with power/authority. This is bust-down-the-door-power. Unstoppable. Almighty.

Ok.

But it could also be: face forward the lowly to help/work/do.

The God of the Bible is both. These are not mutually exclusive.

The Lord isn’t finished renaming people or revealing Himself with new names. Look at what the resurrected Jesus says in His message to the church of ancient Philadelphia:

“All who are victorious will become pillars in the Temple of my God, and they will never have to leave it. And I will write on them the name of my God, and they will be citizens in the city of my God—the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven from my God. And I will also write on them my new name.”
‭‭Revelation‬ ‭3‬:‭12‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Jesus gets a new name? That’s interesting. And the Lord “writes” it on His people. It’s like Andy in Toy Story writing his name on Woody and Buzz Lightyear. They belong to him. It’s like a husband putting his name on his bride. She is his.

Jesus also has a secret name. This is from the epic part where He rides out of heaven on a white horse:

“His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself.” Revelation‬ ‭19‬:‭12‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I think that’s the name He wouldn’t tell Jacob (the first time) or Menoah and his wife. We wouldn’t understand it if He told us.

So the Lord “appears” to Jacob at the altar and when He finishes repeating the covenant blessing it says, “Then God went up from the place where he had spoken to Jacob.” Genesis‬ ‭35‬:‭13‬ ‭NLT‬‬

So, did like ascend? That’s really cool. This isn’t a dream. When he was at Bethel before, it was a dream and God spoke from the top of the stairs. This time, Jacob is very much awake and the Lord has come down the stairs to speak with him face to face, just like at Peniel.

Jacob is going to need the blessing and Divine encouragement because Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin. And there is a name-change here too. As she is dying, Rachel names her son, Benoni which means “son of my sorrow.” But Jacob changes his name to Benjamin which means “son of the right hand.” If anyone knew what a negative name could do to you, it was Jacob (heel-catcher). So he changes his son’s name as the Lord had changed his.

Other important women pass away in this chapter. Deborah, Rebecca’s “nurse” who had gone with her to meet Isaac, is somehow with Jacob at Bethel when she dies because she is buried there. I imagine she would’ve been like an aunt to Jacob. There is no further mention of Rebecca being alive so it seems that Jacob’s beloved mother is gone as well. Perhaps old Deborah returned to the house of Laban from whence she came after the death of her charge and became part of Jacob’s swelling household. If so, she would’ve been like a grandmother to the children. The very fact that the detail of her name and death are recorded show her significance. In this short section, 3 of the most important women in Jacob’s life pass out of the story- Rachel, Rebecca, and Deborah. Someone has to raise little Benjamin and young Joseph. Though this is conjecture, I don’t think it a stretch to assume that Leah took on that role. God bless her.

And there is one more funeral. We don’t get a clear picture from the text how long Jacob was back in Canaan before he finally got to see his father, but Isaac was still alive and Jacob got to see him before he passed. (That’s what you call foreshadowing.)

And in an echo of Abraham & Lot, Jacob and Esau part ways after burying Isaac because they’re both so rich and have so many people and so much livestock that the land isn’t big enough for both of them. Also in chapter 36 we get Esau’s family tree and a quick sketch of where they settled (Mount Seir, modern day Jordan) and who the first several chieftains and kings were. Don’t forget about Esau and his descendants. They’ll be called by Esau’s nickname “Red” (Edom) for the rest of the story. Though the brothers seemed to have reconciled, their descendants? Not so much. It’s going to be a family feud. And I don’t mean the kind where the “survey says.” The Edomites (OT) or Idueameans (NT) will be a worldly bunch. The 3 brutal King Herods of the NT are Idumean. According to Jewish historian Flavius Josephus they descended from Esau. Just as Esau sought to kill Jacob, so his descendants roughly 2000 years later will seek to kill Jacob’s most important descendant- Jesus the Messiah.