Jacob Burned the Idols Before He Came Home

Rachel set her father's stolen gods into Jacob's hands last. The rest of the household had already emptied their ears and their necks. Earrings. Neck-chains. Figures taken from the temple at Shechem after the killing. She added the teraphim she had hidden in the camel furniture years before, on the night they fled Laban.

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Jacob looked at the pile. Bethel was waiting, the place where he had vowed a vow on the day he fled from Esau. He would not climb to the house of God with another house's gods in the packs.

Put Away the Gods Among You

He called the men of his house and all who were with him. "Put away the idols of the peoples which are among you, which you took from the temple of Shechem. Purify yourselves from the uncleanness of the slain. Change your garments. We are going up to Bethel, and I will build an altar to the God who answered me in the day of my distress."

They obeyed. The plunder of Shechem came out of tents and saddlebags. Blood-uncleanness still clung to some of it. They stripped the jewelry acquired in Aram. They brought it to Jacob the way a household brings contraband to a man who has finally named the road.

The Torah would later say he hid what they gave him under the oak in Shechem (Genesis 35:4). Hiding is not the whole of what he did.

Rachel Gave Up What She Had Stolen

Rachel had kept Laban's gods through twenty years of marriage, through the birth of Joseph, through the night she sat on the camel furniture and told her father she could not rise. The stolen figures had crossed the river with her. They had sat in Jacob's camp while he wrestled at the Jabbok and while Simeon and Levi put Shechem to the sword.

Now she gave them wholly to Jacob. No argument. No last pocket. The household gods of Haran left her hands and landed on the same pile as the temple loot of Shechem. Two countries' idols in one heap, waiting on a man who was done carrying them.

Jacob did not thank her. He did not scold her. He took what she gave and turned toward fire.

Fire First, Then the Oak

He burned them. He broke what would not burn. He destroyed them so that nothing left could be lifted, polished, and reinstated. Then he hid the ruin under an oak in the land of Shechem.

A buried idol is a preserved idol if it still has a face. Ash and broken metal under a tree is another matter. The next generation could remember the oak and still find nothing worth kneeling to. Jacob understood the difference between removing a thing from sight and removing a thing from use.

The earrings went into the fire with the figures. Jewelry worn in Laban's country carried Laban's years. Jacob did not keep them as souvenirs. He had a vow to pay at Bethel, and a vow will not share the road with a household god, even a melted one riding in a sack.

Joseph's Birth Had Opened the Road

The climb to Bethel had been waiting on a birth. Jacob had stayed in Laban's country until Joseph arrived, because a holy spirit, ruach hakodesh (רוח הקודש), had shown him that Joseph's house would work the destruction of Esau's house. When the boy was born Jacob said, "Now I need not fear Esau or his legions."

Rebekah had already sent her nurse Deborah, daughter of Uz, with two of Isaac's servants, to urge him home. Fourteen years of service were up. Jacob went to Laban and asked for his wives and his children. Laban stalled. A pest among the cattle had stopped when Jacob arrived. Sons had been born to Laban during those years. He did not want the blessing to walk out of Haran.

Then Laban's face turned. God said to Jacob, "Thy father-in-law's countenance is not toward thee as beforetime, and yet thou tarriest with him? Return unto the land of thy fathers, and there I will let My Shechinah rest upon thee, for I cannot permit the Shechinah to reside outside of the Holy Land." Jacob sent Naphtali to summon Rachel and Leah to the open field, where no wall could listen. They left. Shechem happened. The idols accumulated. Only now, with fire under the oak, was the road actually clean.

He Named Bethel a Second Time

The purified household arrived at the place where, decades earlier, a young man fleeing his brother had slept on a stone and dreamed of a ladder. God appeared to Jacob again. The promise was renewed. The name given at the Jabbok was confirmed here, in the place where it had first been implied.

Jacob set up a stone pillar and poured oil and wine on it. He named the place Bethel, house of God, for the second time. The first naming had been the act of a frightened young man who woke terrified from a dream of heaven. This naming was the act of a man who had burned his household's foreign gods and climbed back to the stone.

The oak at Shechem held ash. The pillar at Bethel held oil. He had come home the long way, with Joseph in the camp and Esau still ahead, but with no stolen god left to answer when God called.