"And they delivered into Jacob's hand all the idols of the people which were in their hands, which they had taken from the temple of Shekem, and the jewels that had been in the ears of the inhabitants of the city of Shekem, in which was portrayed the likeness of their images; and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that was near to the city of Shekem." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 35:4) preserves a striking image: the idols and the idolatrous earrings were buried, not destroyed.
Why bury and not burn?
The rabbis noticed the distinction. Later Torah law would demand that idols be ground to dust and scattered (Deuteronomy 12:3). But Jacob only buried them. Why?
One answer: this was before the giving of Torah. The full protocol for destroying idols had not yet been revealed. Jacob did what he could — he got them out of the household, he got them out of the visible world, he put them under the earth where they could no longer tempt anyone.
Another answer: burial is itself a kind of refusal. You do not grant idols the dignity of the bonfire. You do not spectacle their ending. You quietly put them into the ground, under a tree that had probably been a pagan shrine itself, and you walk away. The silence of the burial is a theological statement: these things do not deserve the drama of fire.
The takeaway: sometimes the holiest response to something false is to bury it without ceremony and keep walking.