For Teaching

Genesis 35: What the Passage Says

88 claims across 29 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Genesis 35 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

God tells Jacob to go up to Bethel and build an altar there, and Jacob has his household give up their foreign gods before they go. At Bethel God appears to Jacob again, gives him the name Israel, and repeats the promise of a nation and the land. On the road from Bethel, Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin, and Reuben sleeps with Bilhah. The chapter lists Jacob's twelve sons and ends with Isaac's death at 180 and his burial by Esau and Jacob.

Claim by Claim

35:1
- God spoke to Jacob.
- God told Jacob to arise and go up to Bethel.
- God told Jacob to dwell at Bethel.
- God told Jacob to make an altar there to the God who had appeared to him.
- God said that this God had appeared to Jacob when he fled from Esau his brother.
35:2
- Jacob spoke to his household and to all who were with him.
- Jacob told them to put away the foreign gods that were among them.
- Jacob told them to purify themselves.
- Jacob told them to change their garments.
35:3
- Jacob said they should arise and go up to Bethel.
- Jacob said he would make an altar there to God.
- Jacob said that God answered him in the day of his distress.
- Jacob said that God was with him in the way he went.
35:4
- They gave Jacob all the foreign gods that were in their hand.
- They gave Jacob the rings that were in their ears.
- Jacob buried these things under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem.
35:5
- They journeyed onward.
- A terror from God was upon the cities around them.
- Those cities did not pursue the sons of Jacob.
35:6
- Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan.
- Luz is Bethel.
- All the people with Jacob came there with him.
35:7
- Jacob built an altar there.
- Jacob called the place El-bethel.
- God had revealed himself to Jacob there when he fled from his brother.
35:8
- Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died.
- Deborah was buried below Bethel under the oak.
- The name of that oak was called Allon-bachuth.
35:9
- God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Paddan-aram.
- God blessed Jacob.
35:10
- God said to Jacob that his name was Jacob.
- God said his name would no longer be called Jacob.
- God said his name would be Israel.
- He called his name Israel.
35:11
- God said to him, I am God Almighty.
- God told him to be fruitful and multiply.
- God said a nation would come from him.
- God said a company of nations would come from him.
- God said kings would come out of his loins.
35:12
- God said he had given the land to Abraham and to Isaac.
- God said he would give that land to Jacob.
- God said he would give the land to Jacob's seed after him.
35:13
- God went up from Jacob at the place where he had spoken with him.
35:14
- Jacob set up a pillar at the place where God had spoken with him.
- The pillar was of stone.
- Jacob poured a drink offering on it.
- Jacob poured oil on it.
35:15
- Jacob called the name of the place where God spoke with him Bethel.
35:16
- They journeyed from Bethel.
- There was still some distance to go to reach Ephrath.
- Rachel gave birth.
- Rachel had hard labor.
35:17
- While Rachel was in hard labor, the midwife spoke to her.
- The midwife told her not to fear.
- The midwife said she was having this son also.
35:18
- Rachel's soul was departing.
- Rachel died.
- Rachel called the child's name Ben-oni.
- The child's father called him Benjamin.
35:19
- Rachel died.
- Rachel was buried on the way to Ephrath.
- Ephrath is Bethlehem.
35:20
- Jacob set up a pillar on Rachel's grave.
- That pillar is the marker of Rachel's grave to this day.
35:21
- Israel journeyed onward.
- Israel pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder.
35:22
- Israel dwelt in that land.
- Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine.
- Bilhah was Jacob's concubine.
- Israel heard of it.
- The sons of Jacob were twelve.
35:23
- The sons of Leah were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun.
- Reuben was Jacob's firstborn.
35:24
- The sons of Rachel were Joseph and Benjamin.
35:25
- The sons of Bilhah were Dan and Naphtali.
- Bilhah was Rachel's maidservant.
35:26
- The sons of Zilpah were Gad and Asher.
- Zilpah was Leah's maidservant.
- These are the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan-aram.
35:27
- Jacob came to Isaac his father at Mamre, at Kiriath-arba.
- Kiriath-arba is Hebron.
- Abraham and Isaac had sojourned there.
35:28
- The days of Isaac were one hundred and eighty years.
35:29
- Isaac expired.
- Isaac died.
- Isaac was gathered to his people.
- Isaac was old and full of days.
- His sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

35:1: Bethel means "house of God" in Hebrew. An altar was a raised structure of earth or stone on which animals or other gifts were burned or poured out for a god. The earlier appearance is the dream of the stairway in Genesis 28, when Jacob was fleeing Esau after cheating him.
35:2: "Foreign gods" are the small images of household gods that people carried with them; Rachel had taken her father's in Genesis 31. Washing and putting on fresh clothes was the standard way of making oneself fit to approach a god, a matter of ritual state, not of dirt.
35:4: The earrings are grouped with the idols because rings and pendants often carried the image of a god and were worn as protective charms. The Hebrew verb rendered "hid" means simply to bury; the oak near Shechem was evidently a known landmark tree.
35:5: The surrounding towns had reason to retaliate: in the previous chapter Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi had killed the men of Shechem. "A terror from God" is a panic sent by God rather than fear felt toward him.
35:6: Luz was the town's older name; the site becomes Bethel in Israelite usage. Canaan is the land later called Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
35:7: El-bethel means "God of Bethel", the name marks the god who appeared there rather than the place itself.
35:8: A "nurse" in this world was a woman who suckled and then raised a child, and often stayed with her for life as a senior servant; Deborah had come with Rebekah from Mesopotamia two generations earlier. Allon-bachuth means "oak of weeping."
35:9: Padan-aram is the region of northern Mesopotamia around Harran, in modern southeastern Turkey, where Jacob's mother's family lived and where he had spent twenty years working for Laban.
35:10: Jacob's name suggests both "heel" and "he supplants" or "he cheats"; Israel is explained in Genesis 32 as "he strives with God." Renaming was a claim on a person, the way a master or a king could rename someone.
35:11: "God Almighty" translates the Hebrew El Shaddai, a title whose exact sense is uncertain, possibly "God of the mountain" or "God of the open country"; the traditional "Almighty" comes from the ancient Greek and Latin versions. "Kings will come from your own body" renders a Hebrew phrase referring to the loins as the source of offspring.
35:12: "Descendants" translates a Hebrew word meaning "seed", offspring as a continuing line, not just immediate children.
35:14: A pillar here is a single upright stone set on end (Hebrew *matzevah*), used to mark a spot as sacred or memorable. A drink offering is wine or another liquid poured out on the stone as a gift to a god. Pouring oil over a stone or a person set it apart for sacred use.
35:16: "Ephrath" is another name for the district of Bethlehem, a few miles south of Jerusalem.
35:17: A midwife was a woman experienced in delivering babies; every birth in this world was attended by women, not doctors. Her words answer a wish Rachel made when Joseph was born, that she would have another son.
35:18: Ben-oni means "son of my sorrow" or "son of my strength"; the Hebrew word can mean either. Benjamin means "son of the right hand", the right side signified favor and good fortune, and can also mean "son of the south."
35:19: Bethlehem is a small town. Many stories in the Bible happen there later.
35:20: "To this day" is the narrator speaking to his own readers, long after the events, pointing to a marker they could still go and see.
35:21: The tower of Edar (Migdal Eder) means "tower of the flock", a watchtower built in open grazing country so shepherds could spot raiders or predators.
35:22: A concubine was a secondary wife, of lower standing than a full wife but not a casual partner; her children were legitimate. Taking a man's concubine was a public claim on his position and authority, which is why this is reported as an act against Israel rather than a private affair. Ancient Hebrew manuscripts mark an unusual break in the middle of this verse, as though the account is deliberately cut short.
35:23: The firstborn son normally received a double share of the inheritance and headship of the family after his father, which makes Reuben's act in verse 22 and its later consequences significant. The twelve sons are named by mother, since each mother's sons formed a distinct group within the household.
35:25: A servant like Bilhah could be given to a wife's husband so that children born to her were counted as the family's own sons. That is why Dan and Naphtali are listed here with the rest.
35:26: "Born to him in Padan-aram" is a summary statement covering the group as a whole; Benjamin, as verses 16–18 have just said, was born in Canaan.
35:27: Mamre was a place near Hebron, about twenty miles south of Jerusalem, associated with Abraham. Kiriath-arba ("city of Arba") was Hebron's older name. "Stayed as outsiders" translates a word for resident foreigners, people living in a land they did not own and where they held no legal standing of their own.
35:28: "Fourscore" is the old English way of saying eighty, since a score is twenty. So the number is one hundred and eighty.
35:29: "Gathered to his people" is a set phrase for dying and joining one's ancestors, tied to the practice of burying family members together in one tomb; it is used of the death itself, before and apart from the burial mentioned next. Isaac's death is recorded here to close his story, though the events of the following chapters overlap with his last years.

Read Genesis 35