Genesis 34-35
The first thing I want you to notice about the thirty-fourth chapter is that God’s name is never mentioned in it. It is a story of the wicked human heart nearly all through. You remember we learned from chapter thirty-three that Jacob bought a piece of land, and in a way settled down to live near a little town, perhaps the first one he came to in the land of Canaan, which was not doing what God had told him to do. What a lot of trouble Jacob got into, and how much he displeased God by his doing his own way so much! Anyone but God would have been angry with him and ‘given up trying to help him. But God is not like us. He had thought of this “stiffnecked” Jacob before he was born, and was going. to take care of him all the days of his life and make him praise God for His love and kindness, which he didn’t deserve at all, once and again on the journey he was taking, (just. like we are taking one, you and I from babyhood to eternity), and then God was going to take Jacob at the end of his life straight to heaven itself, because Jacob, in spite of his self-will, believed God.
We shall first talk about a few of the verses of chapter 34. In verse one we learn that Dinah, the only girl in Jacob’s family, went out to get acquainted with the girls of the country round about her home. This was the second wrong step; Jacob, when he bought the farm, and took up his home in this place, had been untrue to the character God meant him to have, of being a stranger and keeping separate from the wicked world around him, which was soon to be judged and. punished by God, and when the father shows a bad example, the children may very likely go on in the same way. You know we are all examples to each other; when we do right, we, without knowing it, perhaps, are encouraging others to do right, and when we dci wrong, we are giving others who see us, encouragement to do the same. Jacob should have kept on his way, and not settled down among those godless people, and Dinah should not have made friends among enemies of God, and these two wrong steps led to great shame and sorrow. The people of the land too, seeing nothing. about Jacob and his family that differed very much from themselves came .around, and said, we would like to make marriage between your children and ours. Then we find two of Jacob’s sons deceiving as their father had done, and presently murdering all the men of the place, stealing their wives and children and all their property and destroying the. town; the other ‘ brothers, or at least the older ones, joining in the work. How dreadfully wicked all this was! And we can’t wonder at Jacob being very angry and very grieved, and afraid too, as we read what he said to his sons in the thirtieth verse. We wish though, that Jacob had thought about God, and the dishonor to Him, and confessed his own share in it, for he had not been walking with God like his grandfather and others had done.
A word from God Himself set Jacob right at the beginning of chapter 35. “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there:. and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.” Bethel had been forgotten again; God or at least. ways that pleased Him, had been forgotten too, and these things came. into Jacob’s mind now very clearly. If he was going to obey God in going to the place He told him of, the family and the servants must change their ways,—things that Jacob knew about all along the way, as we may suppose. For he said to them, “Put away the strange gods that are among you, and clean, and change your garments: and let us rise, and go up to Bethel.” Jacob buried their images and their rings under a tree before the new start was made for Bethel and home. God in His mercy protecting them from the people around, whom He made afraid of Jacob and his sons, they got safely to Bethel, and there Jacob built an altar to which he gave the name of “God of the house of God,” because it was there that God had appeared to him when he was go-. ing away from home for fear of Esau’s killing him. Here Rebekah’s nurse died, and was buried. God again appeared to Jacob, and repeated to him his change of name from Jacob to Israel, telling him again of His promise that his children should be a great nation, and that the land of Canaan should be his and theirs.
On the way, the loved wife Rachel died as her second baby was born. She called him, “The son of my sorrow,” but her husband gave him a different name, “The son of my right hand” (Benjamin).
At last after another stop, and more sin and sadness in his family, Jacob came to his old father at Mamre, but Isaac died, and Esau came home to join Jacob in burying• him. Before this, Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother, had died.
How little of Quietness and happiness there was in Jacob’s life, and so much of his worry and sadness was due to his own self-will. If he had been like Abraham his grandfather, as we have seen was in most of his life, Jacob would have had far less trials and sorrows. It is best to please God in everything, best for both this world, and for eternity. First though we need to be saved.
Messages of God’s Love 7/10/1921