In the four chief biographies of Genesis, we have illustrated four great principles of God’s dealing with His people in grace.
In Abraham is presented God’s principle of election and grace; in Isaac, sonship and heirship; in Jacob, discipline; in Joseph, we get suffering and glory. Other truths have their place in each of them, but these are the leading thoughts. It is interesting to look at Bethel in connection both with Abraham, the man of faith, and Jacob, the man of experience. Bethel, and the God of Bethel, are the same, but there is an aspect peculiar to each. Bethel was Abram’s meeting-place with God, as well as Jacob’s, and the place of his altar too (Gen. 12:7-8), but he had known him as the “God of glory” before this in Ur of the Chaldees. This was the foundation of the call which the man of faith had obeyed. Faith had brought Abram as a stranger and a pilgrim to Bethel; circumstances first brought Jacob there. Accordingly, after declension in Abram as the man of faith, there is a much speedier restoration to Bethel than Jacob found (Gen. 13:3-4). But Jacob is our subject.
The God of Bethel
In Genesis 28:10-22, we learn the circumstances in which Jacob first became acquainted with Bethel. His subtlety in seeking to obtain the blessing which was his, according to the promise of God, had now made him an exile from his father’s house. But Jacob, with all his obliquities and feebleness of character, was connected with God, while Esau, with every trait of generous frankness, was but a natural man, seeking nothing beyond this world.
It was to this Jacob, when he was a homeless pilgrim, a staff for his companion, and the stone for his pillow, that the God of Bethel appeared and entered into an unchangeable relationship and connection with Him.
Jacob never had a fuller revelation of God as the God of promise and grace than Bethel presented, and that too when every external circumstance was most contrary. Grace penetrates his heart, and he “vowed a vow saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come to my father’s house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God; and this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God’s house” (Gen. 28:20-22). But this is not the strong grasp of faith, but the feeble hesitancy of a soul that must, through many sorrows, learn its own weakness, before it will take God only for its strength. But God is the God of Bethel, and under the power of this revelation of Himself to Jacob, He called upon him to walk and act in the scenes that lay before him.
His subsequent history, before we hear again of Bethel, is marked by hard and unrewarded service, and it seems that Jacob’s bearing under this rigorous service was but little in accordance with the suited character of one who had known the revelations of the God of Bethel. But in the midst of this scene of trial, God recalls his mind to Bethel, for God had not forgotten the promise of His grace. Now He says (Gen. 31:13), “I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto Me: now arise, get thee out of this land and return unto thy kindred.”
The Return to Bethel
This fresh call of God breaks the link of Jacob’s bondage in Padan Aram, but on his journey back under the hand of God, there is many an exercise of heart that lies between him and Bethel. There are the seven days’ hot pursuit of Laban, but there is God’s pillar between Jacob and Laban, as there was afterward between the trembling Israelites and Pharaoh’s pursuing hosts. But another trial awaits him, bringing to remembrance earlier sins, and leading to deeper exercises before the God of Bethel. “Deliver me” (says the trembling man) “from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. And Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good [this was the remembrance of Bethel], and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude” (Gen. 32:11-12).
Wrestling With God
Now comes the last effort of his wisdom in his arrangements to meet the trying hour; he is left alone with God! But it is not in the calm worship by the altar of Bethel, but rather to know a night of wrestling with Him who, because He meant to bless, must needs resist the ways and cripple the energy that had neither been subdued by the presence of grace nor subjected to God by the power of faith! “There wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when He saw that He prevailed not against him, He touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint” (Gen. 32:24-25). “He had power over the angel and prevailed,” but it was with the distress of the wrestler—dreading lest the blessing should escape—that “he wept and made supplication to Him” (Hos. 12:4). He had found God and obtained the blessing, but this is not worshipping by the anointed pillar with the God of Bethel. It is God at Peniel, and when he meets his brother Esau, he finds how God had bowed his brother’s heart, without the presents that were meant by poor Jacob to bribe his love!
Shechem
He comes to Shechem and erects an altar there, and calling it El-Elohe-Israel. He is now a worshipper of “God the God of Israel,” but God in Shechem is not God at Bethel, as Jacob has to learn. Why does he linger here and purchase a piece of ground, when God had called him to Bethel and showed him there his title to all the land as his inheritance? Alas! this fresh attempt to stop short of the place to which God had called him ministers still further to his experience. If her father has purchased a possession here, why may not Dinah his daughter “go out to see the daughters of the land”? Her corruption ensues, followed by Simeon and Levi’s treachery and revenge, which destroy the poor pilgrim’s “green spot in the desert.” But God appears, and He said to Jacob, “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. Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem” (Gen. 35:1-4).
Back to Bethel
In all of Jacob’s experience with Laban there had been no fresh revelation of God, but after this trial, when he contemplated journeying to Bethel according to God’s call, then suddenly Jacob realizes that the things of idolatry that had gathered around him in Padan Aram must not be associated with a return to Bethel. The false gods, the earrings and the filthy garments may remain without rebuke in Syria under Laban’s hard service, but when the God of Bethel recalls us to the brightness of His grace, then the false gods can no longer be retained. At this point Jacob is back again in blessed fellowship with Bethel and the God of Bethel, and how freely does the fountain of grace, love and faithfulness pour forth its streams to refresh his weary heart! It is the God of Bethel still, in spite of all his forgetfulness and wanderings. “God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padan-aram, and blessed him. ... And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with Him, even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Bethel” (Gen. 35:9,14-15).
Such is the effect of the truth of God. It may be known and believed as a revelation, but how different when the same truth is held in living fellowship with God and in moral conformity to him!
G. V. Wigram (adapted)