Genesis 35
Dear RTB’ers,
A number of short items…
As I was reading our passage this morning, I was thinking that we had a “clean” chapter – no deceit, no trickery, no devastation. Then in Genesis 35:22 Reuben lays with Bilhah, his half-brothers’ mother and Jacob’s concubine. Sad.
Today we see Jacob as the changed man that we honor as one of the three patriarchs of Israel (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob): Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone. (Gen 35:3)
I am always saddened when I read of Rachel dying at childbirth, of Jacob losing the woman he loved. I think of my own mother dying with five young children and how my father must have felt to have to experience this.
We have no record of Jacob ever seeing his mother again. There is no happy family reunion with Isaac and Rebekah, not even any mention of Rebekah except that of her nurse, Deborah’s death and burial (Gen 35:8). Also, we only have two verses mentioning Isaac – his age and his death and burial by Jacob and Esau (Gen 35:28-29)
Blessings!