So God told Jacob to go to Bethel, because God was getting tired of visiting Jacob in that shithole he was living in at the time, and build yet another altar. Jacob, in the same state of panic the rest of us get into when the landlord calls up and asks if he can stop by, started running around ordering his people to clean the place up. He also ordered them to put away all those damn idols, as he felt God might be offended by all the little stone trinkets his "chosen people" were worshipping instead of him. Oh, and if they could take a damn bath and change their underwear for once, because the smell was even starting to scare off the flies, that would be great. And so Jacob’s people gave him all of their idols and earrings, because God hates pierced ears, and he buried them under a tree by the newly destroyed village of Shechem.
Jacob and his enormous clan embarked on their journey. The people in the towns they passed by were all too scared to attempt to screw with them, and so the journey was fairly peaceful. The Bible claims the reason these people were fearful was because of the fear of God, but it’s likely at least as attributable to the fact that Jacob’s clan slaughtered every man and enslaved every woman in the previous town they had hung out in.
Anyway, eventually Jacob came to Luz in the land of Canaan and built an altar. At that place, Rebekah’s nurse Deborah died and was buried.
At around this same time, God appeared to Jacob and told him his name was now going to be Israel, apparently unaware that the vampire/angel earlier had already told Jacob this exact same thing. God then went on to make the same promise of land to Jacob as he had previously made to Abraham and Isaac. Suitably impressed, Jacob built a pillar of stone and another altar.
So it came to pass that Rachel was pregnant, and went into labor. The labor was incredibly hard, and Rachel ended up dying in childbirth. As her last wish, Rachel asked that her son be named Benoni. Fortunately for the kid, Jacob wasn’t about to be told what to do, even by his recently deceased wife, and named the kid Benjamin instead. Rachel was buried on the side of the road to Bethlehem, and the rest of the clan went on their way.
After they had made camp, Reuben (the sandwich maker) slept with one of Jacob’s mistresses. Unfortunately, the mistress was something of a screamer and Israel (aka Jacob) heard the whole thing. At any rate, Israel now had 12 sons. This number, of course, would have absolutely no significance to anything at all, and is just mentioned here because the author of the Bible had some extra space to fill.
Jacob went to visit Isaac his father. Isaac lived to be 180, yet again ignoring God’s chosen lifespan of 120 years, and died. Jacob and Esau buried him, and the chapter ended.
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