Surf The Site
Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
35:1 VA YOMER ELOHIM EL YA'AKOV KUM ALEH VEIT-EL VE SHEV SHAM VA ASEH SHAM MIZBE'ACH LA EL HA NIR'EH ELEYCHA BE VARCHACHA MI PENEY ESAV ACHIYCHA
וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים אֶל יַעֲקֹב קוּם עֲלֵה בֵית אֵל וְשֶׁב שָׁם וַעֲשֵׂה שָׁם מִזְבֵּחַ לָאֵל הַנִּרְאֶה אֵלֶיךָ בְּבָרְחֲךָ מִפְּנֵי עֵשָׂו אָחִיךָ
KJ (King James translation): And God said unto 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.
BN (BibleNet translation): Then Elohim said to Ya'akov, "Get up, and go up to Beit-El, and live there; and raise an altar there to the god who appeared to you when you fled from the face of your brother Esav."
Which god? The angels on the ladder in Genesis 28:12 were Elohim, and Ya'akov named it as "the house of Elohim" in 28:17; when he made his pledge in 28:20 it was to Elohim, but in 28:21 he said that "YHVH will be his Elohim", allowing us to understand "Elohim" as "gods" with a small "g", and not as the name of a specific deity, which was probably true throughout the text in its pre-monotheistic original. The pillar in verse 22 which gives Beit-El its name is also described as Elohim, but El is a singular deity, and Elohim is the entire pantheon - the difference between Zeus and Olympus, or Wotan and Valhalla. However, in 28:13 it is YHVH who stands beside him, and speaks to him, and with whom the covenant is cut; and this despite the fact that, in Exodus 6:3, YHVH tells Mosheh that none of the patriarchs knew him by this name. In 28:15 it is nonetheless YHVH who responds to Ya'akov's pledge (which he hasn't actually made yet), and in 28:16 Ya'akov comments, somewhat perversely given 28:13, that YHVH is in this place and he didn't know it. And when Ya'akov does finally make his pledge, in 28:21, he does so in the name of YHVH. So a right mix-up of god-names, presumably, as so often, the Redactor needing to accomodate a multiplicity of tribal or cultic groups who all claimed Beit-El as their holy shrine (and al-Lah instructed him to go up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and pray to YHVH at the Wailing Wall, and pay his respects to Jesus at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on his way back down... something of that sort).
Ya'akov is unable to dwell near Shechem, despite the conquest of it that we have just witnessed; again we see him as the nomadic tribal chief, forever moving on - or is it now the military conqueror, not the nomadic farmer, who is moving on to his next, and then his next...and finally, once Yoseph is established, to Mitsrayim (Egypt) too?
The return to Beit-El is not uninteresting in other ways, of course: the completion of the epic journey by returning to its starting-point and building another altar there to confirm his covenant. But how many altars can a man build in the same place? And Av-Raham had already built one there.
Going up to Beit-El in this case is literal; Shechem is 1880 feet above sea level, Beit-El 2890, a considerable steepness.
But why build an altar when there is already one there? Again evidence that Av-Raham, Yitschak and Ya'akov were never the same family until their stories were connected by the Redactor. Why, they don't even call the god of Beit-El by the same name - it would, after all, be both logical and more importantly the convention of the Torah to say, "make there an altar to the god of your fathers" etc; but the fathers are not mentioned.
And in fact, the phrasing here is hugely significant to one of the main arguments of these commentaries. VA ASEH SHAM MIZBE'ACH LA EL HA NIR'EH ELEYCHA. This is Elohim speaking to him, but making what is clearly a reference to A DIFFERENT GOD!
35:2 VA YOMER YA'AKOV EL BEITO VE EL KOL ASHER IMO HASIRU ET ELOHEY HA NECHAR ASHER BETOCH'CHEM VE HITAHARU VE HACHALIYPHU SIMLOTEYCHEM
וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב אֶל בֵּיתוֹ וְאֶל כָּל אֲשֶׁר עִמּוֹ הָסִרוּ אֶת אֱלֹהֵי הַנֵּכָר אֲשֶׁר בְּתֹכְכֶם וְהִטַּהֲרוּ וְהַחֲלִיפוּ שִׂמְלֹתֵיכֶם
KJ: 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:
BN: Then Ya'akov said to his household, and to everybody that was with him, "Put away the strange gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments...
This endorses the confirmation: we are in a time of multiple gods and goddesses, and not yet anywhere near monotheism. Ya'akov has allowed foreign gods (such as Lavan's terpahim which Rachel has) among his people up until this time; but the change of clothes and purification reflects the practices related to religious ceremony and not to mere tribal nomadism; he is going up to Beit-El for a festival, not a change of home. I do wonder though if the new clothes that they are about to put on are now shepherd-king garments of many colours, and my hypothesis that these were an incoming, even perhaps an invading Aramaean tribe, has turned out to be correct - click here for more background on this.
How would they purify themselves? Exodus 19:10 ff would have them bathing, washing their garments, abstaining from various things etc. Does this include Lavan's teraphim that Rachel absconded with?
Muhammad did precisely the same to the Ka'aba, after he had completed the take-over of Mecca, a total clean-out of all the "false idols", leaving only al-Allah.
Muhammad did precisely the same to the Ka'aba, after he had completed the take-over of Mecca, a total clean-out of all the "false idols", leaving only al-Allah.
35:3 VE NAKUMAH VE NA'ALEH BEIT-EL VE E'ESEH SHAM MIZBE'ACH LA EL HA ONEH OTI BE YOM TSARATI VA YEHI IMADI BA DERECH ASHER HALACHTI
וְנָקוּמָה וְנַעֲלֶה בֵּית אֵל וְאֶעֱשֶׂה שָּׁם מִזְבֵּחַ לָאֵל הָעֹנֶה אֹתִי בְּיוֹם צָרָתִי וַיְהִי עִמָּדִי בַּדֶּרֶךְ אֲשֶׁר הָלָכְתִּי
KJ: 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.
BN: "And let us get up, and go up to Beit-El; and I will raise an altar to the god who answered me in the day of my distress, and and has been with me on the journey I have been making."
The prayer for his safe return at the same place where he made his prayer for a safe journey, thereby ending the epic cycle which this story comprises, and thereby explaining the nature of the pilgrimage. Odysseus in Ithaca.
35:4 VA YITNU EL YA'AKOV ET KOL ELOHEY HA NECHAR ASHER BE YADAM VE ET HA NEZAMIM ASHER BE AZNEYHEM VA YITMON OTAM YA'AKOV TACHAT HA ELAH ASHER IM SHECHEM
וַיִּתְּנוּ אֶל יַעֲקֹב אֵת כָּל אֱלֹהֵי הַנֵּכָר אֲשֶׁר בְּיָדָם וְאֶת הַנְּזָמִים אֲשֶׁר בְּאָזְנֵיהֶם וַיִּטְמֹן אֹתָם יַעֲקֹב תַּחַת הָאֵלָה אֲשֶׁר עִם שְׁכֶם
KJ: 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.
BN: And they gave to Ya'akov all the foreign gods which were in their hands, and the rings which were in their ears, and Ya'akov hid them under the terebinth-oak which was by Shechem.
Wonderful - such an offering to the gods of social archaeology! They actually gave him the gods: proof that they were stone or clay idols etc and not the abstract metaphors and anthropomorphisms of religion today. They also gave him their NEZAMIM (נזמים) or ear-rings, which clearly represented idolatry etc to so zealous a religious fanatic - I wonder how his parents would have felt about that, given the significance of the ear-rings when Eli-Ezer first met Rivkah (Genesis 24:22 ff). But there is still more, for he buried them all under the terebinth oak tree no less, near Shechem. So Shechem too was, or at least housed, a sacred shrine, an oak shrine no less, which would have been sacred to El, as was Beit-El of course; and which became the religious capital later! Is El Shadai then simply an extension of the name of El, but not actually a different deity?
YITMON: The process of hiding these gods under the terebinth implies an act of worship. But does "hiding" them mean "burying" them, in the way that one buries something that is now dead - a form of genizah? Or is it a ritual act to consecrate and preserve them; and if so, then see the burial of Devorah at Alon Bachot, in verse 8 below. To answer this question we need to do some etymological work on YITMON, and for once, you will be delighted to know, the matter is very straightforward.
TAMAN is the root, and it means "to hide". It is used in Joshua 2:6, Jeremiah 43:10 and Job 31:33 for the simple act of concealment; and then in Exodus 2:12 (Mosheh burying the body of the Egyptian overseer he has murdered), Joshua 7:21 (Achan "burying" the stolen booty under the sand in his tent), in the form that we have here, of burying something in the ground. The word recurs throughout the Tanach, with variant meanings, but all on the same track - Psalm 140:6 for example uses it metaphorically for "the proud hiding a snare for me like a net by the wayside", while Deuteronomy 33:19 speaks of "the hidden treasures of the sands", which is probably a metaphor for the silica in sand from which glass is made. So we can conclude that "hidden" here really does mean "hidden"; he is making them give up their multifarious gods, idols, charms and amulets, not to say their teraphim, and heading to Beit-El to adopt One God - unfortunately, as explained above, we cannot be certain which One God, and probably it wasn't One God anyway until the Redactor needed it to be for his own purposes.
Nor should we forget that purpose in this context: Ya'akov is returning with his people from a long period in exile, just as Ezra and Nechem-Yah were doing at the time of the writing of the Tanach. Nechem-Yah complains (Nehemiah 13:23 ff) that his people have taken foreign wives, don't know their own language, et cetera, so a tale of Ya'akov returning, and going straight to the holy shrine to dedicate himself and his people "properly", including buying all their teraphim,, would make propagandistic sense.
The word Elah (אלה) ties in to the Elon of both Moreh and Mamre. The terebinth oak is the most sacred of all trees, the one that contains within itself the root-name of every god.
But one of these idols is not buried beneath the oak-tree at Shechem; she will be buried separately, under the weeping oak at Alon Bachot, in what was presumably a tumulus - see verse 8.
35:5 VA YISA'U VA YEHI CHITAT ELOHIM AL HE ARIM ASHER SEVIYVOTEYHEM VE LO RADPHU ACHAREY BENEY YA'AKOV
KJ: And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.
BN: And they journeyed, and a terror of Elohim was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Ya'akov.
Like Muhammad after the conquest of Mecca, the more we hear about this phase of Ya'akov's life, from Shechem onwards, the more he seems like an authentic fanatic who conquered all before him with the fear of his personal god; all of which clashes with the cynical Ya'akov we have known till now, but is hugely reminiscent of the conquest by Yehoshu'a later on, and again reflects the devastating arrival of the Hyksos. Which allows us an opportunity to state something left unstated until now: that if we take the artificial chronological narrative away, and allow ourselves to see the Book of Genesis simply as an anthology of the myths and legends and liturgical hymns etc etc of all the many tribes who inhabited Kena'an, then we can recognize that all these events in fact were happening concurrently, simultaneously, within the same epoch – a period of several hundred years at least, but still contiguous. And here is the key point: it was the same period as the Book of Joshua, and continued historically into the period of the Judges! We shall explore this more fully later. But the likelihood is that these tales of Ya'akov "conquering" Kena'an are probably tales of the Beney Yisra-El conquering Kena'an under Yehoshu'a, which were themselves the tales of the conquest of Kena'an by the Hyksos. There cannot surely have been two such religious conquests of the land by a people who used the name Yisra-El? And the destruction of Shechem mirrors closely that of Ai in Joshua 7 and 8.
CHITAT ELOHIM: Is that a Jacobite variant on the PACHAD YITSCHAK (cf (Genesis 31:42 and 53)? His military power is also being emphasised; this fear of Elohim is really fear of another Shechem; what we have, going up to a religious ceremony at Beit-El, is the army of a religious leader, saying throw away your old gods and circumcise yourself and worship a new one; and if you do not we shall massacre you. Essentially, this was the First Crusade.
35:6 VA YAVO YA'AKOV LUZAH ASHER BE ERETS KENA'AN HI BEIT-EL HU VE CHOL HA AM ASHER IMO
KJ: So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him.
BN: So Ya'akov came to Luz, which is in the land of Kena'an - the same is Beit-El - he and all the people that were with him.
But we have to go on reading the tale as it is written. The confusion between Luz and Beit-El is still unresolved, as is Ya'akov's name, which was changed to Yisra-El ages ago, yet the new name has still not been applied (see 35:10) - perhaps precisely because the Redactor was trying to avoid the connection with the conquest by Yehoshu'a that we are making. As noted before, we can presume that Luz was the town and Beit-El the shrine, or at the very least the sacred stone.
35:7 VA YIVEN SHAM MIZBE'ACH VA YIKRA LA MAKOM EL BEIT EL KI SHAM NIGLU ELAV HA ELOHIM BE VARCHO MI PENEY ACHIV
KJ: And he built there an altar, and called the place Elbethel: because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother.
BN: And he raised an altar there, and named the place El Beit-El, because there Ha Elohim revealed themselves to him when he was fleeing from the face of his brother.
Is this a return made for the given reason, presumably fulfilling some part of the promise he made then? Or is it an alternate version of the explanation of the shrine. Note that it is called El Beit-El, and not just Beit-El - "the god who inhabits the baetylos". Quite possibly we are in yet another different scroll that is being amalgamated, and it tells the story of Ya'akov naming Beit-El differently - so we end up with two explanations that minorly contradict.
Note also Ha Elohim - again the polytheism.
35:8 VA TAMOT DEVORAH MEYNEKET RIVKAH VA TIKAVER MI TACHAT LE VEIT-EL TACHAT HA ALON VA YIKRA SHEMO ALON BACHOT
KJ: But Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried beneath Bethel under an oak: and the name of it was called Allonbachuth.
BN: And Devorah, Rivkah's nurse, died, and she was buried below Beit-El under the oak; and the name of it was called Alon Bachot.
Does this mean that, at some unstated moment, Ya'akov finally enquired about his parents, even paid a visit? Devorah isn't with his household, after all, but with Rivkah, in Be'er Sheva, a long way south and west of anywhere we have heard him reaching yet? Assuming that Rivkah is still alive.
ALON BACHOT: This is another of those immensely important sentences that tend to be sped by in most readings and studies, but which actually merit extensive explaining. Oak trees were the cult trees of sacred groves, guarded by priestesses and their annual king-husband (cf "The Golden Bough"). To be buried under the oak you had to be a priestess, and probably the high priestess herself. Effectively the goddess, since it is she who inhabits the tree. Burying Devorah could have been a mere teraph, as with the gods "hidden" in verse 4 above; but more likely this was the actual priestess. Why then is she called Rivkah's nurse? Because Rivkah as queen surrogates the goddess, and is still technically virgin after giving birth (hence the barrenness). Her child is reared for her by a wet-nurse, in this case Devorah. Similarly Hagar, Bilhah and Zilpah. But it is also possible that the attribution of nurse status was artificial, and that Devorah was in fact the goddess herself, whose story was annually re-enacted. Devorah as bee goddess from DEVORAH (דברה): "a bee, wasp"; see also Judges 4:4/5 and 5:1 ff, but mostly see my more extensive notes at the link under her name. The big question is: is DEVORAH from the root DAVAR, which also gives us the "Word of God"?... answer yes it is.
Was the burial of Devorah in fact the real reason for going up to Beit-El? Or was the burial of Devorah and the throwing off of foreign gods the same thing? Either way, there is a rejecting of the old religion here, and bee-goddess implies the whole megalithic order, so this is not an insignificant moment, especially as the whole of Kena'an and all the ancient shrines were from the megalithic era. Is it historic or a tale of the Redactor?
The connection between this and the burial of the foreign gods just four verses previously needs close contrast, as one clearly informs the other, and the two must have been similar if not identical in purpose. Why is the Devorah piece placed specifically here, given that it belongs to the Yitschak and Rivkah story, though Devorah was only mentioned in passing back there? Why was she with Ya'akov at all, or did he collect her en route from his parents? This is Rivkah's nurse, after all, not Le'ah's or Rachel's or Dinah's. Where are his parents now? Alive or dead? In fact Yitschak is still alive, and we will shortly meet him. But Rivkah?
Pey break
35:9 VA YERA ELOHIM EL YA'AKOV OD BE VO'O MI PADAN ARAM VA YEVARECH OTO
KJ: And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padanaram, and blessed him.
BN: And Elohim appeared to Ya'akov once again, when he came from Padan Aram, and blessed him.
The following scene makes rather a nonsense of the Penu-El scene, by moving it from there to here, and removing the coronation struggle, the wrestling-match with the "man". The problem, as so often, of having more than one version of a tale, in more than one text, from more than one tribe or nation, and from more than one period of history.
35:10 VA YOMER LO ELOHIM SHIMCHA YA'AKOV LO YIKAR'E SHIMCHA OD YA'AKOV KI IM YISRA-EL YIHEYEH SHMECHA VA YIKRA ET SHEMO YISRA-EL
KJ: And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.
BN: And Elohim said to him, "Your name is Ya'akov. Your name shall no longer be Ya'akov, but you shall be named Yisra-El ." And he named him Yisra-El.
It also undermines the explanation of the name as being the wrestling match itself - YISAR EL, he who wrestled with the deity. Indeed, here no explanation is given, not even as to why his name gets changed. Given what we know of the coronation rituals of priest-kings, the Penu-El story is the one that makes sense, not this one. Or is the story of the ladder in fact the Beit-El equivalent of the wrestling match; there are angels involved in both tales?
Once again we have to assume there are two versions, and because of the respective importances of Beit-El and Penu-El, we can see both as being Ephrayimite documents. Beit-El was in the very south of the northern kingdom, which was called Yisra-El, and which disappeared in 700 BCE when Sennacherib conquered all. Penu-El is over the river Yarden (Jordan), in what was originally the eastern territory of Menasheh but was lost to the Beney Gil'ad in the period of the Judges. Distinguishing Yisra-El from Yehudah was important throughout the period of the divided kingdom, and indeed even in Sha'ul's time. That a key ancestor should have had a different Yah name (Yah-Ekev, possibly Yah-Sar-El here) in each is therefore logical.
Which document or legend came first, Beit-El or Penu-El? Was he named at B or at P? We cannot know.
35:11 VA YOMER LO ELOHIM ANI EL SHADAI PEREH U REBEH GO'I U KEHAL GOYIM YIHEYEH MIMECHA U MELACHIM ME CHALATSEYCHA YETSE'U
KJ: And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;
BN: And Elohim said to him, "I am El Shadai. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation, indeed a tribe of nations shall come out of you, and kings shall be born from your loins...
The god in question once again proves to be El Shadai (אל שדי); does this mean that Elohim and El Shadai were always synonymous, even before monotheism? Unlikely. Does this again allow us to see Elohim not as the name of a single god at all, but a description of the pantheon, and therefore no different from Ha Elohim? Possibly, but again unlikely. This needs more work.
Once and again the blessing is fertility-linked. Check the Av-Rahamic references to El Shadai but it may well be demonstrable that he was exclusively the god of Beit-El.
PEREH U REVEH (פרה ורבה): as opposed to the previous PERU U REVU (פרו ורבו). A simple matter of grammar; this is in the singular, the Genesis 1:28 original was in the plural.
MELACHIM (מלכים): Not to be confused with MAL'ACHIM = "messengers" (or "angels"), which is written מלאכים, with an Aleph third letter; this is the plural of MELECH = "king".
None of the previous covenants had overtly suggested kingship, though we have seen that every one of them also appeared to do just that, through some sort of coronation ritual; and of course King David traced his line back to Ya'akov through the incestuous relationship between Yehudah and Tamar (Genesis 38, 1 Chronicles 2: 1-16), so we can read this verse either as prophetic (because YHVH wrote the Torah) or as retroactive validation (not necessarily by the Ezraic Redactor however; any one of several kings after David would have found it useful for their own genealogical claims to the throne, including both Yoshi-Yahu (Josiah) and Chizki-Yah (Hezekiah), who are known to have been involved with early versions of the Torah.
End of sixth fragment
35:12 VE ET HA ARETS ASHER NATATI LE AV-RAHAM U LE YITSCHAK LECHA ETNENAH U LE ZAR'ACHA ACHAREYCHA ETEN ET HA ARETS
KJ: And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.
BN: And the land which I gave to Av-Raham and to Yitschak, to you I will give it, and to your descendants after you will I give the land."
Yet Av-Raham's and Yitschak's lands were not the same geographically; can we presume that, if they were indeed separate tribes, and not father and son and grandson at all, then the nature of the covenant posed a problem to the Redactor, because it was necessary historically for them to be given to the future generations of the patriarchs, and therefore they had to be each other's future generations no matter what.
Or is this again the other interfering hand of the Redactor, in-filling the gaps between the different tribal legends, in order to make them One?
There is also the problem that this covenant is with Elohim, naming himself El Shadai, as the covenant in Genesis 17 through which Av-Ram became Av-Raham was with El Shadai, while Av-Ram's previous covenant in Genesis 15 was with YHVH, as was Yitschak's in Genesis 26.
35:13 VA YA'AL ME ALAV ELOHIM BA MAKOM ASHER DIBER ITO
KJ: And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him.
BN: And Elohim went up from him in the place where he spoke with him.
Since he is at a shrine, it is hardly surprising that a god spoke to him. By means of an oracle, presumably. Take this thought right back to the first dialogues with god. And also remember that moment, arriving at Machanayim, when he crossed over the river with his almond-rod (Genesis 32:11).
35:14 VA YATSEV YA'AKOV MATSEVAH BA MAKOM ASHER DIBER ITO MATSEVET AVEN VA YASECH ALEYHA NESECH VA YITSOK ALEYHA SHAMEN
KJ: 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.
BN: And Ya'akov set up a pillar at the spot where he spoke with him, a pillar of stone, and he poured a libation over it, and prepared it with oil for a sacrifice.
As he did in the first Beit-El ritual. And as he has already done earlier in this chapter upon his return to Beit-El. Which of the several versions are we meant to accept? And actually none of them are correct, the point about the baetyl being that it is a piece from a meteoric shower that landed on the Earth, probably millions of years ago.
In Temple times, every burnt offering and every peace offering sacrificed on the altar was accompanied by a flour offering, and by the pouring of a prescribed amount of wine on the altar (click here for a full account). During the seven days of the Festival of Sukot, water too was poured on the altar as a libation accompanying the daily morning sacrifice. However there is no reference to the "drink-offering" anywhere in the Torah; it was supplemented by the Rabbis much later, and accredited retroactively through Oral Law. I mention this only because we have been told that Ya'akov erected an altar at Beit-El (verse 1), but he doesn't actually use it, preferring, and rightly given the nature of Beit-El, to pour his libation over the baetyl rather than making a sacrifice upon an altar. Does this place in question the alter that Av-Ram previously erected at Beit-El? Does it allow us to understand that Beit-El later on became a fully-fledged shrine, in the same way that Yeru-Shala'im became religiously potent in much more than just the black rock that sat beneath the altar in the Temple (and which is now in the basement of the Shrine of Omar)?
MATSEVAH: The root is NATSAV and is used for anything that is set upright, including statues, monuments and pillars of the baetyl kind - too many Biblical instances to list. Isaiah 6:13 even uses it as a description of the solidity of a tree-trunk, itself a metaphor for the solidity of the "holy seed".
35:15 VA YIKRA YA'AKOV ET SHEM HA MAKOM ASHER DIBER ITO SHAM ELOHIM BEIT-EL
KJ: And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Bethel.
BN: And Ya'akov named the place where Elohim spoke with him Beit-El.
He had already named it Beit-El the last time he was here (Genesis 28:19); again the suggestion that several versions of the same story have been amalgamated into one.
35:16 VA YIS'U MI BEIT-EL VA YEHI OD KIVRAT HA ARETS LAVO EPHRATAH VA TELED RACHEL VA TEKASH BE LIDETAH
KJ: And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour.
BN: And they travelled on from Beit-El, and there was still some way to come to Ephratah; and Rachel's contractions started, and she had a very difficult labour.
EPHRATAH (אפרתה): Other than here, the name only crops up in this form on one other occasion, in Ruth 1:2, where Machlon and Chilyon are described as "Ephrathites of Beit Lechem in Yehudah". Michah (Micah 5:2) speaks of Beit-Lechem Ephratah, hyphenating Beit-Lechem (בֵּית-לֶחֶם אֶפְרָתָה), and Genesis 48:7 refers to Beit Lechem as being synonymous with the Ephrat named here. PERAT in Genesis 2:14 is identified as the Euphrates, one of the two principle rivers of Mesopotamia; it flows through Bavel (Babylon) into the Persian Gulf. There are several references to Ephratim (אפרתים), and verse 19 below says that Ephrat is Beit-Lechem, which confirms the matter. The term means "House of Bread", which appears to designate it as a bakery, but it would be better translated in its fullest sense, given that everything in Biblical life was religiously construed and ceremonialised, as "the temple of the corn-god", which could be Adonis or Tammuz or Osher etc. We know Beit (בית) can be used to mean "temple" from Beit-El and many other examples, and given that Perat and Ephrat are variant ways of denoting the Euphrates, BEIT LECHEM EPHRATAH in full must mean "the house of the corn god of the Euphrates", which identifies him specifically with Tammuz. The significance of Jesus having been born, literally on the threshing-floor, in the very stable, of the corn god's temple, may not escape the notice of Christian readers.
There is of course the possibility that the Ephratah mentioned here was not the Beit Lechem where David and Jesus were born; however, the presence of the Tomb of Rachel in the city that we now call Bethlehem does rather close out that argument. See also verse 19 below.
When did she fall pregnant? Around the time of the rites at Shechem? It doesn't seem as if nine months have elapsed since Lavan came looking for his household gods and Rachel hid them under her skirts, refusing to get up for him to check because she was menstruating. Does this mean that she was lying? Perhaps. Was she already pregnant, or did it happen later? Were mandrakes involved? Or perhaps, quite simply, that much time has indeed passed since Shechem. (And should we ask if her pains would have been less, her chances of survival increased, if Ya'akov had not made her give up her father's teraphim?)
35:17 VA YEHI VE HAK'SHOTAH BE LIDETAH VA TOMER LAH HA MEYALEDET AL TIYR'I KI GAM ZEH LACH BEN
KJ: And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.
BN: And it came to pass, while she was labouring to give birth, that the midwife said to her, "Fear not, for this one too is going to be a boy."
The punishment of Chavah once again - the pain of labour - which we saw when Le'ah gave birth to Reu'-Ven in Genesis 29:32.
35:18 VA YEHI BE TSE'T NAPHSHAH KI METAH VA TIKRA SHEMO BEN ONI VE AVIV KARAH LO VIN-YAMIN
KJ: And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin.
BN: And it came to pass, as her soul was departing - for she died - that she named him "Ben-Oni"; but his father called him Bin-Yamin.
BEN-ONI/BIN-YAMIN (בנימין...בן-אוני): BEN ONI (בן-אוני) ought to mean "one born in the town of On" which is On-Heliopolis in Egypt, and extraordinarily that just happens to have been the home of Yoseph when he became the human equivalent of the corn-god, and which city was also the shrine of the sun-god; however there is no suggestion that Ya'akov, Rachel or any of the others involved had ever been to Egypt, so the name is a problem if this explanation holds, as Graves suggests.
The Tanach explains the meaning as "son of my sorrow" from the root AVON (און); but other than the pain of childbirth there is nothing in the text that even attempts to explain this meaning.
Might it have been from the root ON (און) = "faculty, ability", whence "strength, power, substance, wealth" et al?
1 Chronicles 8:12, Ezra 2:33 and Nehemiah 7:37, inter alia, refer to a town in the tribe of Bin-Yamin called ONO (אונו); nor should it be forgotten that Yehudah had a son named ONAN (אונן), which could also be taken to mean "a person from On, or Ono".
But one of these idols is not buried beneath the oak-tree at Shechem; she will be buried separately, under the weeping oak at Alon Bachot, in what was presumably a tumulus - see verse 8.
35:5 VA YISA'U VA YEHI CHITAT ELOHIM AL HE ARIM ASHER SEVIYVOTEYHEM VE LO RADPHU ACHAREY BENEY YA'AKOV
וַיִּסָּעוּ וַיְהִי חִתַּת אֱלֹהִים עַל הֶעָרִים אֲשֶׁר סְבִיבֹתֵיהֶם וְלֹא רָדְפוּ אַחֲרֵי בְּנֵי יַעֲקֹב
KJ: And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.
BN: And they journeyed, and a terror of Elohim was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Ya'akov.
Like Muhammad after the conquest of Mecca, the more we hear about this phase of Ya'akov's life, from Shechem onwards, the more he seems like an authentic fanatic who conquered all before him with the fear of his personal god; all of which clashes with the cynical Ya'akov we have known till now, but is hugely reminiscent of the conquest by Yehoshu'a later on, and again reflects the devastating arrival of the Hyksos. Which allows us an opportunity to state something left unstated until now: that if we take the artificial chronological narrative away, and allow ourselves to see the Book of Genesis simply as an anthology of the myths and legends and liturgical hymns etc etc of all the many tribes who inhabited Kena'an, then we can recognize that all these events in fact were happening concurrently, simultaneously, within the same epoch – a period of several hundred years at least, but still contiguous. And here is the key point: it was the same period as the Book of Joshua, and continued historically into the period of the Judges! We shall explore this more fully later. But the likelihood is that these tales of Ya'akov "conquering" Kena'an are probably tales of the Beney Yisra-El conquering Kena'an under Yehoshu'a, which were themselves the tales of the conquest of Kena'an by the Hyksos. There cannot surely have been two such religious conquests of the land by a people who used the name Yisra-El? And the destruction of Shechem mirrors closely that of Ai in Joshua 7 and 8.
CHITAT ELOHIM: Is that a Jacobite variant on the PACHAD YITSCHAK (cf (Genesis 31:42 and 53)? His military power is also being emphasised; this fear of Elohim is really fear of another Shechem; what we have, going up to a religious ceremony at Beit-El, is the army of a religious leader, saying throw away your old gods and circumcise yourself and worship a new one; and if you do not we shall massacre you. Essentially, this was the First Crusade.
35:6 VA YAVO YA'AKOV LUZAH ASHER BE ERETS KENA'AN HI BEIT-EL HU VE CHOL HA AM ASHER IMO
וַיָּבֹא יַעֲקֹב לוּזָה אֲשֶׁר בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן הִוא בֵּית אֵל הוּא וְכָל הָעָם אֲשֶׁר עִמּוֹ
KJ: So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him.
BN: So Ya'akov came to Luz, which is in the land of Kena'an - the same is Beit-El - he and all the people that were with him.
But we have to go on reading the tale as it is written. The confusion between Luz and Beit-El is still unresolved, as is Ya'akov's name, which was changed to Yisra-El ages ago, yet the new name has still not been applied (see 35:10) - perhaps precisely because the Redactor was trying to avoid the connection with the conquest by Yehoshu'a that we are making. As noted before, we can presume that Luz was the town and Beit-El the shrine, or at the very least the sacred stone.
35:7 VA YIVEN SHAM MIZBE'ACH VA YIKRA LA MAKOM EL BEIT EL KI SHAM NIGLU ELAV HA ELOHIM BE VARCHO MI PENEY ACHIV
וַיִּבֶן שָׁם מִזְבֵּחַ וַיִּקְרָא לַמָּקוֹם אֵל בֵּית אֵל כִּי שָׁם נִגְלוּ אֵלָיו הָאֱלֹהִים בְּבָרְחוֹ מִפְּנֵי אָחִיו
KJ: And he built there an altar, and called the place Elbethel: because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother.
BN: And he raised an altar there, and named the place El Beit-El, because there Ha Elohim revealed themselves to him when he was fleeing from the face of his brother.
Is this a return made for the given reason, presumably fulfilling some part of the promise he made then? Or is it an alternate version of the explanation of the shrine. Note that it is called El Beit-El, and not just Beit-El - "the god who inhabits the baetylos". Quite possibly we are in yet another different scroll that is being amalgamated, and it tells the story of Ya'akov naming Beit-El differently - so we end up with two explanations that minorly contradict.
Note also Ha Elohim - again the polytheism.
35:8 VA TAMOT DEVORAH MEYNEKET RIVKAH VA TIKAVER MI TACHAT LE VEIT-EL TACHAT HA ALON VA YIKRA SHEMO ALON BACHOT
וַתָּמָת דְּבֹרָה מֵינֶקֶת רִבְקָה וַתִּקָּבֵר מִתַּחַת לְבֵית אֵל תַּחַת הָאַלּוֹן וַיִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ אַלּוֹן בָּכוּת
KJ: But Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried beneath Bethel under an oak: and the name of it was called Allonbachuth.
BN: And Devorah, Rivkah's nurse, died, and she was buried below Beit-El under the oak; and the name of it was called Alon Bachot.
Does this mean that, at some unstated moment, Ya'akov finally enquired about his parents, even paid a visit? Devorah isn't with his household, after all, but with Rivkah, in Be'er Sheva, a long way south and west of anywhere we have heard him reaching yet? Assuming that Rivkah is still alive.
ALON BACHOT: This is another of those immensely important sentences that tend to be sped by in most readings and studies, but which actually merit extensive explaining. Oak trees were the cult trees of sacred groves, guarded by priestesses and their annual king-husband (cf "The Golden Bough"). To be buried under the oak you had to be a priestess, and probably the high priestess herself. Effectively the goddess, since it is she who inhabits the tree. Burying Devorah could have been a mere teraph, as with the gods "hidden" in verse 4 above; but more likely this was the actual priestess. Why then is she called Rivkah's nurse? Because Rivkah as queen surrogates the goddess, and is still technically virgin after giving birth (hence the barrenness). Her child is reared for her by a wet-nurse, in this case Devorah. Similarly Hagar, Bilhah and Zilpah. But it is also possible that the attribution of nurse status was artificial, and that Devorah was in fact the goddess herself, whose story was annually re-enacted. Devorah as bee goddess from DEVORAH (דברה): "a bee, wasp"; see also Judges 4:4/5 and 5:1 ff, but mostly see my more extensive notes at the link under her name. The big question is: is DEVORAH from the root DAVAR, which also gives us the "Word of God"?... answer yes it is.
Was the burial of Devorah in fact the real reason for going up to Beit-El? Or was the burial of Devorah and the throwing off of foreign gods the same thing? Either way, there is a rejecting of the old religion here, and bee-goddess implies the whole megalithic order, so this is not an insignificant moment, especially as the whole of Kena'an and all the ancient shrines were from the megalithic era. Is it historic or a tale of the Redactor?
The connection between this and the burial of the foreign gods just four verses previously needs close contrast, as one clearly informs the other, and the two must have been similar if not identical in purpose. Why is the Devorah piece placed specifically here, given that it belongs to the Yitschak and Rivkah story, though Devorah was only mentioned in passing back there? Why was she with Ya'akov at all, or did he collect her en route from his parents? This is Rivkah's nurse, after all, not Le'ah's or Rachel's or Dinah's. Where are his parents now? Alive or dead? In fact Yitschak is still alive, and we will shortly meet him. But Rivkah?
Pey break
35:9 VA YERA ELOHIM EL YA'AKOV OD BE VO'O MI PADAN ARAM VA YEVARECH OTO
וַיֵּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶל יַעֲקֹב עוֹד בְּבֹאוֹ מִפַּדַּן אֲרָם וַיְבָרֶךְ אֹתו
KJ: And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padanaram, and blessed him.
BN: And Elohim appeared to Ya'akov once again, when he came from Padan Aram, and blessed him.
The following scene makes rather a nonsense of the Penu-El scene, by moving it from there to here, and removing the coronation struggle, the wrestling-match with the "man". The problem, as so often, of having more than one version of a tale, in more than one text, from more than one tribe or nation, and from more than one period of history.
35:10 VA YOMER LO ELOHIM SHIMCHA YA'AKOV LO YIKAR'E SHIMCHA OD YA'AKOV KI IM YISRA-EL YIHEYEH SHMECHA VA YIKRA ET SHEMO YISRA-EL
וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ אֱלֹהִים שִׁמְךָ יַעֲקֹב לֹא יִקָּרֵא שִׁמְךָ עוֹד יַעֲקֹב כִּי אִם יִשְׂרָאֵל יִהְיֶה שְׁמֶךָ וַיִּקְרָא אֶת שְׁמוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל
KJ: And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.
BN: And Elohim said to him, "Your name is Ya'akov. Your name shall no longer be Ya'akov, but you shall be named Yisra-El ." And he named him Yisra-El.
It also undermines the explanation of the name as being the wrestling match itself - YISAR EL, he who wrestled with the deity. Indeed, here no explanation is given, not even as to why his name gets changed. Given what we know of the coronation rituals of priest-kings, the Penu-El story is the one that makes sense, not this one. Or is the story of the ladder in fact the Beit-El equivalent of the wrestling match; there are angels involved in both tales?
Once again we have to assume there are two versions, and because of the respective importances of Beit-El and Penu-El, we can see both as being Ephrayimite documents. Beit-El was in the very south of the northern kingdom, which was called Yisra-El, and which disappeared in 700 BCE when Sennacherib conquered all. Penu-El is over the river Yarden (Jordan), in what was originally the eastern territory of Menasheh but was lost to the Beney Gil'ad in the period of the Judges. Distinguishing Yisra-El from Yehudah was important throughout the period of the divided kingdom, and indeed even in Sha'ul's time. That a key ancestor should have had a different Yah name (Yah-Ekev, possibly Yah-Sar-El here) in each is therefore logical.
Which document or legend came first, Beit-El or Penu-El? Was he named at B or at P? We cannot know.
35:11 VA YOMER LO ELOHIM ANI EL SHADAI PEREH U REBEH GO'I U KEHAL GOYIM YIHEYEH MIMECHA U MELACHIM ME CHALATSEYCHA YETSE'U
וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ אֱלֹהִים אֲנִי אֵל שַׁדַּי פְּרֵה וּרְבֵה גּוֹי וּקְהַל גּוֹיִם יִהְיֶה מִמֶּךָּ וּמְלָכִים מֵחֲלָצֶיךָ יֵצֵאוּ
KJ: And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;
BN: And Elohim said to him, "I am El Shadai. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation, indeed a tribe of nations shall come out of you, and kings shall be born from your loins...
The god in question once again proves to be El Shadai (אל שדי); does this mean that Elohim and El Shadai were always synonymous, even before monotheism? Unlikely. Does this again allow us to see Elohim not as the name of a single god at all, but a description of the pantheon, and therefore no different from Ha Elohim? Possibly, but again unlikely. This needs more work.
Once and again the blessing is fertility-linked. Check the Av-Rahamic references to El Shadai but it may well be demonstrable that he was exclusively the god of Beit-El.
PEREH U REVEH (פרה ורבה): as opposed to the previous PERU U REVU (פרו ורבו). A simple matter of grammar; this is in the singular, the Genesis 1:28 original was in the plural.
MELACHIM (מלכים): Not to be confused with MAL'ACHIM = "messengers" (or "angels"), which is written מלאכים, with an Aleph third letter; this is the plural of MELECH = "king".
None of the previous covenants had overtly suggested kingship, though we have seen that every one of them also appeared to do just that, through some sort of coronation ritual; and of course King David traced his line back to Ya'akov through the incestuous relationship between Yehudah and Tamar (Genesis 38, 1 Chronicles 2: 1-16), so we can read this verse either as prophetic (because YHVH wrote the Torah) or as retroactive validation (not necessarily by the Ezraic Redactor however; any one of several kings after David would have found it useful for their own genealogical claims to the throne, including both Yoshi-Yahu (Josiah) and Chizki-Yah (Hezekiah), who are known to have been involved with early versions of the Torah.
End of sixth fragment
35:12 VE ET HA ARETS ASHER NATATI LE AV-RAHAM U LE YITSCHAK LECHA ETNENAH U LE ZAR'ACHA ACHAREYCHA ETEN ET HA ARETS
וְאֶת הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לְאַבְרָהָם וּלְיִצְחָק לְךָ אֶתְּנֶנָּה וּלְזַרְעֲךָ אַחֲרֶיךָ אֶתֵּן אֶת הָאָרֶץ
KJ: And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.
BN: And the land which I gave to Av-Raham and to Yitschak, to you I will give it, and to your descendants after you will I give the land."
Yet Av-Raham's and Yitschak's lands were not the same geographically; can we presume that, if they were indeed separate tribes, and not father and son and grandson at all, then the nature of the covenant posed a problem to the Redactor, because it was necessary historically for them to be given to the future generations of the patriarchs, and therefore they had to be each other's future generations no matter what.
Or is this again the other interfering hand of the Redactor, in-filling the gaps between the different tribal legends, in order to make them One?
There is also the problem that this covenant is with Elohim, naming himself El Shadai, as the covenant in Genesis 17 through which Av-Ram became Av-Raham was with El Shadai, while Av-Ram's previous covenant in Genesis 15 was with YHVH, as was Yitschak's in Genesis 26.
35:13 VA YA'AL ME ALAV ELOHIM BA MAKOM ASHER DIBER ITO
וַיַּעַל מֵעָלָיו אֱלֹהִים בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר אִתּוֹ
KJ: And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him.
BN: And Elohim went up from him in the place where he spoke with him.
Since he is at a shrine, it is hardly surprising that a god spoke to him. By means of an oracle, presumably. Take this thought right back to the first dialogues with god. And also remember that moment, arriving at Machanayim, when he crossed over the river with his almond-rod (Genesis 32:11).
35:14 VA YATSEV YA'AKOV MATSEVAH BA MAKOM ASHER DIBER ITO MATSEVET AVEN VA YASECH ALEYHA NESECH VA YITSOK ALEYHA SHAMEN
וַיַּצֵּב יַעֲקֹב מַצֵּבָה בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר אִתּוֹ מַצֶּבֶת אָבֶן וַיַּסֵּךְ עָלֶיהָ נֶסֶךְ וַיִּצֹק עָלֶיהָ שָׁמֶן
KJ: 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.
BN: And Ya'akov set up a pillar at the spot where he spoke with him, a pillar of stone, and he poured a libation over it, and prepared it with oil for a sacrifice.
As he did in the first Beit-El ritual. And as he has already done earlier in this chapter upon his return to Beit-El. Which of the several versions are we meant to accept? And actually none of them are correct, the point about the baetyl being that it is a piece from a meteoric shower that landed on the Earth, probably millions of years ago.
In Temple times, every burnt offering and every peace offering sacrificed on the altar was accompanied by a flour offering, and by the pouring of a prescribed amount of wine on the altar (click here for a full account). During the seven days of the Festival of Sukot, water too was poured on the altar as a libation accompanying the daily morning sacrifice. However there is no reference to the "drink-offering" anywhere in the Torah; it was supplemented by the Rabbis much later, and accredited retroactively through Oral Law. I mention this only because we have been told that Ya'akov erected an altar at Beit-El (verse 1), but he doesn't actually use it, preferring, and rightly given the nature of Beit-El, to pour his libation over the baetyl rather than making a sacrifice upon an altar. Does this place in question the alter that Av-Ram previously erected at Beit-El? Does it allow us to understand that Beit-El later on became a fully-fledged shrine, in the same way that Yeru-Shala'im became religiously potent in much more than just the black rock that sat beneath the altar in the Temple (and which is now in the basement of the Shrine of Omar)?
MATSEVAH: The root is NATSAV and is used for anything that is set upright, including statues, monuments and pillars of the baetyl kind - too many Biblical instances to list. Isaiah 6:13 even uses it as a description of the solidity of a tree-trunk, itself a metaphor for the solidity of the "holy seed".
35:15 VA YIKRA YA'AKOV ET SHEM HA MAKOM ASHER DIBER ITO SHAM ELOHIM BEIT-EL
וַיִּקְרָא יַעֲקֹב אֶת שֵׁם הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר אִתּוֹ שָׁם אֱלֹהִים בֵּית אֵל
KJ: And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Bethel.
BN: And Ya'akov named the place where Elohim spoke with him Beit-El.
He had already named it Beit-El the last time he was here (Genesis 28:19); again the suggestion that several versions of the same story have been amalgamated into one.
35:16 VA YIS'U MI BEIT-EL VA YEHI OD KIVRAT HA ARETS LAVO EPHRATAH VA TELED RACHEL VA TEKASH BE LIDETAH
וַיִּסְעוּ מִבֵּית אֵל וַיְהִי עוֹד כִּבְרַת הָאָרֶץ לָבוֹא אֶפְרָתָה וַתֵּלֶד רָחֵל וַתְּקַשׁ בְּלִדְתָּהּ
KJ: And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour.
BN: And they travelled on from Beit-El, and there was still some way to come to Ephratah; and Rachel's contractions started, and she had a very difficult labour.
EPHRATAH (אפרתה): Other than here, the name only crops up in this form on one other occasion, in Ruth 1:2, where Machlon and Chilyon are described as "Ephrathites of Beit Lechem in Yehudah". Michah (Micah 5:2) speaks of Beit-Lechem Ephratah, hyphenating Beit-Lechem (בֵּית-לֶחֶם אֶפְרָתָה), and Genesis 48:7 refers to Beit Lechem as being synonymous with the Ephrat named here. PERAT in Genesis 2:14 is identified as the Euphrates, one of the two principle rivers of Mesopotamia; it flows through Bavel (Babylon) into the Persian Gulf. There are several references to Ephratim (אפרתים), and verse 19 below says that Ephrat is Beit-Lechem, which confirms the matter. The term means "House of Bread", which appears to designate it as a bakery, but it would be better translated in its fullest sense, given that everything in Biblical life was religiously construed and ceremonialised, as "the temple of the corn-god", which could be Adonis or Tammuz or Osher etc. We know Beit (בית) can be used to mean "temple" from Beit-El and many other examples, and given that Perat and Ephrat are variant ways of denoting the Euphrates, BEIT LECHEM EPHRATAH in full must mean "the house of the corn god of the Euphrates", which identifies him specifically with Tammuz. The significance of Jesus having been born, literally on the threshing-floor, in the very stable, of the corn god's temple, may not escape the notice of Christian readers.
There is of course the possibility that the Ephratah mentioned here was not the Beit Lechem where David and Jesus were born; however, the presence of the Tomb of Rachel in the city that we now call Bethlehem does rather close out that argument. See also verse 19 below.
When did she fall pregnant? Around the time of the rites at Shechem? It doesn't seem as if nine months have elapsed since Lavan came looking for his household gods and Rachel hid them under her skirts, refusing to get up for him to check because she was menstruating. Does this mean that she was lying? Perhaps. Was she already pregnant, or did it happen later? Were mandrakes involved? Or perhaps, quite simply, that much time has indeed passed since Shechem. (And should we ask if her pains would have been less, her chances of survival increased, if Ya'akov had not made her give up her father's teraphim?)
35:17 VA YEHI VE HAK'SHOTAH BE LIDETAH VA TOMER LAH HA MEYALEDET AL TIYR'I KI GAM ZEH LACH BEN
וַיְהִי בְהַקְשֹׁתָהּ בְּלִדְתָּהּ וַתֹּאמֶר לָהּ הַמְיַלֶּדֶת אַל תִּירְאִי כִּי גַם זֶה לָךְ בֵּן
KJ: And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.
BN: And it came to pass, while she was labouring to give birth, that the midwife said to her, "Fear not, for this one too is going to be a boy."
The punishment of Chavah once again - the pain of labour - which we saw when Le'ah gave birth to Reu'-Ven in Genesis 29:32.
35:18 VA YEHI BE TSE'T NAPHSHAH KI METAH VA TIKRA SHEMO BEN ONI VE AVIV KARAH LO VIN-YAMIN
וַיְהִי בְּצֵאת נַפְשָׁהּ כִּי מֵתָה וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ בֶּן אוֹנִי וְאָבִיו קָרָא לוֹ בִנְיָמִין
KJ: And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin.
BN: And it came to pass, as her soul was departing - for she died - that she named him "Ben-Oni"; but his father called him Bin-Yamin.
BEN-ONI/BIN-YAMIN (בנימין...בן-אוני): BEN ONI (בן-אוני) ought to mean "one born in the town of On" which is On-Heliopolis in Egypt, and extraordinarily that just happens to have been the home of Yoseph when he became the human equivalent of the corn-god, and which city was also the shrine of the sun-god; however there is no suggestion that Ya'akov, Rachel or any of the others involved had ever been to Egypt, so the name is a problem if this explanation holds, as Graves suggests.
The Tanach explains the meaning as "son of my sorrow" from the root AVON (און); but other than the pain of childbirth there is nothing in the text that even attempts to explain this meaning.
Might it have been from the root ON (און) = "faculty, ability", whence "strength, power, substance, wealth" et al?
1 Chronicles 8:12, Ezra 2:33 and Nehemiah 7:37, inter alia, refer to a town in the tribe of Bin-Yamin called ONO (אונו); nor should it be forgotten that Yehudah had a son named ONAN (אונן), which could also be taken to mean "a person from On, or Ono".
Why did they give their son different names anyway? Why Bin-Yamin? Ultimogeniture? The probability is that, as with Rachel herself, and quite probably Ya'akov too, at least in one of his manifestations in these tales, it had nothing to do with the Av-Rahamic line of descent, but came on another wave of migration, from another cultural and linguistic background, from somewhere else altogether, and became merged, in the way that Anglo-Saxons and Vikings merged in south Yorkshire in the Norman period, and if you have fifteen children in a school in America today, and you ask them how many countries are represented by their parents and grandparents, you are likely to get a total in the seventies or eighties, and yet every one of them will say "I am an American".
35:19 VA TAMOT RACHEL VA TIKAVER BE DERECH EPHRATAH HI BEIT LACHEM
וַתָּמָת רָחֵל וַתִּקָּבֵר בְּדֶרֶךְ אֶפְרָתָה הִוא בֵּית לָחֶם
KJ: And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.
BN: And Rachel died, and was buried on the road to Ephrat - that is to say: Beit Lachem.
BEIT LACHEM (בית לחם): see verse 16 above.
The most striking feature of Rachel's death is not the unsentimental way in which it is thrown into the story, but the fact that she was not buried among the patriarchal wives at Chevron, which is remarkable, given that she was Ya'akov's favourite wife, and Machpelah the family tomb? Yehudah of course descends from Le'ah, and therefore Rachel was a problem after the exile; but Beit Lechem was originally Benjamite, as we know from the Sha'ul/David stories.
35:20 VA YATSEV YA'AKOV MATSEVAH AL KEVURATAH HI MATSEVET KEVURAT RACHEL AD HA YOM
וַיַּצֵּב יַעֲקֹב מַצֵּבָה עַל קְבֻרָתָהּ הִוא מַצֶּבֶת קְבֻרַת רָחֵל עַד הַיּוֹם
KJ: And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day.
BN: And Ya'akov set up a pillar over her grave; the same Pillar that is on Rachel's grave to this day.
A MATSEVAH, not a BEIT-EL, as in verse 14, above.
And it really is "to this day", for it is still visited as a fertility shrine by both Jewish, Moslem and other women! Today it is known simply as Rachel's Tomb (Kever Rachel Imenu), though recently the Arabs have decided to rename it as the Bilal bin Rabah mosque, after Muhammad's first muezzin.There is a genuine dispute as to the authenticty of the site, though it is not this name-change. 1 Samuel 10:2 states that, "When you go from me today, you will find two men by Rachel's tomb, in the border of Bin-Yamin, in Tsel-Tsach (Zelzah)", which is not geographically viable for the location of the existing tomb. Rashi noted this, and commented in unusually jocular mood: "Now, isn't Rachel's tomb in the border of Judah, in Bethlehem?", before explaining the verse as meaning that: "Now they are by Rachel's tomb, and when you will meet them, you will find them in the border of Bin-Yamin, in Zelzah." Maimonides rejected this opinion, having visited the Beit Lechem site himself and been convinced of its authenticity, therefore rejecting the Samuel contention that it was north of Yeru-Shala'im. However there is also Jeremiah 31:15 (13:14 in some versions), which appears to place her burial in Ramah, though the text speaks only of her voice and not of her remains.
To resolve this conflict, we need to understand Rachel's role in Jewish theology, and indeed in the Christian. Jeremiah 31:15 tells us that "Thus says YHVH, 'A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.'" This verse is quoted by Matthew in 2:18 as a prophecy of the advent of the Messiah (though it is far from obvious what the one has to do with the other). Through this verse, Rachel has become the "mother" of the Jewish people, lamenting for them when they went into exile in Babylon (the whole tribe being understood as her children, and not specifically Yoseph and Bin-Yamin). In this capacity she effectively replaces Chavah (Eve), who was the original "Em Kol Chai - the mother of all living things", and Sarah, the first patriarchess, and becomes the principal symbol of the feminine in two of her three phases: the maiden (the waxing moon of the Ya'akov-Lavan stories) and the Madonna (the full moon in her brief time as mother); she did not live long enough to take the role of the aged crone (the waning moon) as well. This apotheosis has also enabled Judaism to assimilate the fertility cults without undermining the patriarchal and masculine status of the One God. At Rachel's Tomb to this day women will wrap a red string seven times around the monument, and then wear it as a fertility inducement. The red string is a reminder of the scarlet thread placed on Parets when he came out of the womb before his brother Zerach (Genesis 38:28-30).
By way of conclusion then, the likelihood is that there were once multiple sites that were claimed as Rachel's burial ground, because they had previously been shrines to one or other of the many fertility goddesses. The Temple itself stands on one of these sites, it having been a shrine to Ornah, or Araunah, before King David purchased it as the site for the Temple (2 Samuel 24:16 ff).
The word MATSEVAH (מצבה) is now used to mean a tombstone. The pillar that Ya'akov raises here should not be confused with the pillar of Beit-El, though in shape they would not have been that dissimilar. The one was a fallen meteorite of arbitrary shape, the latter a headstone, selected or carved for the purpose.
What is clearly happening in these tales is an attempt to lay claim upon all the sacred shrines of Kena'an, by giving them a patriarchal origin; in much the way that early Christian churches were built on Celtic sites (if your English church is named for St Margaret of Antioch, or has White in its name - Whitchurch, St Albans, etc - it's a pretty safe bet that it was originally a Celtic shrine to the moon-goddess Guinevere).
Note that his name has been changed, but, as in the previous version, he is still called Ya'akov; until it changes, in the next verse, and then back again, in the verse immediately after.
Ramah was probably Ramat-Yah, which in the Christian gospel becomes Arimathaea, where Joseph had a tomb (another of the very odd connections with the world of Arthur and Guinevere - see the link under Arimathaea), and in which Jesus was buried. Cf Luke 23:51. Not to be confused with Ra'amah. Early Christian commentators tried to connect it with Ramatayim Tsophim, where the Prophet Shemu-El (Samuel) was buried, which would make a splendid connection for the Jesus story, but alas doesn't work geographically.
35:21 VA YISA YISRA-EL VA YET AHALOH ME HAL'AH LE MIGDAL EDER
וַיִּסַּע יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֵּט אָהֳלֹה מֵהָלְאָה לְמִגְדַּל עֵדֶר
KJ: And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Edar.
BN: And Yisra-El journeyed, and spread his tent beyond Migdal Eder.
YISRA-EL: There was a single verse before the text got it right, but he is now called Yisra-El. For how long?
VA YET AHALOH: Where was it that the text told us that "he built his house"? Genesis 33:17. I translated it there as "set up his home", and clearly that was correct. This is a life of canvas and guy-peg, not brick and mortar.
MIGDAL EDER (מגדל-עדר): Migdal Eder is near Beit Lechem. An interesting place to choose, in this story of sheep. EDER (עדר) has already been encountered; it means "a flock" from the root ADAR (עדר). But wait a moment, for it is more complex than that.
ADAR in its base root means "to set in order" and is used in 1 Chronicles 12:38/39 for setting an army in battle array. How though does this give "flock", unless in the most abstruse manner of gathering all the sheep in some organised way, which of course never happens with real sheep except at feeding time. Perhaps the Chronicles usage is the anomaly, an idiom of its time and place.
There is also a second root of ADAR, which is used in 1 Samuel 30:19 to mean "wanting" or "lacking", and recurs with the same meaning in Isaiah 40:26 and 59:15. All three of these are using the root in its passive (Niphil) form, which makes sense, so the notion of "order" being thereby reversed into "lack" or "want". 2 Samuel 17:22 uses it in the Niphil form to mean "left behind", though it is often translated as "lacking".
However there is also a third root, or at least a third meaning from what may well be the same root, for Isaiah 5:6 takes it (the origin of this is probably Chaldean and it is therefore a different root) to mean "weeds" and therefore speaks of "pruned and hoed".
How does any of this lead to "flock"? Impossible to say, but lead there it does, though which of the several meanings listed here is the one intended for MIGDAL EDER it likewise becomes impossible to say. And why does it matter anyway? Because Michah (Micah 4:8) speaks about the place as a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah: "And you, Migdal Eder, the hill of the daughter of Tsi'on, unto you shall it come; yea, the former dominion shall come, the kingdom of the daughter of Yeru-Shala'im - וְאַתָּה מִגְדַּל עֵדֶר עֹפֶל בַּת צִיּוֹן עָדֶיךָ תֵּאתֶה וּבָאָה הַמֶּמְשָׁלָה הָרִאשֹׁנָה מַמְלֶכֶת לְבַת יְרוּשָׁלִָם - VE ATAH MIGDAL EDER OPHEL BAT TSI'ON ADEYCHA TETEH U VA'AH HA MEMSHALAH HA RISHONAH MAMLECHET LE VAT YERU-SHALAYIM.
There is also a man named EDER in 1 Chronicles 8:15 and another named ADRI-EL, a son-in-law of King Sha'ul, in 1 Samuel 18:19 and 2 Samuel 21:8; and a town named EDER in the tribal territory of Yehudah in Joshua 15:21.
35:22 VA YEHI BISH'KON YISRA-EL BA ARETS HA HI VA YELECH RE'U-VEN VA YISHKAV ET BILHAH PIYLEGESH AVIV VA YISHMA YISRA-EL VA YEHIYU VENEY YA'AKOV SHENAYIM ASAR
וַיְהִי בִּשְׁכֹּן יִשְׂרָאֵל בָּאָרֶץ הַהִוא וַיֵּלֶךְ רְאוּבֵן וַיִּשְׁכַּב אֶת בִּלְהָה פִּילֶגֶשׁ אָבִיו וַיִּשְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל פ וַיִּהְיוּ בְנֵי יַעֲקֹב שְׁנֵים עָשָׂר
KJ: And it came to pass, when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve:
BN: And it came to pass, while Yisra-El dwelt in that land, that Re'u-Ven went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine; and Yisra-El heard of it. Now there were twelve sons of Ya'akov.
Has the name Yisra-El at last stuck? Alas, only for a moment. Not even a whole verse indeed; even before the end of this one, he is once again named Ya’akov.
PIYLEGESH: There is no blood relationship between Bilhah and Re'u-Ven, but she is his father's concubine, and therefore the relationship is "inappropriate", even if it is not incestuous. Though Pilgashim presumably counted as wives in the Moslem manner, and she is therefore a step-mother; and at the very least the mother of two of his brothers, Dan and Naphtali. The Mosaic Laws, which of course had not yet come into effect, prohibited a relationship with a step-mother (Leviticus 18:8).
PIYLEGESH v SHIPHCHAH (שִׁפְחָה): Previously she and Zilpah were described as the latter; the first time in Genesis 29:24, where it was understood to mean "handmaid". Presumably their status changed from SHIPHCHAH (the wife's "handmaiden") to PIYLEGESH (the husband's concubine) when they were given to Ya'akov as bed-companions, in the same way that HAGAR did in Genesis 16:1.
Given that the episode is later regarded as significant, why does it only receive this single verse, with nothing more recounted? Perhaps to disinherit Re'u-Ven as the first-born and to lift up Yehudah: historical retroaction by the later scribes, after Yehudah alone was left? Remember that the other two of Yehudah's elder brothers out of Le'ah have already been discredited over the Shechem incident - how very convenient! Cf Genesis 39:3/4 where Ya'akov's blessing recalls the incident; also 1 Chronicles 5:1/2, which states precisely this, and unequivocally. Mosheh's Blessing (Deuteronomy 33:6) expresses the hope that Re'u-Ven will survive despite its few numbers: but the tribe did not, and no records of it exist. Two of his sons, Chetsron and Karmi, were added to Yehudah (1 Chronicles 4:1 & 5:3). The key to Re'u-Ven's action can be found in Av-Shalom's (Absalom's) seizure of the harem in 2 Samuel 16:21-22. To sleep with any member of the king's harem is effectively to stage a coup d'état.
The incident is treated as if it were a rape: one of several in the Bible. The others are Tamar by Amnon (2 Samuel 13) and Dinah by Shechem (Genesis 34). However, I think that this incident should be looked at quite differently. In 2 Samuel 16:20 ff Av-Shalom lies publicly with his predecessor's harem, which is very different from his encouragement of Amnon in the matter of Tamar. When Av-Ner lay with Sha'ul's former concubine Ritspah bat Ayah (2 Samuel 3:7 ff) it was regarded as high treason; as was Adoni-Yah's petition of Shelomoh (Solomon) to be given David's concubine Avi-Shag (1 Kings 2:13 ff). As noted above, the tradition was that power was assumed through the taking of the mistress: thus, in sleeping with Bilhah (and some Midrashim add that he slept with Zilpah too), Re'u-Ven is effectively staging a coup against Ya'akov. The coup failed, and Re'u-Ven was disinherited as a punishment.
The text of 1 Chronicles 5:1/2 informs us (but this is the northern kingdom version) that, as a consequence of "defiling his father's bed", "his birthright was given to the sons of Yoseph the son of Yisra-El; so that he is not enrolled in the genealogy according to the birthright; though Yehudah prevailed over his brothers, and from him came the leader, yet the birthright belonged to Yoseph." Three comments on this.
First, note the repetition of the word "defile" - though interestingly the Chronicles text has U VECHALELU (וּֽבְחַלְּלוֹ֙) where Genesis 34:2, for the Shechem-Dinah tale, had YE'ANEYHA (ויענה) - so clearly the two incidents were not parallels, further endorsingTheBibleNet's conviction that Shechem may have seduced Dinah, but he clearly did not rape her. Second, that we have yet another instance of the first-born ceding his birthright and his inheritance - every single first-born among the patriarchy will do so, eventually. Third, and perhaps even more significant, that this is given as the reason why Ephrayim and Menasheh acquired tribal territory; the Yehudah version is clear that Yoseph was disinherited because Asnat his wife was not Bat Yisra-Eli, but the blessing of Ya'akov effectively reinstated the grandsons. Very different.
Hertz claims it was a Middle Eastern custom for the heir apparent to take possession of his father's wives as an assertion of his right to succeed (Leviticus 18:8 disputes this). As usual he has got this wrong; Re'u-Ven as firstborn does not obtain the inheritance anyway, as we have seen throughout this tale of ultimogeniture; that will go to Bin-Yamin, whose tribe will provide the first King, Sha'ul, and then merge with Yehudah to become the only remaining.
VA YIHEYU: Is that sentence not the start of another verse, even another section? It tags on very oddly here - like a brother coming out of the womb clutching on to his twin's heel!
35:23 BENEY LE'AH BECHOR YA'AKOV RE'U-VEN VE SHIM'ON VE LEVI VI YEHUDAH VE YISASCHAR U ZEVULUN
בְּנֵי לֵאָה בְּכוֹר יַעֲקֹב רְאוּבֵן וְשִׁמְעוֹן וְלֵוִי וִיהוּדָה וְיִשָּׂשכָר וּזְבוּלֻן
KJ: The sons of Leah; Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun:
BN: The sons of Le'ah: Re'u-Ven, Ya'akov's first-born, Shim'on, Levi, Yehudah, Yisaschar and Zevulun.
Somehow the three eldest have all been in trouble, and disinherited for it, leaving Yehudah as top-dog. How convenient!
There is a second distinction to be made, on the basis of the two phases of her child-bearing. Yisaschar and Zevulun, who came with the mandrakes, are northern tribes, the one on the immediate west of the Sea of Galilee, the other across the Yazar-El (Jezreel) valley towards the coast at Haifa. The four sons from the first phase are all southern tribes, Shim'on in the depths of the Negev, Yehudah its northern end, Re'u-Ven across the Dead Sea in Mo-Av, and Levi cityless.
35:24 BENEY RACHEL YOSEPH U VIN-YAMIN
בְּנֵי רָחֵל יוֹסֵף וּבִנְיָמִן
KJ: The sons of Rachel; Joseph, and Benjamin:
BN: The sons of Rachel: Yoseph and Bin-Yamin.
BIN-YAMIN: Note that he loses his mother's name for him as soon as she is dead, and it will never be used again.
Yoseph had no tribe, but his sons Ephrayim and Menasheh received the middle section of Yisra-El, and a part of the Golan Heights.
35:25 U VENEY BILHAH SHIPCHAT RACHEL DAN VE NAPHTALI
וּבְנֵי בִלְהָה שִׁפְחַת רָחֵל דָּן וְנַפְתָּלִי
KJ: And the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid; Dan, and Naphtali:
BN: And the sons of Bilhah Rachel's handmaid: Dan and Naphtali
Dan supposedly started life on the Mediterranean coast and then moved north to La'ish. Dan and Naphtali occupied the northern Galil (Galilee) above Kinneret.
35:26 U VENEY ZILPAH SHIPHCHAT LE'AH GAD VE ASHER ELEH BENEY YA'AKOV ASHER YULAD LO BE PADAN ARAM
וּבְנֵי זִלְפָּה שִׁפְחַת לֵאָה גָּד וְאָשֵׁר אֵלֶּה בְּנֵי יַעֲקֹב אֲשֶׁר יֻלַּד לוֹ בְּפַדַּן אֲרָם
KJ: And the sons of Zilpah, Leah's handmaid; Gad, and Asher: these are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Padanaram.
BN: And the sons of Zilpah, Le'ah's handmaid: Gad and Asher. These are the sons of Ya'akov, who were born to him in Padan Aram.
35:27 VA YAVO YA'AKOV EL YITSCHAK AVIV MAMRE KIRYAT HA ARBA HI CHEVRON ASHER GAR SHAM AV-RAHAM VE YITSCHAK
וַיָּבֹא יַעֲקֹב אֶל יִצְחָק אָבִיו מַמְרֵא קִרְיַת הָאַרְבַּע הִוא חֶבְרוֹן אֲשֶׁר גָּר שָׁם אַבְרָהָם וְיִצְחָק
KJ: And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto Mamre, unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned.
BN: And Ya'akov came to Yitschak his father, to Mamre, to Kiryat Arba - the same is Chevron - where Av-Raham and Yitschak sojourned.
Based on events - especially the Shechem incident and Rachel's parturation and death - something approaching two years must have elapsed between Ya'akov's return to his homeland and what appears to be his first visit to his father (adding to our concerns about the death of Devorah, verse 8, above). This ought to be a significant reunion, yet nothing more than this gets stated.
And what on Earth is Yitschak suddenly doing at Mamre? All previous references make it clear that he lived at Be'er Sheva. And what has happened to Rivkah? And wasn't he dying when Ya'akov got his departure blessing twenty-plus years ago? But Yitschak is to be considered a patriarch of this new, artificial history that the Redactor has constructed; and so his death has to be marked.
Note that Mamre, Chevron and Kiryat Arba are once again identified as being alternate names for the same place; except that on this occasion it is Kiryat Ha Arba, which suggests "the four", rather than the eponymous founder.
Yet one more Homeric parallel ("The Odyssey", Book 16): Odysseus and Telemachus going to visit Laertes in his country-retreat - and we are surprised to learn that he is still alive as well.
35:28 VA YIHEYU YEMEY YITSCHAK ME'AT SHANAH U SHEMONIM SHANAH
וַיִּהְיוּ יְמֵי יִצְחָק מְאַת שָׁנָה וּשְׁמֹנִים שָׁנָה
KJ: And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years.
BN: And Yitschak lived for a hundred and eighty years.
35:29 VA YIGVA YITSCHAK VA YAMAT VA YE'ASEPH EL AMAV ZAKEN U SEVA YAMIM VA YIKBERU OTO ESAV VE YA'AKOV BANAV
וַיִּגְוַע יִצְחָק וַיָּמָת וַיֵּאָסֶף אֶל עַמָּיו זָקֵן וּשְׂבַע יָמִים וַיִּקְבְּרוּ אֹתוֹ עֵשָׂו וְיַעֲקֹב בָּנָיו
KJ: And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, being old and full of days: and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.
BN: And Yitschak expired, and died, and he was gathered to his people, old but still vigorous; and Esav and Ya'akov his sons buried him.
Just as Yishma-El and Yitschak were together at the burial of Av-Raham, so Esav and Ya'akov are together at the burial of Yitschak. Can we presume that the Mamre reference is added to allow Yitschak to be buried at Chevron, in the cave of Machpelah with Av-Raham and Sarah? More interesting, while his predecessors were gathered to "their fathers", he is here gathered to "his people", or perhaps to his "maternal ancestors" (EMAV).
Pey break; end of chapter 35
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