Here’s a story within a story, a prototype of the history of the Jewish people in miniature.
With relief we begin Genesis 35: “Then God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau’” (v 1). No doubt, word had spread about the slaughter at Shechem, and Jacob opined, “I shall be destroyed, my household and I” (34:30). But his fears were not realized. Why? “The terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob” (35:5). Of course, there was much more at stake than the survival of this family. Your salvation, for example! In fact, the fate of the universe hung in the balance. God must protect this family, not only from its enemies but from its own foolhardiness, since it was through them that a Babe would be born who would be Savior of the world! Here Jacob shows his spiritual leadership: “And Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, ‘Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me in the way which I have gone’” (vv 2-3). They were to separate from all that was false and foul. Time to go back to Bethel, to reconnect with the God who not only met Jacob there, but had been beside him along the rough road ever since. God is no fair-weather friend! Interestingly, this return trip to Bethel, placed on God’s big screen, is called “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer 30:7), and speaks of the way God will bring the Jews at last, not only back to Jerusalem, but back to Jehovah—but only after wrestling with the Man, and realizing at last, that in the rejected Messiah Yeshua they have actually seen the face of God.