Genesis
35:3-4 "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. (4) 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."
Jacob settled in the land of Shechem after the Lord had blessed him and Esau to
be reconciled. The son of the Prince of that land took Jacob's daughter to be
his wife. This upset her brothers and they went into the city where they slew
all the males. Jacob was distressed because an agreement had been made
with those people and now his sons had broken the agreement.
If you remember very early in our study, Abraham had gone back to the beginning
point in order to make amends with the Lord for a transgression. We do
not know if Jacob has been taught that from the story of his grandfather or if
the Lord directly placed it in his heart, but he went back to the place of the
beginning. He went back to Bethel where he first had sought the Lord.
Let's face it, there are times in our lives when we mess up. We have two directions in which we can go. We can continue in the wrong direction, or we can turn and go back to that place in our life when we first had sweet communication with our Lord. It is best when we follow the examples of Abraham and Jacob - turn back to the closeness of fellowship with our God. We call it repentance, but it is a sweet movement toward the Lord, our God, our Helper!