“Isaac lived to be 180 years old.  Then he breathed his last, died and was gathered to his people, an old man full of years; and his sons ‘Esau and Jacob buried him.”-Genesis 35:28-29 As we progress through the Torah, slowly but surely we are becoming acquainted with the cultural peculiarities of the ancient middle […]

“Israel moved on again and pitched his tent beyond Migdal Eder.  While Israel was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father’s concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard of it.”-Genesis 35:21-22 So we’re told that Jacob’s clan left Beit-el (House of God) and moved to a place called Efrat. Efrat would later come to be […]

More often than not, prophetic events in the Bible are both figurative and literal and repeat themselves continuously throughout history. For example, in reference to God rescuing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the prophet Hosea said the following: “When Israel was a child, I loved him,     and out of Egypt I called my son.” -Hosea 11:1 […]

“Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak outside Bethel. So it was named Allon Bakuth.”-Genesis 35:8 Suddenly out of the blue, the death of Rebecca’s much beloved nurse Deborah is reported to us. If you recall that when Abraham’s servant Eliezer brought Rebecca back from Mesopotamia to be Isaac’s wife, she was accompanied by […]

“Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes.  Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.”-Genesis 35:2-3 I mentioned in my last post […]