Genesis 35:1-4

Contemporary English Version

Jacob Returns to Bethel

35 ^(A) God told Jacob, “Return to Bethel, where I appeared to you when you were running from your brother Esau. Make your home there and build an altar for me.”

² Jacob said to his family and to everyone else who was traveling with him:

Get rid of your foreign gods! Then make yourselves acceptable to worship God and put on clean clothes. ³ Afterwards, we'll go to Bethel. I will build an altar there for God, who answered my prayers when I was in trouble and who has always been at my side.

⁴ So everyone gave Jacob their idols and their earrings,^[a] and he buried them under the oak tree near Shechem.