Genesis 35:1-8

Living Bible

35 “Move on to Bethel now, and settle there,” God said to Jacob, “and build an altar to worship me—the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”

² So Jacob instructed all those in his household to destroy the idols they had brought with them, and to wash themselves and to put on fresh clothing. ³ “For we are going to Bethel,” he told them, “and I will build an altar there to the God who answered my prayers in the day of my distress, and was with me on my journey.”

⁴ So they gave Jacob all their idols and their earrings, and he buried them beneath the oak tree near Shechem. ⁵ Then they started on again. And the terror of God was upon all the cities they journeyed through, so that they were not attacked. ⁶ Finally they arrived at Luz (also called Bethel), in Canaan. ⁷ And Jacob erected an altar there and named it “the altar to the God who met me here at Bethel”^[a] because it was there at Bethel that God appeared to him when he was fleeing from Esau.

⁸ Soon after this^[b] Rebekah’s old nurse, Deborah, died and was buried beneath the oak tree in the valley below Bethel. And ever after it was called “The Oak of Weeping.”