Read Genesis 35:1-8 at Bible Gateway.
Hebrew paragraph division
Gen 35:1-8 {p} Repentance and return to the house of God (Bethel)
Gen 35:1-8 chiastic structure
1a.1) Gen 35:1, God to Jacob: Go to Bethel + dwell there + make an altar to God who appeared to you when you fled from Esau;
1a.2) Gen 35:2, Jacob to his household: Put away your foreign gods + purify yourselves;
1a.1 repeated) Gen 35:3, Let us go to Bethel + I will make an altar to God, who answered me in my distress;
1a.2 repeated) Gen 35:4, They gave Jacob their foreign gods/ he hid them under the terebinth tree by Shechem;
central axis) Gen 35:5, They journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob;
2a.1) Gen 35:6-7, Jacob came to Bethel/ He built an altar there, because there God appeared to him when he fled from his brother;
2a.2) Gen 35:8 {p} Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died/ buried below Bethel under the terebinth tree.
Original Hebrew
altar is Strong’s H4196, mizbayach, from Strong’s H2076, zabach, a primitive root meaning to slaughter an animal. The ancient pictographs are zayin + bet + chet:
zayin = the mattock, thus tool, food, cut, nourish
bet = the house, thus house, household, family, in, within
chet = the wall, thus outside, divide, half
The story the ancient pictographs are telling is of cutting (zayin) beyond the house’s (bet) wall (chet); i.e., slaughter, for such work took place away from the house. To slaughter is the verb, knife is the concrete noun. The altar, the place where the sacrifice is offered, is a derivative.
purify is Strong’s H2891, taher, a primitive root meaning to shine, to be bright. The ancient pictographs are tet + hey + resh:
tet = the basket, thus surround, contain, hold, mud
hey = the man with upraised arms, thus look, reveal, wonder, worship, breath
resh = the head of man, thus head, first, top, beginning, man
Tet can sometimes signify mud, as baskets were most often used to carry mud. So then the story the ancient pictographs are telling, is that when mud (tet) or tarnish covers an item, polishing it so that it shines (taher) reveals it (hey) as it was at first (resh).
The concrete noun from this primitive root is a prison, the place that contains or holds (tet) the man (resh). The purpose of the prison is to either purify society from lawbreakers, by removing them, or purify the criminal from lawbreaking, by removing his freedom and hopefully cause him to reflect on why he is there; so that he leaves off folly and gains wisdom.
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