¹Then God said to Jacob, “Go to Bethel and live there. Make an altar there. I am the God who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.”

²So Jacob said to his family and those who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods which you have, wash yourselves until you are ritually clean,^aand change your clothes. ³Then let’s go to Bethel. I will make an altar there to God, who answered me when I was troubled and who has been with me wherever I’ve gone.” ⁴So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods that they had in their possession as well as the earrings that they had on. Jacob buried these things under the oak tree near Shechem.

⁵As they moved on, God made the people of the cities that were all around them terrified so that no one pursued them. ⁶Jacob and all the people who were with him came to Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan. ⁷He built an altar there and called that place El Bethel ^[God of the House of God^[. That’s where God had revealed himself to Jacob when he was fleeing from his brother.

Read in Logos

Genesis 35:3: Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone…

Footnotes

a 35:2 “Clean” refers to anything that is presentable to God.
[Proper names or foreign words whose meaning is significant for understanding a particular Bible passage are translated in brackets following the name or phrase