Genesis 35:2 Commentary and Bible Study

It is one sad thing about Jacob that he allowed idolatry to persist in his family. We do not believe for a moment that he had any idols, any strange gods, himself, but he knew his family had them, and he doesn't seem to have done anything to stop it, until this great crisis. He didn't exercise discipline. When Rachel left her father, Laban, she had stolen a teraphim and taken it with her, and now it seems to have multiplied. The mother’s idolatry – or one of the mothers; there were four mothers: two wives and two servant women who were concubines – was another source of the trouble. Why is it that Jacob's sons were so ungodly, so unreliable? Why is it that they were turning out badly? Because of the polygamy because of the fractured household and the divided loyalties, but also one of the principal mothers had an idol, and it had multiplied evidently into many idols – parental example was bad. But Jacob now says, ‘They have to be destroyed, and you are to change your garments.’ Not just change them and wash them so that they get put back in your wardrobe, but what is said to them in effect is, ‘What you stand up in now, you will destroy.’ It would be a token of complete departure from how they had been proceeding and living. There must be a complete change in their ideals and their aspirations. The gods must go, and so must even their present clothing; and they did it. They gave them to Jacob and he hid them, that is, he buried them, ‘under the oak which was by Shechem.’ So they went to Bethel, the place where God and met with him to fulfil that long-delayed vow. Idolatry would end and they would be endeavouring much more in the future to obey God.