Genesis 35:5 Commentary and Bible Study

Now they journeyed and this could well have been a flight for their lives, but the Lord protected them in a very remarkable way. Again this was grace and a mark of God’s favour to Jacob’s family in spite of their unworthiness. God had a purpose for them and his promises were tied up with the history of the nation. Why did the Lord choose Jacob and his descendants? Moses answers, ‘The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: ⁸ But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers’ (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). So they left Shechem, and they didn't need their swords; God protected them in a most remarkable way. ‘The terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.’ We have seen something like this recently in Iraq, where the ISIS group, as it was called, managed to so alarm the Iraq Armed Forces that they ran in terror from them, even though it turned out that the armed forces outnumbered ISIS six to one. So we see this in ordinary life sometimes, and it's nothing for God to cast a terror upon all the Perizzites and the Canaanites, so that the party of Jacob pass through extremely hostile territory unhindered and unharmed. Jacob builds an altar and worships the Lord. He calls the place by a name that celebrates God’s goodness to him: Elbethel – ‘The God of the house of God’.