Bible Study Group

  Jacob Returns to Bethel 35  Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.” 2  So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes.   3  Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.”   4  So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem.   5  Then they set out, and the terror of God fell on the towns all around them so that no one pursued them. 6  Jacob and all the people with him came to Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan.   7  There he built an altar, an...

  Dinah and the Shechemites 34  Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land.   2  When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her.   3  His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob; he loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her.   4  And Shechem said to his father Hamor, “Get me this girl as my wife.” 5  When Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled, his sons were in the fields with his livestock; so he did nothing about it until they came home. 6  Then Shechem’s father Hamor went out to talk with Jacob.   7  Meanwhile, Jacob’s sons had come in from the fields as soon as they heard what had happened. They were shocked and furious, because Shechem had done an outrageous thing in [ a ]  Israel by sleeping with Jacob’s daughter—a thing that should not be d...

1.   And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two female servants.   2  And he put the servants with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all.   3  He himself went on before them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. 4  But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.   5  And when Esau lifted up his eyes and saw the women and children, he said, “Who are these with you?” Jacob said, “The children whom God has graciously given your servant.”   6  Then the servants drew near, they and their children, and bowed down.   7  Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down. And last Joseph and Rachel drew near, and they bowed down.   8  Esau said, “What...