Honey From The Rock

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Honey From The Rock
Psalm 81:16

"Sweet Stuff From God's Word"

A daily Bible study with Victor Knowles
Copyright 2007

WHEN TERROR PROTECTS

This entry was posted on 03-19-2010 and is filed under STUDIES IN GENESIS.

It was time to go home again. That's what God told Jacob. "Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother" (Gen. 35:1 NKJV). But while Jacob's family had been living among the Canaanites, they had been collecting things ~ things like foreign gods (idols), garments, and jewelry (see vs. 2 & 4). So before Jacob builds the altar, he tells his family to get rid of the stuff, purify themselves, and even change their clothes. Jacob buried all of it under a terebinth tree near Shechem. Now they were ready to go. Notice what happens next.

"And 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" (Gen. 35:5). Now remember that Jacob's sons had just wiped out the male population of an entire Canaanite city in response to the defilement of their sister Dinah. I'm sure there were blood relatives who wanted to spill the blood of those men, especially Simeon and Levi who had instigated the massacre. Yet Jacob's huge caravan went through the enemy territory without incident because the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them. That is some kind of protective power that prevented those people from taking vengeance. I don't know what terrors befell them or threatened them, but they must have been very real and convincing to thwart their plans. I would like to think it was because Jacob made his family divest themselves of all traces of pagan idolatry that they may have succumbed to while with the Hivites. Hmmm. I wonder how much divine protection we rob ourselves of by not putting away the foreign gods that are among us today? What might some of those things be? Let us examine ourselves carefully and purify ourselves before the Lord today.