Jacob covered his eyes and fervently wished it would all vanish. Who would feed these women? What would they do with them? “Slaves,” Levi and Simeon had said. “We are the ones who will be the slaves,” he muttered. “They are helpless. Their old women and children will be nothing but a burden.”
* * *
Jacob went inside his tent and knelt with his face to the ground and prayed, “What shall I do? My own flesh and blood have done this evil thing. We will be hated and feared. How can we ever settle here?” There was silence. He felt all alone. The skies were shut against him. Elohim of Abraham and Isaac could not bear to look on any of them. They were all evil and flawed. Not worthy of the blessing. I am no longer Israel, God’s glorious prince, as I had thought, but just Jacob. Sons born of a Jacob can never be anything but a disappointment.
He straightened up and sat back on his heels while he thought about all that had happened and wondered if Elohim would ever speak to him again.
All that night he struggled with the terrible realization that his sons were hopelessly evil. The sons he hoped to present to Isaac as the sons of Elohim’s promise were not worthy of his attention or blessing. He couldn’t see how they would ever be any different, and there were so many of them.
In the stillness of the early morning, after the moon had set and the stars were fading, a wonderful thing happened. A cool spring breeze sprang up and Jacob became aware of the now familiar voice of Elohim speaking to him. “Move on to Bethel now and settle there,” Jacob was told. “Build an altar and worship the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”
As the sun came up, Jacob was no longer confused. It was clear that they must destroy the idols, cleanse themselves, put on fresh clothing, and prepare to journey to Bethel. He must take them all to Bethel, where he had first encountered the God of Abraham and Isaac. At Bethel they would build an altar and repent of the evil each one had harbored openly or secretly.
He thought of all the things that he had ignored just to have peace in his family. He had not disciplined his sons. He had left that to his wives. Worse yet, he had known for some time that Rachel had been the one who had stolen Laban’s idols and then lied about it. She desperately wanted another child, and when his prayers had been of no avail, she had brazenly brought out her little idols and set them up where everyone coming into her tent could see them.
He felt no better, but he knew what they must do. They would go back to Bethel and start over again, this time with Elohim and only Elohim as their God.
The camp was strangely quiet. No one had come to disturb him. He went to the tent door and lifted the flap to let in the morning sun. To his utter amazement, he saw a huge pile of jewelry, trinkets, chests of gold, ornate belts, jeweled swords, and garments of fine Egyptian linen all piled in a heap. It was the loot his sons had gathered from the houses of Shechem.
He knew immediately what must be done. His sons would have to divide up the treasure among the women and send them back to their homes in Shechem. They must not keep one bead or wedge of gold. There must be no benefit from the massacre. How the women would manage in the city without their husbands and fathers, he could not imagine.
He found his sons were too ashamed to face him. Neither did they want to go back to the village and see the devastation they had brought about, but Jacob made them go. They saw the broken wine jugs, the scattered grain, broken grindstones, and torn cushions and mats. Worst of all were the bodies of the men lying just where they had fallen. “You must dig graves for them,” Jacob commanded.
When these things were accomplished, Jacob called them all together. “We can never go back to the innocence of yesterday. We must go on. We must somehow go up to Bethel where I first encountered the God of Abraham and Isaac, but we cannot go as we are. We have found that each of us has failed. Elohim has seen all the evil we have done, even the thoughts that are hidden, and He is not pleased.”
Suddenly there was a shrill cry as Leah covered her face and wept bitterly. Dinah hurried to her mother and tried to comfort her, while her sons one after the other found their eyes stinging with tears. “It is me and my sons, my sons that I was so proud of, and my beautiful daughter who have brought this disgrace to our family. I cannot bear it. It is too much,” Leah wailed, rocking back and forth in her grief.
Jacob was moved as he saw the pride of Leah crumble. She had never thought of herself and her children as being anything but perfect. What a blow it was to her. How difficult to see her dreams of glory crushed by her own children.
He glanced at Rachel and saw that she was astonished to see her sister so humbled. His dear, beautiful Rachel with her one son was the only untarnished part of his family. Joseph would never be guilty of such unbridled cruelty. “Could it be,” he wondered, “that after all I am the guilty one? I have never loved Leah or her children.”