Jacob Buries the Idols

‎Jacob was sorely upset by the sudden outbreak of his sons at Shechem. His reproof of them is characteristic in its shrewd worldly wisdom. He does not tell them they have done wrong, but that they have roused the country against them, that they will be looked on as a band of robbers, and be slain. About this time there seemed to come upon Jacob a sudden increase of religious devotion, perhaps from his wrestling with the angel, perhaps from his sense of multiplying dangers. To the end of his life, he remembered this outbreak of Simeon and Levi and blamed them bitterly. He also at this time aroused himself to the fact that Rachel and others of his household still worshiped the idols of Laban, and he forbade it firmly.

‎All idolatrous emblems and charms of every sort he took away from his people and buried under an oak tree or grove by the wayside. Then after gathering all his house in an act of solemn worship and acceptance of the One God, he hurried away from Shechem southward to the region of Hebron. Here his father Isaac, grown very old and very feeble, awaited him; and Jacob found some few years of quiet in the “south country.” He and Esau joined hands in laving their father’s body in the family’s one final resting place, the burial cave of Machpelah.