Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #6 in Genesis 35, and we will read Genesis 35:4-8: 

And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place Elbethel: because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother.  But Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried beneath Bethel under an oak: and the name of it was called Allonbachuth.

I will stop reading there.  In our last study, we were discussing the word “hid” in verse 4: “

…and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.”  We also saw that the word “oak” has the same consonants, and is therefore the same word” as “el-aw',”  or “ay-law',” and it is a Hebrew word for “God.” 

As I mentioned last time, the word translated as “oak” is found thirty-one times in the Old Testament, and it is used, overwhelmingly, in a negative way of those that are hiding their sin, like Achan.  He was hiding his idols, and he buried them in the ground.  And it is used in relationship to snares that wicked men set, and we could go to Psalm 140.  I gave you some verses in our last study, but we will look at some more.  It says in Psalm 140:5:

The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net by the wayside; they have set gins for me. Selah.

And it says in Psalm 142:3:

When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.

They laid or hid a snare, and it is always the wicked that are laying snares, and it is of no good purpose; it is to catch the people of God, or even the Lord Jesus Christ, and in some way to destroy.  And that is why I say it is a negative context.

Also, this word is used in Jeremiah 18:22-23:

Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet. Yet, JEHOVAH, thou knowest all their counsel against me to slay me: forgive not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight, but let them be overthrown before thee; deal thus with them in the time of thine anger.

And once more, it is wicked men trying to trap the people of God.

This word is also used in the sense of hiding sin.  It says in Job 31:33:

If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom:

And how did Adam seek to hide his iniquity?  He and his wife covered themselves with fig leaves.  They hid their nakedness, and in the Bible “nakedness” points to exposed sin, and they sought to cover their nakedness, or cover their sin, with the fig leaves.  And we know that God uses the “fig tree” as a type and figure of Israel of old, and as a type and figure of the churches of the New Testament.  So it really was a prefiguring in a historical, parabolic way that man, like Adam, would enter into the nation of Israel and into the congregations in order to use the churches and their doctrines to cover their sins.

And that is exactly what happened as unsaved individuals congregated together to put forth false doctrines (false teachings), like “accepting Christ.”  And what happens if you believe according to their false gospel, and if you “accept Christ” and believe?  Then your sins are covered with a “fig leaf,” just like Adam’s.   Adam used a little fig leaf, but they are using the fig leaf of the corporate churches to do the same thing.

Again, as far as our word search, we are looking at the word “hide,” and “hiding iniquity” is not a good thing, obviously.

Let us look at one more verse in Jeremiah 13 where God told Jeremiah to put on a girdle, and then He told him in Jeremiah 13:4-11:

Take the girdle that thou hast got, which is upon thy loins, and arise, go to Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock. So I went, and hid it by Euphrates, as JEHOVAH commanded me. And it came to pass after many days, that JEHOVAH said unto me, Arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence, which I commanded thee to hide there. Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle from the place where I had hid it: and, behold, the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing. Then the word of JEHOVAH came unto me, saying, Thus saith JEHOVAH, After this manner will I mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem.  This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good for nothing. For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah, saith JEHOVAH; that they might be unto me for a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not hear.

(Notice that they walked after other gods, or idols.)  You see, God told Jeremiah to go hide the girdle, and he hid it.  Then after many days, God told him to go get the girdle, and he dug and took it up, and it was marred, profitable for nothing.  What is the point of this?  That is what we saw with Achan, is it not?  He hid those idols that he coveted in his tent, and covetousness has to do with idolatry, or with worshipping of idols.  It came to light.  He hid them, but it was unearthed, and it was brought before the whole congregation of Israel, and he was stoned to death for his worship of the idols he had coveted.

In the verses that we went to that spoke of wicked men hiding snares, we learned that it comes back to trap themselves.  You see, their sins do not remain hidden.  The thing they have hidden as a snare catches themselves.  And that is the point in Joshua when Rahab the harlot hid the spies – they were only hidden temporarily, and then they left the city.  In other words, when something like this is “hidden,” it does not stay hidden.  It comes to the surface like Jeremiah digging up the girdle.  And did the sin that Adam sought to hide, and do the sins that man attempts to hide before the eyes of the all-seeing God, remain hidden?  No.  People can deceive themselves (and they do), as they think that their faithfulness to their false religion (Buddhism, Islam, the Reformed Church) will hide their sins, but it does not.  Their sins are still open.  The only real covering for sin and the only way of hiding sin is through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Those sins are not hidden or put aside in any kind of temporary manner, but they are put away forever, as far as the east is from the west.  That is what God says, and He will remember the sins of His elect people no more.  Their sins will be cast into the sea, and they will never be seen again.  Let us read that in Micah 7:18-20:

Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.

God will cast our sins into the depths of the sea, and they will be remembered no more.  They are gone from us.  We have been made clean, as white as snow, and we are spiritually cleansed.  All sin is removed.

But not in the case with how our word is used, and this is the problem.  Let us go back to Genesis 35, and I think we can now understand that what is going on here identifies with the entity of national Israel, or the corporate body of the New Testament church.  Yes, God came to Israel again, and again, and they put their idols away.  But historically, it was always “temporary.”  They were repentant and they cried unto God, “O, help deliver us from this oppressive enemy!”  And God would raise up a judge or deliverer, and they would be delivered from that oppression.  And yet not long after that, they would return right back to their idols, or continue to worship in their high places, and so forth.  So I think the Lord is teaching us that this was going to happen, and it was not a permanent ridding of the idols or strange gods.  And this word “hid” does show us that.

We are going to move on in Genesis 35.  As I mentioned a few studies ago, once they did put away their strange gods, it meant that God would come and help them.  So Jacob’s fear of the surrounding nations coming against him and his family (after his sons had done the men of Shechem hurt) did not happen because Jacob called for immediate repentance, calling on them to turn to God and get rid of their strange gods.  It goes on to say in Genesis 35:5:

And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.

Then it goes on to say in Genesis 35:6-7:

So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar…

We have talked about that before.  The altar identifies with the Gospel, and wherever God’s people go, they bring the Gospel, and that is the reason that when we read of the sojourning of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they are building altars.  They travel, and then they build an altar.  Again, it says in Genesis 35:7:

And he built there an altar, and called the place Elbethel…

This is interesting.  We see the word “bethel,” which we know means “house of God,” but the word “El” is also in front of it, so it literally means “God house of God.”  I am not sure why God moved Jacob to call the altar “God house of God.”  Then it says in Genesis 35:7-8:

…because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother. But Deborah Rebekah's nurse died, and she was buried beneath Bethel under an oak: and the name of it was called Allonbachuth.

The word “Allonbachuth” means “oak of weeping.”  Again, “al-lone'” is the word “oak” here, and as I mentioned before, it is Strong’s #437, whereas in verse 4 it is Strong’s #424, which is “ay-law'.”  And our word here is “al-lone',” which is similar, but it has a different ending.  And the last part of this word is “bek-eeth',” which is the word for “weeping,” so it means “oak of weeping.”  And it is very strange that God brings up Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse.  It is very odd because this is the only time she is mentioned by name in the Bible.  The name “Deborah” is found ten times in the Old Testament, and nine of those times it has to do with the prophetess Deborah that we read of in Judges 4 and 5, which is another story.  But this is the only other place we find the word “Deborah,” and we understand that this word is a form of “daw-bar',” the Hebrew word for “word.”  

So “Deborah” means “word,” and she was Rebekah’s nurse.  That is interesting.  Although she was not named, she was actually mentioned back in Genesis 24 when the servant of Abraham went to Haran to find a wife for Isaac.  Sarah had died, and Abraham wanted to find Isaac a wife so that he would be comforted.  And the servant did find a damsel to be Isaac’s wife, which is all a picture of the Gospel because Isaac is a type of Christ, and the servant was sent to find Christ a bride.  What does that sound like?  It sounds like the sending forth of the Gospel to find all that were to become saved, and they became “the bride of Christ.”  It says in Genesis 24:58-59:

And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go. And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham’s servant, and his men.

This was Deborah, but she is not called by name; she is only said to be Rebekah’s nurse.  And the same language is used in Genesis 35:8 where it says, “Deborah Rebekah’s nurse died.”  We do not know how old she was when she left Haran with Rebekah.  We cannot pinpoint her actual age, but we can pinpoint the number of years from when they left Haran to the time when she died.  And we can do that because we know that Sarah died at age 127 in 2030 B. C. , and not long after Abraham sent his servant to Haran to find a wife for Isaac.  The servant found Rebekah and returned, and when he returned Isaac was 40.  So we can understand that Rebekah and her nurse Deborah came out of Haran and traveled some distance during which was probably the same year that Isaac was 40.  We know that Isaac was born in 2067 B. C., and he was 37 years old when his mother died in 2030 B. C.  And Isaac turned 40 in the year 2027 B. C.  So in 2027 B. C. Rebekah’s nurse comes into biblical view, we could say.  And we know that Jacob, Isaac’s father, stayed in Haran for 40 years; he went there when he was 60, and he came out when he was 100.  Although some events had transpired, that would be the latest date we have, so it was very possibly the year 1907 that Jacob was 100 years old, and God had changed his name.  If it was 1907 B. C. (and I believe it was), then we have a timeline for Rebekah’s nurse Deborah.  In 2027 B. C. she left Haran, and in 1907 B. C., she died, and that is a space of 120 years.  That is very interesting!  What could be in view with this woman whose name means “the word” of God?  Deborah, the “word,” dies after 120 years.

Lord willing, we will look into this in our next Bible study.