Jacob Arrived Whole and Bought Joseph's Future Grave (Genesis 33:12–20)

Whole when he arrived

In Genesis 33:18, arrived safely translates shalem (H8003), whole or complete, with nothing missing, and it comes from the same root as shalom (H7965). At Bethel Jacob had asked that he might "return safely to my father's house" (Genesis 28:21), and the Hebrew there is beshalom, in peace. Twenty years later he came into the land shalem. An English reader sees the word safely and can miss that God's answer used the root of Jacob's own prayer.

Scripture uses the same word for Israel's altars. Moses commanded the people to build an altar on Mount Ebal, the mountain above Shechem, once they had crossed the Jordan: "You shall build the altar of the LORD your God with uncut stones" (Deuteronomy 27:6). Uncut stones are avanim shelemot, whole stones that no iron tool had touched. Solomon later told the people, "let your heart be fully devoted to the LORD our God" (1 Kings 8:61), and fully devoted is shalem again, a whole heart. Jacob had been limping when he passed Penuel at sunrise (Genesis 32:31), and in God's word for it he was whole when he reached Shechem.

The King James Version read the word as the name of a town, Shalem, near Shechem. Most modern translations read it as the state Jacob arrived in, and the echo of the Bethel vow supports them.

Booths at Succoth

Succoth means booths, the rough shelters of branches Jacob built for his flocks, and the first readers of Genesis built the same booths every autumn. The noun is sukkah (H5521) and the town is Sukkot (H5523): Jacob "built a house for himself and shelters for his livestock; that is why the place was called Succoth" (Genesis 33:17). A herdsman who builds a house means to stay for a season, and Jacob built one before he crossed the Jordan.

God later commanded Israel, "You are to dwell in booths for seven days" (Leviticus 23:42), "so that your descendants may know that I made the Israelites dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt" (Leviticus 23:43). Their first camp after Egypt was a different place with the same name: "The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth" (Exodus 12:37). A people who sat in booths each year to remember how God brought them out of slavery heard that their father Jacob built booths on his own way home, after God brought him out of Laban's house.

A hundred pieces of silver

The hundred pieces of silver were a hundred qesitah (H7192), a unit of value so old that Scripture uses it only three times and nobody now knows its weight. The other two are Joshua 24:32, about this same field, and Job 42:11, where each of Job's family and friends brought him one. Abraham had weighed out shekels for his cave at Machpelah (Genesis 23:16); Jacob paid in a unit that belonged to the age of the fathers.

A herdsman camped outside a city wall had no right to the ground his flocks grazed. Buying a plot from the city's ruling family gave Jacob ground of his own in Canaan, only the second piece the family ever owned, and the first had been a grave. The writer of Hebrews said Abraham "lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise" (Hebrews 11:9). Jacob's field was a first piece of that promise, held by a man who still lived in a tent.

The first readers knew what became of this field. Joseph, dying in Egypt, told his brothers, "God will surely attend to you, and then you must carry my bones up from this place" (Genesis 50:25). Generations later his bones "were buried at Shechem in the plot of land that Jacob had purchased from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for a hundred pieces of silver" (Joshua 24:32). The people who first heard this chapter had carried Joseph's coffin out of Egypt and across the wilderness to lay it in the field their father Jacob paid for.

The God of Israel at Shechem

At Shechem, in the days of Joshua, Israel built an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel, renewed the covenant, wrote down what God had said and set up a stone to remember it. "Joshua built an altar on Mount Ebal to the LORD, the God of Israel" (Joshua 8:30), of whole stones. The name was Jacob's: El (H410), the mighty God, joined to Elohim (H430) and to Israel (H3478), the name God gave Jacob at the Jabbok.

At the end of his life Joshua gathered the tribes at Shechem (Joshua 24:1) and began, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says" (Joshua 24:2). Before they went home, "Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was near the sanctuary of the LORD" (Joshua 24:26). The nation stood where their father had stood and called God by the name on his altar. The first readers knew that Jacob's altar at Shechem was the first place in Scripture where anyone called Him the God of Israel, and they called Him that on the same ground.

Known at Shechem

To know God in this chapter is to know Him as the One who finishes what He says, and Jacob answered by putting God's name and his own on one altar. God had called him Israel, and Jacob called God the God of Israel. Centuries later a Samaritan woman told Jesus beside Jacob's well, "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain" (John 4:20), and Jesus answered that "the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him" (John 4:23). The God who met Jacob at Shechem was seeking worshipers there still.

We are the people who remember what God has finished. Write down in the Doxa app what God has finished for you, the way Joshua wrote in the Book of the Law and set up a stone at Shechem, and come back to it when the next promise is still open. The God of Israel who kept His word to Jacob is seeking worshipers still.

This goes with today's Doxa Daily Lift: Jacob Named His Altar 'God, the God of Israel' (Genesis 33:12–20)