Missions Paul

This passage is not just Jacob’s story; it is an invitation to every one of us to recognise that God’s promises do not expire, and that the God who met you even over 20 years ago is ready to meet you again now.

“And God said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. ‘ ” A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will be among your descendants. ¹² The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.” ¹³ Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him. ¹⁴ Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him, and he poured out a drink offering on it; he also poured oil on it. ¹⁵ Jacob called the place where God had talked with him Bethel.” (Genesis 35 v11-15)

Look again at verses 11-12. These are true for you.

You are here to grow. Wherever you are, God is responding to your YES.

Your life reaches beyond your life. What God has started in you won’t end when you leave this earth. Your legacy will continue beyond you.

You will receive what others have sown. It is not only that others will benefit from you, but that you can still reap where the previous generations have sown.

You may not think these promises apply to you because no one knows you better than yourself!

But God does not rule out these blessings for Jacob despite the way he lived his life of deception.

Jacob’s response may seem rather strange to us in 2026. But this is worship in ancient form and a recognition that God was here. Jacob named that place Bethel, ‘the house of God’.

Hold on!

Wasn’t it already called Bethel? Yes, Jacob had named it Bethel around 20-25 years previously. There are moments when we need to rededicate our lives to being the house of God.

Perhaps you remember the Bethels in your life, and God may be waiting to meet you again. Even 20-25 years later!

What do you call yourself when no one is listening? What words come to mind when you look at your own life, your failures, your patterns, the things you can’t seem to shake off? What do you see when you look in the mirror? For many of us, the names we carry are heavier than we let on.

Jacob knew something about that. God had given him a new name at the Jabbok River. He would be renamed Israel.

But God comes again and reiterates the message that he is no longer to be called Jacob but Israel.

“After Jacob returned from Paddan Aram,God appeared to him again and blessed him. ¹⁰ God said to him, “Your name is Jacob,but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.” So he named him Israel.” (Genesis 35 v 9-10)

Again.

God had renamed Jacob back in chapter 32 after the wrestling match! But sometimes we need to hear things more than once.

God, in His grace, appears again and says the same thing: You are Israel, not Jacob.

The New Testament picks up this thread in striking ways. Jesus renames Simon as Peter, the rock. Paul (formerly Saul) carries a transformed identity into his apostolic calling. Revelation promises that the one who overcomes will receive “a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it” (Rev. 2:17).

The principle is this: God sees through any name given by some assessment of you. He speaks a greater name over you, which is based not on what you are doing but on what He is doing.

Maybe when you look at yourself, when you look over your life, then words to describe you are more destructive than life-giving.

God’s word to you is this: “That name will no longer call you.”

A single verse, that’s all we have to read today.

It’s about a nurse who dies.

She was buried under a tree.

Unassuming perhaps, but God made sure it was written down.

“Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak outside Bethel. So it was named Allon Bakuth.” (Genesis 35 v 8)

The Bible didn’t need to record her death. In Genesis 24 we first read of her when she went with Rebekah after marrying Isaac. Deborah was there for Rebekah in the silent, long years of barrenness, at the twins’ birth, and during the family strife; she remained by her mistress’s side.

By the time we reach this verse, Rebekah has probably died, and Deborah is Jacob’s final link to a past life. He named her burial plot, ‘the oak of weeping’. A woman we had largely forgotten, who is definitely not a major character in the Bible story, has been given her own tree, a named memorial. She is mentioned in Scripture, given a monument, yet never the central figure of any Bible story.

God always remembers the marginalised.

This verse sits here as a reminder that God remembers the small stories. That love for a minority person, a weeping for the unassuming, is never beneath the notice of God.

You are seen. You are known. You will be remembered. God knows you. This is perhaps the heart of the gospel in abbreviated form.

Most of us know what it feels like to have been somewhere with God that we are no longer at. Life moves on, and we can find ourselves far from where we once were. This is exactly where Jacob found himself. And it is exactly where God met him.

“Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.” ² So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. ³ Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.” ⁴ So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem. ⁵ Then they set out, and the terror of God fell on the towns all around them so that no one pursued them. ⁶ Jacob and all the people with him came to Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan. ⁷ There he built an altar, and he called the place El Bethel,because it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.” (Genesis 35:1-7)

Were you closer to God in the past than you are today? Things have happened, and compromise can easily settle in. You may have drifted from where you once were.

Jacob was not perfect when God called him. He had failed his daughter. He had failed God. His family were not close to God. Yet God graciously called him back.

God doesn’t wait for you to be acceptable before He comes to you. He always takes the initiative. Before Jacob had tidied everything up, God demonstrated his love.

What needs to be got rid of? We cannot carry our idols to Bethel. We have to bury them.

Then build an altar. Jacob’s return was not to a place, it was to a Person. Genuine return to God expresses itself in genuine, deliberate worship, not as performance, but as the natural overflow of a heart that has found again what it has been missing.

Wherever you are, whether you are close to Bethel or you have drifted a long way off, the same God who called Jacob is calling you. He is the God who answered in the day of distress. He is El Bethel, the God who reveals himself.

He says to you today, “Go up to Bethel. Settle there. Build an altar.”

Come, let us go up.

What do you do when the cause is righteous, and the action is atrocity? When the perpetrator faces zero consequences, and the only available justice is violent? Questions that every generation of this world has faced, and which emerge from Genesis 34.

Whereas the first part of the chapter leaves us angry, the second leaves us confused as well as angry. Why is God so silent? Jacob was a deceiver, but his sons went further in deceiving the entire city of Shechem. They kill every man in the city as they recover from being circumcised, steal from their homes and take their women and children. The revenge for the rape of their sister, Dinah, sits at one end of the extreme and at the other sits her father Jacob, who seems only worried about reputational damage to himself. The reply from his sons is a question left unanswered; it just sits there, lingering for a few millennia.

“Their proposal seemed good to Hamor and his son Shechem. ¹⁹ The young man, who was the most honoured of all his father’s family, lost no time in doing what they said, because he was delighted with Jacob’s daughter. ²⁰ So Hamor and his son Shechem went to the gate of their city to speak to the men of their city. ²¹ “These men are friendly toward us,” they said. “Let them live in our land and trade in it; the land has plenty of room for them. We can marry their daughters and they can marry ours. ²² But the men will agree to live with us as one people only on the condition that our males be circumcised, as they themselves are. ²³ Won’t their livestock, their property and all their other animals become ours? So let us agree to their terms, and they will settle among us.” ²⁴ All the men who went out of the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male in the city was circumcised. ²⁵ Three days later, while all of them were still in pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and attacked the unsuspecting city, killing every male. ²⁶ They put Hamor and his son Shechem to the sword and took Dinah from Shechem’s house and left. ²⁷ The sons of Jacob came upon the dead bodies and looted the city wheretheir sister had been defiled. ²⁸ They seized their flocks and herds and donkeys and everything else of theirs in the city and out in the fields. ²⁹ They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses. ³⁰ Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.” ³¹ But they replied, “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?” (Genesis 34 v 18-31)

The story is abhorrent. The argument over the heavy revenge from the brothers and the selfish response from Jacob drowns out the voice of the silence of Dinah and the male population of Shechem and the enslaved women and children, who were innocent of her rape.

The chapter ends with an unanswered question. It’s like a case study. The truth is, the situation of collateral damage is continually played out throughout history. In the Russia–Ukraine war, already over 3,000 children have died according to the UN, but it agrees that the number is likely to be far higher. On February 28^th in the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran, 168 girls were killed by a strike on a military compound nearby that went terribly wrong, a ‘rogue strike’—filed under collateral damage. But 168 girls are gone. At least 36,000 Iranian protesters during the January 8-9^th nationwide protests never came home, killed by their own security forces. Such reports are in everyone’s historical experience, and all are invited into the silence of the unanswered question of v. 31.

God does not appear to condemn the massacre at Shechem or vindicate it. The chapter ends with an unanswered question. The writer leaves us with a father anxious about the retribution caused by his sons, who reduce justice to revenge. The unanswered question follows the actions, which carry their own unanswered question, which should be given over the lifeless bodies of the innocents: Should a righteous cause automatically sanctify every action taken in its name? The story doesn’t give us an answer, but it refuses to let us look away from the question.

In a story where Shechem faced zero consequences for being a rapist. His father was trying to benefit economically from this violation. Dinah’s father says nothing about the atrocity to her. So her brothers believed that the only justice for being violated was violent justice, to take matters into their own hands and become the judge of the story. We are left hanging, questioning who was right and who was wrong. The Bible doesn’t help us. The story is written with uncomfortable precision. Who is right and who is wrong? God knows is our answer.

Gloss over this story, or even worse, jump the chapter, and you miss what God wants to show us. It is one of the most disturbing of passages that the Bible records. Her name is removed, her voice silenced, and men negotiate what happens to her. But the reader doesn’t forget. Dinah is there throughout, in every verse, silent, unseen, but there. The mighty and powerful may think they are the centre of the story, but they are not. This is Dinah’s story, and we do well to read it as such.

“Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. ² When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her. ³ His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob; he loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. ⁴ And Shechem said to his father Hamor, “Get me this girl as my wife.” ⁵ When Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled, his sons were in the fields with his livestock; so he did nothing about it until they came home. ⁶ Then Shechem’s father Hamor went out to talk with Jacob. ⁷ Meanwhile, Jacob’s sons had come in from the fields as soon as they heard what had happened. They were shocked and furious, because Shechem had done an outrageous thing in Israel by sleeping with Jacob’s daughter—a thing that should not be done. ⁸ But Hamor said to them, “My son Shechem has his heart set on your daughter. Please give her to him as his wife. ⁹ Intermarry with us; give us your daughters and take our daughters for yourselves. ¹⁰ You can settle among us; the land is open to you. Live in it, tradein it, and acquire property in it.” ¹¹ Then Shechem said to Dinah’s father and brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and I will give you whatever you ask. ¹² Make the price for the bride and the gift I am to bring as great as you like, and I’ll pay whatever you ask me. Only give me the young woman as my wife.” ¹³ Because their sister Dinah had been defiled, Jacob’s sons replied deceitfully as they spoke to Shechem and his father Hamor. ¹⁴ They said to them, “We can’t do such a thing; we can’t give our sister to a man who is not circumcised. That would be a disgrace to us. ¹⁵ We will enter into an agreement with you on one condition only: that you become like us by circumcising all your males. ¹⁶ Then we will give you our daughters and take your daughters for ourselves. We’ll settle among you and become one people with you. ¹⁷ But if you will not agree to be circumcised, we’ll take our sister and go.” (Genesis 34: 1-17)

The first verse and yesterday’s blog were nice, and what follows isn’t. We have a name: Dinah. We know she is a daughter, her mother being Leah, Jacob’s first wife. We know what she does and where she goes. Then, after that short opening, everything changes, and she is in the hands of men, and we can only try to imagine her feelings.

She becomes a woman without a voice.

She is raped, and then, incredulously, Shechem, the one who violated her, declares his love for her. His father starts negotiating with her father, Jacob, and she is there, seemingly as some product to be purchased. Dowries, circumcision, land rights and intermarriage, but not one word from Dinah. This evil is played out around the world today. The voice of the people has been taken from them. They are collateral. Their voices are silent, though they weep. There is no room for them. They cry, but no one is paying attention.

But this is her story, and that is the point.

Even though her brothers are furious and need to protect and avenge what has happened to her, it is for the cause of ‘Israel’ which is of most importance. She is the wound, not the wounded; the focus is on Israel, the one who has been hurt.

Don’t be fooled by Shechem’s words. The shocking and chilling words of an abuser are still with us in this world. Those who abuse wickedly confuse their evil actions as love. This is not love. Even if his culture at the time suggested so.

This is a story of the powerless, the hidden and the voiceless. We must read it with the full knowledge that Dinah is there. Her words are missing, but she isn’t.

The role of the Church and for you and me today is to speak for those who have been silenced. To make sure the world knows they are still there, grieving, wounded and voiceless.

Dinah just wanted to meet her neighbours. It led to one of the most disturbing stories in the Bible.

“Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land.” (Genesis 34 v 1)

Jacob had other daughters, but Dinah is the only one mentioned in the Bible.

This chapter is certificate 18 for sure. But before we get into it, there are questions from the first verse.

Did Dinah simply want to meet other local women from the community?

Or was she stepping outside of her cultural boundaries, and so we are introduced to the tension between Israel’s family and the culture they were living in?

Did Dinah want more connection than what she was getting within her own family? There was nothing wrong with that.

Without attaching any blame to her for what was to happen, we start with Dinah’s curiosity at least and a desire for cultural engagement. She wants to meet people who live nearby, even though they are very different to her.

Don’t we all want that?

In our current world state of increasing misogyny, the description which will be known for years of the Epstein files to label serious wicked behaviour by the rich and powerful, this story could be written for our modern world.

Sometimes the most ordinary moments in life become the starting point of the most profound lessons.

The first verse reminds us that curiosity, connection, and reaching beyond familiar boundaries are natural and valuable impulses. Even in a world marked by injustice and wrongdoing, ordinary moments like Dinah’s desire to engage with her neighbours show that this need has been universal since time began.

You can copy a lot of things. You can ask AI to write and do many things in a fraction of the time that it used to take you. But the limp given by God, whatever form that takes, cannot be earned nor received through shortcuts.

“After Jacob came from Paddan Aram,he arrived safely at the city of Shechem in Canaan and camped within sight of the city. ¹⁹ For a hundred pieces of silver,he bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, the plot of ground where he pitched his tent. ²⁰ There he set up an altar and called it El Elohe Israel.” (Genesis 33 v 18-20)

Jacob does not arrive at just any place. He arrives at Shechem, the place where the promises were first spoken over the land. Jacob’s arrival at Shechem is no coincidence. God has brought him back to the very place where it all began.

He is not running anymore. Jacob’s purchase is a declaration: I am here. I belong here.

He doesn’t say “El Elohe Abraham”, not borrowing his grandfather’s relationship with God. He doesn’t say “El Elohe Isaac”, not sheltering under his father’s faith. He says El Elohe Israel. This is not the nation; this is his new name.  At some point, every person must move from “the God my parents knew” to “my God.” Jacob has crossed that threshold.

The name “Israel” was not given at a comfortable moment. It was given in the dark, in a struggle, at the cost of Jacob’s hip socket. The wound and the blessing are not opposites. They come together. And the altar names them both.

Jacob camped within sight of Shechem, and it is within sight of the city that he builds the altar. Faith, when it is real, cannot remain entirely private.

The altar is not built in the easy seasons. It is built on the far side of Jabbok, after the wrestling which led to the wound and a new name. The limp is not the defeat; it is the proof, and the altar stands as a testimony to that.

Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is stop, rest, and build a shelter before moving on. Taking care of you is an important season.

“So that day Esau started on his way back to Seir. ¹⁷ Jacob, however, went to Sukkoth, where he built a place for himself and made shelters for his livestock. That is why the place is called Sukkoth.” (Genesis 33 v 16-17)

Esau had wanted to accompany Jacob to bring him to his home. When Jacob refused, he wanted to leave some men behind to accompany him, but he refused again. Many have speculated on why Jacob said he would go to Seir but didn’t. Was this another deception? We don’t know. What we do know is that Jacob decided not to go home straight away.

There are seasons when getting to the next chapter or destination is not the most important thing. Whatever Sukkoth is for you, it is necessary. We all need to find a place to rest and not simply rush into the next chapter. Especially if you now walk with a limp and you have livestock to take care of.

Perhaps today is a season which is demanding you stop and take shelter. It’s not your forever place, but it is a place for today. You need to rest.

Maybe you have to stop and build a shelter for yourself, and you have to be responsible for just that. Maybe finding time for you is what is important for this season, for now.

May you find your Sukkoth – a place for you.

Jacob’s entire life was defined by taking through deception: a birthright, a blessing, the best of Laban’s flock. He was a man who secured his own future with his own hands, at the expense of others. But he then had an encounter with God. He came away with a limp, a new name and a life that was changing. We are now reading as he meets Esau, the brother he wronged so badly, and he is receiving grace, not punishment. This encounter is full of the experience and effects of an encounter with God.

“Then Esau looked up and saw the women and children. “Who are these with you?” he asked. Jacob answered, “They are the children God has graciously given your servant.” ⁶ Then the female servants and their children approached and bowed down. ⁷ Next, Leah and her children came and bowed down. Last of all came Joseph and Rachel, and they too bowed down. ⁸ Esau asked, “What’s the meaning of all these flocks and herds I met?” “To find favour in your eyes, my lord,” he said. ⁹ But Esau said, “I already have plenty, my brother. Keep what you have for yourself.” ¹⁰ “No, please!” said Jacob. “If I have found favour in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favourably. ¹¹ Please accept the present that was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me and I have all I need.” And because Jacob insisted, Esau accepted it. ¹² Then Esau said, “Let us be on our way; I’ll accompany you.” ¹³ But Jacob said to him, “My lord knows that the children are tender and that I must care for the ewes and cows that are nursing their young. If they are driven hard just one day, all the animals will die. ¹⁴ So let my lord go on ahead of his servant, while I move along slowly at the pace of the flocks and herds before me and the pace of the children, until I come to my lord in Seir.” ¹⁵ Esau said, “Then let me leave some of my men with you.” “But why do that?” Jacob asked. “Just let me find favour in the eyes of my lord.” ¹⁶ So that day Esau started on his way back to Seir. ¹⁷ Jacob, however, went to Sukkoth, where he built a place for himself and made shelters for his livestock. That is why the place is called Sukkoth.” (Genesis 33 v 5-17)

You know this is a God-moment because of the generosity (v8-10).

Jesus said, “he who has been forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47). The one who has been forgiven much loves much. It’s spoken over the woman who washed his feet with her tears while the self-righteous Pharisee looked on unmoved.

Jacob is not a man who has been forgiven little.

God and now Esau have shown lavish generosity to him, and now Jacob, knowing he has been forgiven much, offers enormous generosity.

The depth of the giving mirrors the depth of the debt he knew he owed.

You know this is a God-moment because of the forgiveness that is flowing (v10-11).

Jacob uses the same language he used in his meeting with Esau as he did in his encounter with God at Peniel. In both encounters, he receives unearned mercy and forgiveness. Forgiveness from another human being, freely given when it wasn’t owed, can be one of the clearest glimpses of God we ever receive.

You know this is a God-moment when the most vulnerable become important (v13-15).

Jacob sends Esau’s escort home and travels slowly, pacing himself by what the weakest among them can bear. The man who spent his life grasping for advantage now organises his entire journey around those who cannot keep up. This is what a changed life looks like – the speed of life as slowed down to accommodate the most vulnerable.

You’ll know it’s God at work in a life, including yours, when taking gives way to giving, when enemies become glimpses of grace, and when the vulnerable finally get to set the pace.