Isaac and Jacob

his family while destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. Thus, because of the mediating priestly prayers of Abraham, his household was spared from the wrath of God.

The last example of Abraham building an altar occurs when God instructs

Abraham to build an altar for the purpose of offering his own son Isaac as a sacrifice. Not

long after God had fulfilled his covenant promise in granting Abraham offspring (Gen

21:1-3), he was instructed to go to the land of Moriah and offer his son Isaac as a burnt

offering on the mountain of God’s choosing (Gen 22:2, 9). As the narrative goes, after

Abraham built the altar and was about to sacrifice Isaac, God provided a ram to be

sacrificed instead of Isaac (Gen 22:13). This mountain would later become the site for

Solomon’s temple (2 Chr 3:1).

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and, after he had received the Adamic commission “I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake” (Gen 26:24), he “built an altar there and called upon the name of the LORD and pitched his tent there” (Gen 26:25).

God indeed blessed Isaac with offspring: twin sons, Esau and Jacob (Gen 25:24-26).

When Isaac grew old and was nearing his death, he passed his blessing along to Jacob (Gen 27) because Esau, Isaac’s firstborn, had sold Jacob his birthright (Gen 25:29-34). Following the priestly example of his forefathers, Jacob, thus, continued the practice of altar-building. In Genesis 33:20, Jacob came to Shechem, the location where Abraham built his first altar (Gen 12:6-7), and “erected an altar and called it El-Elohe- Israel,” meaning “God the God of Israel.” Shortly after Jacob builds this altar, his

daughter Dinah is sexually defiled (Gen 34:2). Jacob’s sons avenge this wrong-doing and kill the perpetrator (Gen 34:25-26); Jacob responds in anger, fearing retaliation from the Canaanites and the Perizzites (Gen 34:30-31).

In response to Jacob’s predicament, God instructs Jacob to return—or to “go up”—to Bethel (Gen 35:1), the house of God—where he had previously encountered the Lord in a dream (Gen 28:12-15)

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—to build an altar to him there (Gen 35:1, 3). Serving as a priest to his household and to God, Jacob sought to protect the people of his

household from the holiness of God while also preserving the sanctity of the altar he would build. He did this by instructing his household to put away their foreign gods and to purify themselves as they were about to approach Bethel, the house of God and the

54 That dream had served to reaffirm the Adamic commission and promises made with Jacob’s forefathers (Gen 28:12-15; cf. 12:1-3; 22:16-18). After waking from the dream, Jacob was made aware of the presence and power of God; the text reads, “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place!

This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’” (Gen 28:16-17). Still, Jacob is not yet fully committed to the Lord. He sets up a pillar there at Bethel, a practice that is later forbidden as a syncretistic practice associated with Canaanite worship (Deut 16:22), and then he makes a vow with God saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you” (Gen 28:20-22).

abode of his special presence, to set up an altar for him (Gen 35:2). In turn, God protected Jacob and his household during their journey, restraining his assailants from pursuing them (Gen 35:5). Upon reaching Bethel, Jacob obeyed God and built an altar to him (Gen 35:7). God responded to Jacob’s obedience by blessing him, renaming him “Israel,” and reaffirming aspects of the Adamic commission and the promises made to his forefathers (Gen 35:9-12). It is important to note that it was Jacob, and not those in his household, who as a priest had access to the divine presence, who had the right to build an altar to God, and who had the responsibility of guarding those in his household.

Seeking to “expand the borders” through procreation, Jacob carried the cultural mandate further, having twelve sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher (Gen 35:22-26). In the process of time, Joseph’s brothers turned on him and sold him into slavery, eventually resulting in Joseph living in and rising to power in Egypt and the family of Jacob/Israel leaving the land of Canaan to settle in Egypt. After Jacob died and his sons had buried him back in the land of Canaan (Gen 50:13), they returned to Egypt where “the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them” (Exod 1:7). It is significant to observe that no further mention of altar- building is made in the narrative after Jacob builds an altar at Bethel in Canaan in Genesis 35:1-7; that is, the children of Jacob/Israel apparently ceased the practice of altar-building while they were away from the promised land of Canaan and while they lived in the pagan land of Egypt.

The next mention of an altar in the narrative comes many years later after the Lord had delivered Moses and the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt; after the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea and had escaped the wrath of the Egyptian Pharaoh, they faced off with the Amalekites at Rephidim and were, by the power of God,

victorious. To commemorate God’s mercy, Moses erected an altar on the hill/mountain of

Rephidim (Exod 17:15). This “practice of building an altar to commemorate a significant

blessing from God.” began with the patriarchs, and now “Moses was carrying on this

tradition in building the altar at Rephidim to express thanksgiving to God for delivering

the Israelites.”

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Moreover, this “altar at Rephidim is the first altar Moses builds, and as

such it serves as a hint of the importance altars will take on throughout the remainder of

the book [of Exodus] and the Pentateuch.”

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This altar at Rephidim would be the last altar

built by the Israelites until Moses received the law of God at Sinai (Exod 24:4-8).

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