Genesis 35:1-8
‘Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took each man his sword and came upon the city…and slew all the males…. God said to Jacob: “Arise, go up to Beth-El, and dwell there; and make there an altar to God!”… The Jacob said to his household…: “Put away the strange gods that are among you!…. Let us arise, and go up to Beth-El, and I will make there an altar to God!”…. They gave to Jacob all the strange gods…, and Jacob hid them under the oak at Shechem…. And he built…an altar and called the place ‘El Beth-El’…. But Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died. And she was buried beneath Beth-El under an oak”‘ — ‘the oak of weeping.’ Genesis 34:25 & 25:1-8.
Calvin commented: “The violation of one maid (Dinah) was avenged by the horrible massacre of a whole city!… Jacob was then most miserable…. He would be surrounded with…many deaths…. God permitted the holy man to be thus tossed with cares and tormented with troubles, until by a kind of resurrection He restored him as one half-dead…. He had been very greatly perplexed,
when the Lord thus revived him…
“‘Go up to Beth-El!’…. It is God’s design, to raise His servant from death to life…. As he was commanded, he quickly prepared himself for his journey…. He not only collected his goods, but also purified his house from idols…. Jacob did not approve of these superstitions…. It was not owing to him, that the pure worship of God had…gradually been subverted….
“‘They gave unto Jacob (their idols)’…. The hand of God urgd them, and with ready minds they quickly repented…. Jacob…buried the idols under an oak…. God accepted his obedience…, knowing that it was the design of the holy man to remove idols from his family and…to bury them in the earth….
‘He built there an altar’…. To make it manifest, that they did not worship goods of various kinds…. They had a God peculiar to themselves….
“Jacob always adhered to the Word of God…. In calling the name of the place ‘The God of Beth-El’ (‘El Beth-‘El)…, this very title commends the faith of the holy man…. He confines himself within the divinely-prescribed bounds….
‘But Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died’…. Deborah…we may conclude to have been a holy matron…whom the family of Jacob venerated as a mother…. She was buried with peculiar honour, and with no common mourning (at ‘the oak of weeping’)…. It is probable that she was held by all in the place of a grandmother….
“It may be asked, how she then happened to be in Jacob’s company?…. The age of a decrepid old woman (at least 170), rendered her unfit for so long a journey…. Perhaps she had loved Jacob from a boy, because she had nursed him…. She followed him, from her regard for religion.
Thus Deborah’s burial — at ‘the oak of weeping.’
