1. Then God said to Jacob, “Go to Bethel and live there. Make an altar there. I am the God who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.”
2. So Jacob said to his family and those who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods which you have, wash yourselves until you are ritually clean, and change your clothes.
3. Then let’s go to Bethel. I will make an altar there to God, who answered me when I was troubled and who has been with me wherever I’ve gone.”
4. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods that they had in their possession as well as the earrings that they had on. Jacob buried these things under the oak tree near Shechem.
5. As they moved on, God made the people of the cities that were all around them terrified so that no one pursued them.
6. Jacob and all the people who were with him came to Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan.
7. He built an altar there and called that place El Bethel [God of the House of God]. That’s where God had revealed himself to Jacob when he was fleeing from his brother.
8. Rebekah’s nurse Deborah died and was buried under the oak tree outside Bethel. So Jacob called it the Tree of Crying.
9. Then God appeared once more to Jacob after he came back from Paddan Aram, and he blessed him.