Genesis 35:21

This occurs only in Genesis 35:21, and means "Tower of the flock." It was probably a tower the shepherds built to protect their flocks. It seems to have stood a little south of Bethlehem. Jacob halted there with his flocks. The expression "tower of the flock" occurs in Micah 4:8 (Edar in the margin) as the stronghold of the daughter of Zion.

Then, in the freedom and strength of all this, our patriarch resumes his journey. He goes from Bethel to Bethlehem, and from there, by the tower of Edar, to Mamre, in the south country, where his father Isaac was living. But in none of these places do we read of house or land again. It is the tent, the altar and the pillar. He keeps journeying on. He buries his aged father. At last, as one with his fathers, he lives in the land where they had lived before him. See Genesis 37:1.

But now, although he has grasped the Lord's teaching, he is not brought into exact obedience to His word. The Lord had told him to live at Bethel; instead we find that, after a little, he journeyed away from there; and so fresh discipline awaits him. Now he must suffer the trial of his affections... He buried the one he loved in the place where Christ, the real balm for every bereaved heart, was to be born. Bethel is the house of God, the place where God had appeared to him and told him to live. If he leaves it, he is taught that there is nothing but a desolate path outside. The clouds gather round his path.

So brightly Micah (Micah 4) prophesied of the flock of Israel. In the next chapter he prophesies of the Shepherd, and only through His sufferings could such blessing and glory come. Meanwhile Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, moved slowly, limping under a grief he felt deeply. He had known both being driven out and being afflicted.

But at that time they will not go from Bethlehem to Edar. They will go from Edar to Bethlehem (Micah 4:8; Micah 5:2). And the first dominion will come to the Tower of the flock, the strength of the daughter of Zion, the daughter of Jerusalem.

He journeys further, still with his tent, but called Israel, toward Edar, meaning "a flock" (v. 21). Bethel shows the character of the church as the house of God. It stresses God's own presence living with His people. The flock, on the other hand, speaks of the church as a dependent company, constantly in need of care (Acts 20:28). First we learn the sweetness of God's presence in His house. Then, in practical daily life, we are ready to join the saints in encouraging them by shepherding and feeding them.

In this area the sad sin of Reuben is recorded: he violated his father's concubine. We are told only this: "And Israel heard of it." He makes no angry reply. He has learned to submit himself to God, though Genesis 49:3-4 shows us he felt it deeply. In his firstborn Jacob now sees the unstable, untrustworthy character of the flesh, the same flesh that had surfaced in himself in a different way.