Genesis 35:21: One more move, under a new name, past a watchtower nobody can find
Read it →Commentary on Genesis 35:21
Jacob has just buried Rachel near Bethlehem. Now called Israel, he moves on and camps past a shepherd's watchtower. The verse reads like a travel note. Yet commentators find in it a place name the prophets would later make famous, and the setting for a painful family sin.
The name and the place
The tower's name carries a meaning that later Scripture picks up.
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.
A tent, never a house
One writer traces the rest of Jacob's route and notes what is missing from it.
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.
Or a step taken away from Bethel
Commentators differ on how to read this move. Where the last writer saw strength, another reads the departure from Bethel as the reason the sorrows keep arriving.
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.
A grieving man by the tower of the flock
One writer sets Micah's promise for the flock beside Jacob himself, moving slowly past that same tower.
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.
The route run backwards
Jacob's road ran from Bethlehem out to Edar. Another writer points out that prophecy runs the road the other way.
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.
Bethel first, then the flock
The order of Jacob's stops, Bethel first and then Edar, carries a lesson.
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.
What happened while he camped there
The verse is the hinge into the next line of the chapter, and Jacob's silence there is worth weighing.
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.
Summary
- Flock — the name. Migdal Eder means "tower of the flock." It was a shepherds' watchtower just south of Bethlehem. Micah 4:8 uses the same phrase.
- Flock — the tent. From here on Jacob owns no house and no land; his life is tent, altar and pillar, still moving on.
- Flock — the halting. He passes the tower slowly, weighed down by grief. Micah later points to the Shepherd whose sufferings make the blessing possible.
- Flock — the reversal. Jacob travelled from Bethlehem out to Edar. Prophecy runs the road the other way, and the first dominion comes to the tower of the flock.
- Flock — the care. Bethel teaches God's presence. Edar teaches a flock that needs care. Learn Bethel first, then shepherd the flock.
