1 God told Jacob, “Return to Bethel, where I appeared to you when you were running from your brother Esau. Make your home there and build an altar for me.”
2 Jacob said to his family and to everyone else who was travelling with him:Get rid of your foreign gods! Then make yourselves acceptable to worship God and put on clean clothes.
3 Afterwards, we'll go to Bethel. I will build an altar there for God, who answered my prayers when I was in trouble and who has always been at my side.
4 So everyone gave Jacob their idols and their earrings, and he buried them under the oak tree near Shechem.
5 While Jacob and his family were travelling through Canaan, God terrified the people in the towns so much that no one dared bother them.
6 Finally, they reached Bethel, also known as Luz.
7 Jacob built an altar there and called it “God of Bethel”, because that was the place where God had appeared to him when he was running from Esau.