Tag: Bethel

January 18, read the Bible in a year; in PowerPoint, with comments.

John 12:1-19 begins the telling of the last week before the Crucifixion. It is important when this happened, so I have inserted a segment on the correct dates for Passover and the Holy week. Jesus was anointed at Bethany, on Sunday and, as prophesied, he rode on an unbroken donkey colt in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Trouble started in Genesis 34. Dinah was violated by an uncircumcised person, two of her brothers executed revenge on not only the violator but every male in the whole town, killing them all. Jacob said: “You have troubled me to make me a stink among the inhabitants of the land.” And so trouble started.

Genesis 35. Jacob returned to Bethel, got rid of all the idols and built an altar. Moving on from Bethel, Rachel gave birth to Benjamin, a birth so hard Rachel died in childbirth. The chapter ends with the death of Isaac.

Genesis 35, The birth of Benjamin and Rachel’s death, Altar at Bethel, Jacob’s sons.

1 John 5:21  Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

 

From Wikipedia:  After an attack on Joseph’s Tomb and its subsequent takeover by Arabs ceded to the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo accord, hundreds of residents of Bethlehem and the Aida refugee camp, led by the Palestinian Authority-appointed governor of Bethlehem, Muhammad Rashad al-Jabari, attacked Rachel’s Tomb. They set the scaffolding that had been erected around it on fire and tried to break in. The IDF dispersed the mob with gunfire and stun grenades, and dozens were wounded. In the following years, the Israeli-controlled site became a flashpoint between young Palestinians who hurled stones, bottles and firebombs and IDF troops, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

At the end of 2000, when the second intifada broke out, the tomb came under attack for 41 days. Fatah operatives and members of the Palestinian security services who were responsible for curbing militant activity against Israelis actively participated in it. In May 2001, fifty Jews found themselves trapped inside by a firefight between the IDF and Palestinian Authority gunmen. In March 2002 the IDF returned to Bethlehem as part of Operation Defensive Shield and remained there for an extended period of time. In September 2002, the tomb was incorporated on the Israeli side of the West Bank barrier and surrounded by a concrete wall and watchtowers.