Genesis 35:1-2

Here are these biblical verses from The New American Bible: "God said to Jacob: Go up now to Bethel. Settle there and build an altar there to the God that appeared to you while you were fleeing from your brother Esau. So Jacob told his family and all the others who were with him: 'Get rid of the foreign gods that you have among you; then purify yourselves and put on fresh clothes.'"

I wish to react to the concept of Yahweh as a jealous God that would not brook coexistence with and the co-worshiping of foreign gods, household gods and pagan divinities. I do not think Yahweh was jealous so much as seeking to make the Hebrews his chosen people. Pagan worshipers were fatalistic, earth-centered, primitive, and absorbed by nature religions of the day.

If Yahweh could convert these lapsing Hebrews to worship monotheistically a father sky deity (himself), that would be a modernizing miracle from prehistory into history where humans mastered and made a living off of nature, rather than being utterly immersed in nature. This would be the start of the idea of the sovereign individual, and the rise of reason and Western civilization.

A cultural relativist would argue that Yahweh the monotheistic deity would not stomach any rival cult for reasons of power, territory, and reach. The monotheistic Hebrews like Jacob could not allow the introduced foreign gods to be worshiped in the same household at the same time as people worshiped Yahweh.

Yahweh was less the jealous father than the stern but loving taskmaster, nudging and pushing his barbaric, tribal chosen people to adopt an absolute morality, to serve and love a good God, and come up with a grand narrative culturally that would grow to dominate the Western world. I am glad that Yahweh was a jealous God, or the West may never have been born.

Here are these verses from the Holy Bible (KJV): "And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother. Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean and change thy garments."

Note that the pagan gods were considered by Moses to be foreign gods adopted by the Hebrews. From the beginning the Hebrews were different from their neighbors.