Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods . . . and earrings—Strange gods, the "seraphim" (compare Genesis 31:30), as well, perhaps, as other idols acquired among the Shechemite spoil—earrings of various forms, sizes, and materials, which are universally worn in the East, and, then as now, connected with incantation and idolatry (compare Hosea 2:13). The decided tone which Jacob now assumed was the probable cause of the alacrity with which those favorite objects of superstition were surrendered.
Jacob hid them under the oak—or terebinth—a towering tree, which, like all others of the kind, was a striking object in the scenery of Palestine; and beneath which, at Shechem, the patriarch had pitched his tent. He hid the images and amulets, delivered to him by his Mesopotamian dependents, at the root of this tree. The oak being deemed a consecrated tree, to bury them at its root was to deposit them in a place where no bold hand would venture to disturb the ground; and hence it was called from this circumstance—"the plain of Meonenim"—that is, "the oak of enchantments" (Judges 9:37); and from the great stone which Joshua set up—"the oak of the pillar" (Judges 9:6).
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Genesis 35:4:
Genesis 35:1
Joshua 24:1
Job 42:11
Ezekiel 21:21
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