What were the foreign gods Jacob's household buried at Shechem?

Before Jacob's household could go up to Bethel, it had to be cleaned out. Genesis 35:2-4 records the purge — and what gets buried is more than generic "idols."

The command Jacob gives

Jacob issues three imperatives to his household: put away the foreign gods (elohei ha-nekar, with nekar, H5236, meaning "foreignness"), purify yourselves, and change your garments (Genesis 35:2). The middle command is the most pointed — the word for "purify" is in a reflexive form that puts the action on the people themselves: they are to act on their own hearts, not just hand over objects. The sequence is the standard preparation for encountering God — the same triad appears before the Sinai theophany, where Israel must wash clothes before God descends (Exodus 19:10).

What those gods probably were

The text calls them elohei ha-nekar, "gods of the foreignness," without identifying them precisely. But the earlier narrative has already named the most likely candidates: the teraphim — household gods, probably small figurines — that Rachel had stolen from her father Laban on the flight from Haran and hidden in her camel's saddle (Genesis 31:19, 31:34). Jacob didn't even know she had them. These objects had traveled with the family the entire time Jacob was building his household, without his knowledge. The command in Genesis 35:2 now reaches them.

What they gave over

"And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem." — Genesis 35:4

The earrings are notable — in the ancient world, jewelry was often associated with amulets and protective charms. They go into the ground along with the idols. And the location carries its own weight: this is Shechem, the same site where the massacre of Genesis 34 had just happened, and the same kind of tree under which Joshua would later set the stone of his own covenant renewal (Joshua 24:26). Jacob buries the household gods at Shechem; Joshua enacts covenant renewal at Shechem. The same soil receives both acts.

A formula that runs across the canon

What Jacob does here — hasiru et-elohei ha-nekar, "remove the gods of the foreignness" — becomes a repeating formula. The exact two-root combination (sur + nekar) appears in exactly six verses across the whole canon, and every one is a moment of covenant renewal or national repentance:

• Joshua commands it at Shechem (Joshua 24:23) — the same site as Jacob's burial
• Israel does it before deliverance from the Ammonites (Judges 10:16)
• Samuel requires it before God delivers Israel from the Philistines (1 Samuel 7:3)
• King Asa enacts the royal version, removing foreign altars (2 Chronicles 14:3)
• Even Manasseh, the worst of the kings, finally removes the gods of foreignness from the temple after his captivity (2 Chronicles 33:15)

Genesis 35:2 is the template. Every later instance of the formula reaches back to Jacob's purge before Bethel. The principle it establishes is simple: before renewal, purity; before presence, purge.

The full study traces the six-verse pattern across the canon in The Return to Bethel.