Genesis 35:14 Daily Devotional & Meaning – Jacob Set Up a Pillar at Bethel
Daily Verses Everyday! Day 230
“And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon.”
“And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon.” Jacob’s response to God is immediate and tangible. God had appeared to him, God had spoken to him, God had reaffirmed his new name, God had repeated the promise of nations and kings, and God had once again confirmed that the land promised to Abraham and Isaac would belong to Jacob and his descendants. Then, after God “went up from him,” Jacob did not simply walk away from the place as though nothing had happened. He set up a pillar. He poured out a drink offering. He poured oil upon the stone. Jacob understood that when God speaks, the proper response is worship.
This pillar was not an idol. Jacob was not worshipping the stone itself. The stone was a memorial, a visible marker of an invisible reality. Something had happened there that Jacob never wanted to forget. God had spoken to him in that place. The physical pillar served as a reminder of the faithfulness of God and of the covenant words that had been spoken. Throughout Scripture, God’s people repeatedly established memorials after significant acts of divine intervention, not because the object itself possessed power, but because human beings are prone to forget.
Joshua would later do something very similar after Israel crossed the Jordan River. Joshua 4:6-7 says, “That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.” The stones were intended to provoke remembrance. Children would see them and ask questions. Parents would then recount the faithfulness of God.
Jacob’s pillar served much the same purpose. Every time he thought of Bethel, there would be a place associated with the memory of God’s voice. The stone could not speak, yet it testified to the fact that God had spoken.
This is not the first time Jacob has erected a pillar at Bethel. In fact, the scene intentionally reaches backward to one of the most important moments of his life. When Jacob first fled from Esau many years earlier, he slept at Bethel and dreamed of the ladder reaching from earth to heaven. After awakening, Genesis 28:18 says, “And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.” The similarity is unmistakable. In Genesis 28 Jacob set up a stone and poured oil upon it. In Genesis 35 he again sets up a pillar and pours oil upon it.
But Jacob is not the same man.
The first pillar was raised by a frightened fugitive beginning a journey into the unknown. The second pillar is raised by a man whom God has preserved through decades of hardship and brought back to the place where the promise began. At the first pillar Jacob had almost nothing. He was alone, fleeing his brother, carrying little more than what he could take with him. At the second pillar he returns with wives, children, servants, flocks, possessions, and an entire household. Everything surrounding Jacob now testifies that God kept His word.
At the first Bethel encounter God had said in Genesis 28:15, “And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land.” Now Jacob is standing in that land.
The pillar therefore becomes more than a memorial of what God has just said. It is also a monument to what God has already done.
There are moments in our own lives when we should stop and look backward long enough to recognize this. We often spend so much time asking God for the next thing that we fail to notice how many previous prayers are standing around us as answered prayers. We remember the fear we are facing today more clearly than the fears God already brought us through. Jacob could look back at the frightened man sleeping with his head on a stone and realize that the God who promised to accompany him had done exactly what He said.
Psalm 77:11 says, “I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old.” Psalm 105:5 likewise commands, “Remember his marvellous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth.”
Remembrance is an important part of worship because remembrance produces gratitude.
When we forget what God has done, we begin to act as though we have survived by our own strength. When we remember, pride is replaced by thanksgiving.
Jacob knew better than most that his life could not be explained entirely by his own ability. He had made mistakes. He had been deceived. He had feared for his life. He had wrestled through difficult relationships. He had faced Laban. He had feared Esau. He had experienced turmoil within his own household. Yet through all of it God had remained faithful.
The pillar said, in effect, “I remember.”
But Jacob did more than erect a stone. Genesis 35:14 tells us, “and he poured a drink offering thereon.” This is the first explicit mention of a drink offering in Scripture, and it is a beautiful act of worship. Jacob pours something valuable out before God. The offering is not being preserved for Jacob’s own benefit. Once poured upon the altar or pillar, it cannot be reclaimed. It is given entirely.
That image becomes deeply significant throughout the remainder of Scripture. Under the Mosaic law, drink offerings would accompany sacrifices to God. Numbers 15:5 says, “And the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering shalt thou prepare with the burnt offering or sacrifice.” The drink offering became part of Israel’s worship, a pouring out before the LORD.
Centuries later, the apostle Paul would use this very imagery to describe his own life of service. Philippians 2:17 says, “Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all.” Near the end of his life Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4:6, “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.” The language carries the idea of being poured out as an offering.
That is what true devotion eventually becomes.
We should not merely ask what God can give us. We must ask what we are willing to pour out before Him.
Jacob had received tremendous blessings, yet at Bethel he pours something back out. His worship costs him something. David later expresses this principle powerfully in 2 Samuel 24:24 when he says, “Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing.” Worship that never costs us time, effort, comfort, possessions, pride, or obedience can easily become shallow.
Romans 12:1 carries this principle into the Christian life when Paul writes, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” God does not merely ask for isolated religious acts. He calls for the whole life to be laid before Him.
Jacob pours out a drink offering upon the pillar, and we are called to pour out ourselves.
Our time belongs to God. Our strength belongs to God. Our gifts belong to God. Our money belongs to God. Our future belongs to God. Our plans belong to God. Our relationships belong to God. Our successes belong to God. Even our suffering can be surrendered to God.
Nothing is truly wasted when it is poured out for Him.
Jesus demonstrated this principle perfectly. His entire earthly life was one of complete obedience to the Father. In John 6:38 He says, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” At Gethsemane, facing the cross, He prayed in Luke 22:42, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” Christ did not give God part of Himself. He submitted completely.
The drink offering at Bethel therefore presents an image that will echo throughout Scripture: worship involves pouring something out.
Jacob also “poured oil thereon.” Again, this directly recalls Genesis 28:18, when Jacob first poured oil upon the stone at Bethel. Oil throughout Scripture frequently carries associations of consecration, holiness, appointment, and dedication to God. Priests were anointed with oil. Kings were anointed with oil. Sacred objects associated with the tabernacle were consecrated for God’s purposes.
Exodus 30:30 says, “And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may minister unto me in the priest’s office.” First Samuel 16:13 tells us, “Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward.”
To pour oil upon something was to mark it as set apart.
Jacob is therefore declaring that this place belongs uniquely to the memory and worship of God.
There is a lesson here about consecration in our own lives. Christians are not called merely to believe that God exists. We are called to belong to Him. First Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
Those words confront one of the great temptations of human nature: we want God’s blessing without God’s ownership.
We are comfortable asking Him to protect our family, bless our work, guide our future, provide our needs, forgive our sins, and give us peace. But if He is truly Lord, then everything we ask Him to bless must first be acknowledged as His.
Jacob pours oil on the pillar because it is being dedicated to God.
Likewise, our lives must be consecrated to Him.
Our homes should belong to Him. Our marriages should belong to Him. Our children should belong to Him. Our careers should belong to Him. Our writing should belong to Him. Our ambitions should belong to Him. Our possessions should belong to Him. Whatever God has entrusted to us should ultimately be returned to Him in service and worship.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” The order matters. God is not one part of life among many competing parts. He is first.
Jacob’s actions at Bethel also reveal that genuine encounters with God ought to produce visible consequences. Jacob had heard God speak, and now Jacob does something. His worship does not remain confined to emotion.
Throughout Scripture, revelation demands response.
When Abraham heard God’s call in Genesis 12:1, he departed.
When Noah received God’s instructions concerning the ark, Genesis 6:22 says, “Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.”
When Moses encountered God at the burning bush, he eventually returned to Egypt.
When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, Isaiah 6:8 records his response: “Here am I; send me.”
When the disciples heard Jesus say, “Follow me,” Matthew 4:20 says, “And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.”
It should concern us if we can repeatedly encounter the truth of Scripture and remain completely unchanged.
James 1:22 warns, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”
Jacob does not merely hear. Jacob builds. Jacob pours. Jacob worships.
There is also something deeply personal in the repeated phrase, “the place where he talked with him.” The Holy Spirit could simply have said that Jacob set up a pillar at Bethel, yet instead Scripture emphasizes the conversation. This was the place “where he talked with him.”
Jacob remembers not merely the miracle but the words.
That is important because faith ultimately depends upon what God has said.
“And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon.” Jacob’s response to God is immediate and tangible. God had appeared to him, God had spoken to him, God had reaffirmed his new name, God had repeated the promise of nations and kings, and God had once again confirmed that the land promised to Abraham and Isaac would belong to Jacob and his descendants. Then, after God “went up from him,” Jacob did not simply walk away from the place as though nothing had happened. He set up a pillar. He poured out a drink offering. He poured oil upon the stone. Jacob understood that when God speaks, the proper response is worship.
This pillar was not an idol. Jacob was not worshipping the stone itself. The stone was a memorial, a visible marker of an invisible reality. Something had happened there that Jacob never wanted to forget. God had spoken to him in that place. The physical pillar served as a reminder of the faithfulness of God and of the covenant words that had been spoken. Throughout Scripture, God’s people repeatedly established memorials after significant acts of divine intervention, not because the object itself possessed power, but because human beings are prone to forget.
Joshua would later do something very similar after Israel crossed the Jordan River. Joshua 4:6-7 says, “That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.” The stones were intended to provoke remembrance. Children would see them and ask questions. Parents would then recount the faithfulness of God.
Jacob’s pillar served much the same purpose. Every time he thought of Bethel, there would be a place associated with the memory of God’s voice. The stone could not speak, yet it testified to the fact that God had spoken.
This is not the first time Jacob has erected a pillar at Bethel. In fact, the scene intentionally reaches backward to one of the most important moments of his life. When Jacob first fled from Esau many years earlier, he slept at Bethel and dreamed of the ladder reaching from earth to heaven. After awakening, Genesis 28:18 says, “And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.” The similarity is unmistakable. In Genesis 28 Jacob set up a stone and poured oil upon it. In Genesis 35 he again sets up a pillar and pours oil upon it.
But Jacob is not the same man.
The first pillar was raised by a frightened fugitive beginning a journey into the unknown. The second pillar is raised by a man whom God has preserved through decades of hardship and brought back to the place where the promise began. At the first pillar Jacob had almost nothing. He was alone, fleeing his brother, carrying little more than what he could take with him. At the second pillar he returns with wives, children, servants, flocks, possessions, and an entire household. Everything surrounding Jacob now testifies that God kept His word.
At the first Bethel encounter God had said in Genesis 28:15, “And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land.” Now Jacob is standing in that land.
The pillar therefore becomes more than a memorial of what God has just said. It is also a monument to what God has already done.
There are moments in our own lives when we should stop and look backward long enough to recognize this. We often spend so much time asking God for the next thing that we fail to notice how many previous prayers are standing around us as answered prayers. We remember the fear we are facing today more clearly than the fears God already brought us through. Jacob could look back at the frightened man sleeping with his head on a stone and realize that the God who promised to accompany him had done exactly what He said.
Psalm 77:11 says, “I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old.” Psalm 105:5 likewise commands, “Remember his marvellous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth.”
Remembrance is an important part of worship because remembrance produces gratitude.
When we forget what God has done, we begin to act as though we have survived by our own strength. When we remember, pride is replaced by thanksgiving.
Jacob knew better than most that his life could not be explained entirely by his own ability. He had made mistakes. He had been deceived. He had feared for his life. He had wrestled through difficult relationships. He had faced Laban. He had feared Esau. He had experienced turmoil within his own household. Yet through all of it God had remained faithful.
The pillar said, in effect, “I remember.”
But Jacob did more than erect a stone. Genesis 35:14 tells us, “and he poured a drink offering thereon.” This is the first explicit mention of a drink offering in Scripture, and it is a beautiful act of worship. Jacob pours something valuable out before God. The offering is not being preserved for Jacob’s own benefit. Once poured upon the altar or pillar, it cannot be reclaimed. It is given entirely.
That image becomes deeply significant throughout the remainder of Scripture. Under the Mosaic law, drink offerings would accompany sacrifices to God. Numbers 15:5 says, “And the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering shalt thou prepare with the burnt offering or sacrifice.” The drink offering became part of Israel’s worship, a pouring out before the LORD.
Centuries later, the apostle Paul would use this very imagery to describe his own life of service. Philippians 2:17 says, “Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all.” Near the end of his life Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4:6, “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.” The language carries the idea of being poured out as an offering.
That is what true devotion eventually becomes.
We should not merely ask what God can give us. We must ask what we are willing to pour out before Him.
Jacob had received tremendous blessings, yet at Bethel he pours something back out. His worship costs him something. David later expresses this principle powerfully in 2 Samuel 24:24 when he says, “Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing.” Worship that never costs us time, effort, comfort, possessions, pride, or obedience can easily become shallow.
Romans 12:1 carries this principle into the Christian life when Paul writes, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” God does not merely ask for isolated religious acts. He calls for the whole life to be laid before Him.
Jacob pours out a drink offering upon the pillar, and we are called to pour out ourselves.
Our time belongs to God. Our strength belongs to God. Our gifts belong to God. Our money belongs to God. Our future belongs to God. Our plans belong to God. Our relationships belong to God. Our successes belong to God. Even our suffering can be surrendered to God.
Nothing is truly wasted when it is poured out for Him.
Jesus demonstrated this principle perfectly. His entire earthly life was one of complete obedience to the Father. In John 6:38 He says, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” At Gethsemane, facing the cross, He prayed in Luke 22:42, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” Christ did not give God part of Himself. He submitted completely.
The drink offering at Bethel therefore presents an image that will echo throughout Scripture: worship involves pouring something out.
Jacob also “poured oil thereon.” Again, this directly recalls Genesis 28:18, when Jacob first poured oil upon the stone at Bethel. Oil throughout Scripture frequently carries associations of consecration, holiness, appointment, and dedication to God. Priests were anointed with oil. Kings were anointed with oil. Sacred objects associated with the tabernacle were consecrated for God’s purposes.
Exodus 30:30 says, “And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may minister unto me in the priest’s office.” First Samuel 16:13 tells us, “Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward.”
To pour oil upon something was to mark it as set apart.
Jacob is therefore declaring that this place belongs uniquely to the memory and worship of God.
There is a lesson here about consecration in our own lives. Christians are not called merely to believe that God exists. We are called to belong to Him. First Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
Those words confront one of the great temptations of human nature: we want God’s blessing without God’s ownership.
We are comfortable asking Him to protect our family, bless our work, guide our future, provide our needs, forgive our sins, and give us peace. But if He is truly Lord, then everything we ask Him to bless must first be acknowledged as His.
Jacob pours oil on the pillar because it is being dedicated to God.
Likewise, our lives must be consecrated to Him.
Our homes should belong to Him. Our marriages should belong to Him. Our children should belong to Him. Our careers should belong to Him. Our writing should belong to Him. Our ambitions should belong to Him. Our possessions should belong to Him. Whatever God has entrusted to us should ultimately be returned to Him in service and worship.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” The order matters. God is not one part of life among many competing parts. He is first.
Jacob’s actions at Bethel also reveal that genuine encounters with God ought to produce visible consequences. Jacob had heard God speak, and now Jacob does something. His worship does not remain confined to emotion.
Throughout Scripture, revelation demands response.
When Abraham heard God’s call in Genesis 12:1, he departed.
When Noah received God’s instructions concerning the ark, Genesis 6:22 says, “Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.”
When Moses encountered God at the burning bush, he eventually returned to Egypt.
When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, Isaiah 6:8 records his response: “Here am I; send me.”
When the disciples heard Jesus say, “Follow me,” Matthew 4:20 says, “And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.”
It should concern us if we can repeatedly encounter the truth of Scripture and remain completely unchanged.
James 1:22 warns, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”
Jacob does not merely hear. Jacob builds. Jacob pours. Jacob worships.
There is also something deeply personal in the repeated phrase, “the place where he talked with him.” The Holy Spirit could simply have said that Jacob set up a pillar at Bethel, yet instead Scripture emphasizes the conversation. This was the place “where he talked with him.”
Jacob remembers not merely the miracle but the words.
That is important because faith ultimately depends upon what God has said.
If you would like to explore Genesis in a sustained, verse-by-verse way with space to reflect, journal, and trace how these foundational truths unfold through Scripture the Verse by Verse book expands these reflections into a unified reading experience. The book gathers these meditations into a structured journey through Genesis, designed to help readers linger in the text and engage God’s Word more deeply over time.
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