This sheet on Genesis 35 was written by Marc Bregman for 929 and can also be found here
Most of us would like to live forever. There was one biblical city in which this was possible – Luz.
In Genesis, Chapter 35 (verses 6-7), our patriarch Jacob builds an altar there: "Thus, Jacob came to Luz—that is, Bethel—in the land of Canaan…There he built an altar and named the site El-bethel, for it was there that God had revealed Himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother."
In Hebrew, the place name Bethel means literally “House of God”. Earlier, on his way to Haran, Jacob had consecrated to God a stone altar there (Genesis 28:18-19).
The rabbis of the Talmudic period turned this once Canaanite city into a legendary City of Immortality [compare Shangri-La]: “…the Angel of Death has no permission to pass through it. But the elderly [in the city of Luz], when their mind is done with them [and they want to die], go beyond the wall [of the city] to perish” (Babylonian Talmud, Sota 46b).
This tradition seems to be related to the etymology of the word Luz, which was used to refer to the nut-shaped bone at the base of the spine that was thought to be the indestructible “bone of resurrection”, the one human bone from which physical resurrection will begin (Leviticus Rabbah 18:1 and parallels). The Biblical city of Luz is also referred to as Qushta (the Aramaic word for “truth”) because its inhabitants who never lied, never died before their time (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a).
Significant connections between Luz and life/death are also found in our chapter. Immediately after Jacob builds his altar in Luz-Bethel, his mother’s nurse, Deborah -- who had apparently served as Jacob’s beloved nursemaid -- died and was buried “under the oak below Bethel; so, it was named Allon-Bakhut (‘Oak of Weeping’)” (Genesis 35:8). In the same chapter, yet another important death befalls Jacob and his extended family (Genesis 35:16-19):
“They set out from Bethel; but when they were still some distance short of Ephrath, Rachel was in childbirth, and she had hard labor. When her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, “Have no fear, for it is another boy for you.” But as she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named him Ben-Oni (“son of my suffering”); but his father called him Benjamin. Thus, Rachel died.
It may be recalled that Jacob, at the instigation of his mother, Rebecca, lied to his father Isaac to steal the blessing of the firstborn son from his older brother Esau (Genesis, Chapter 27). It was Esau’s rage at this deception that caused Jacob – again at the instigation of his mother – to flee to his uncle Laban in far-distant Haran.
It is Jacob’s return to Luz-Bethel that provides the biblical basis for the midrashic tradition that Luz is the City of Immortality for those who never lied.
Marc Bregman is the Herman and Zelda Bernard Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies emeritus, at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro.
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