At Beth-el Jacob built another altar. But he could not rest there, and
once more took his way to the south. On the road his wife Rachel died
while giving birth to his youngest son, and her tomb beside the path to
Beth-lehem was marked by a "pillar" which the writer of the Book of
Genesis tells us remained to his own day. It indicated the boundary
between the territories of Benjamin and Judah at Zelzah (1 Sam. x. 2).

At Beth-lehem Jacob lingered a long while. His flocks and herds were
spread over the country, under the charge of his sons, browsing on the
hills and watered at the springs, for which the "hill-country of Judah"
was famous. In their search for pasturage they wandered northward, we
are told, "beyond the tower of the Flock," which guarded the Jebusite
stronghold of Zion (Mic. iv. 8). Beth-lehem itself was more commonly
known in that age by the name of Ephrath. Beth-lehem, "the temple of
Lehem," must, in fact, have been the sacred name of the city derived
from the worship of its chief deity, and Mr. Tomkins is doubtless right
in seeing in this deity the Babylonian Lakhmu, who with his consort
Lakhama, was regarded as a primaeval god of the nascent world.

At Beth-lehem Jacob was but a few miles distant from Hebron, where Isaac
still lived, and where at his death he was buried by his sons Jacob and
Esau in the family tomb of Machpelah. It was the last time, seemingly,
that the two brothers found themselves together. Esau, partly by
marriage, partly by conquest, dispossessed the Horites of Mount Seir,
and founded the kingdom of Edom, while the sons and flocks of Jacob
scattered themselves from Hebron in the south of Canaan to Shechem in
its centre. The two hallowed sanctuaries of the future kingdoms of Judah
and Israel, where the first throne was set up in Israel and the monarchy
of David was first established, thus became the boundaries of the
herdsmen's domain. In both the Hebrew patriarch held ground that was