Still Jacob is not to be put with Lot. His life was not _formed_ of mixed principles. He was indeed a stranger with God in the earth. But, like Lot, he had been in the place of the uncircumcised willingly; and he was now to feel the bitterness of his own way; and very much what Sodom had been to Lot, Shechem is now to Jacob. He is saved (may I not say?) yet so as by fire. The iniquity of Simeon and Levi, with the instruments of cruelty that were in their habitations, bring poor Jacob very low. He is at his wits’ end in the midst of that people, of whom he had purchased his estate, and in the neighbourhood of whom, he had, Lot-like, consented to settle. Things, however, are now at the worst. We are about to make, through the grace of God, a happy escape with Jacob out of all this, to find a good riddance of Shechem and all its pollutions. "A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" We often prove this ourselves. A word will do more for us at times than long and careful discourses. For "power belongeth unto God." "Follow me," from the lips of Christ, had power to detach Levi from the receipt of custom; while, in the same chapter, a discourse was heard by Peter without effect, being left by it, as he had been before it, the easy, kind-hearted, amiable, and obliging Peter. See Luke v. "Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power," even that very people, of whom it had been said before, "All day long have I stretched out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." An instance of this power is found in the history of Jacob, just at this time, in chapter xxxv. 1. "Arise, go up to Bethel," said the Lord to him, "and dwell there; and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother." These few words were with power. They formed, I believe, the great era in the life of Jacob, or rather, in the history of his soul. They were few and simple, unaccompanied by anything strange or startling, no vision or miracle attending them; but they were a day of power. He had already come forth from the vision of the ladder at Bethel, from the magnificent sight of the angelic host at Mahanaim, and from the wrestling of the divine Stranger at Peniel, scarcely helped or advanced at all in the real energy of his soul. But now, power visits him; and power with God may use as weak an instrument as it pleases; it matters not. The hand of God can do the business of God, though it have but a sling and a stone, or the jaw-bone of an ass, or lamps and pitchers; and the Spirit of God can do the business of God with souls, though He use but a word, or a look, or a groan. These few words which open chapter xxxv. prevail over Jacob. "Arise, go up to Bethel." Bethel is rewritten on his heart and conscience as by the finger of God. He falls before it, as Abraham, in chap. xvii., had fallen before the name of "God Almighty," or as Peter, long after, in Luke xii., fell before the look of Jesus.