Commentaire sur La Genèse 35:4

האלה THE TEREBINTH — a kind of tree that bears no fruit.

AND JACOB HID THEM. An idol and the things that pertain to it are not in the category of objects that require burial and for which burial suffices, but instead they are to be crumbled up and scattered to the wind or thrown into the sea.¹⁸⁰Abodah Zarah 43b. And if so, why did Jacob bury the idols when they should have been destroyed? It appears to me that the sons of Jacob did not take the idols and the things that pertain to them from Shechem until they had been nullified and had thus become permissible to them, for a heathen can nullify an idol against its worshipper’s will,¹⁸¹Ibid., 52b. thus making it permissible to them. Jacob, however, for the sake of the purity of holy things, commanded that they remove it so that they should be fit to worship G-d and sacrifice before Him, just as He had commanded them concerning immersion and the changing of garments.¹⁸²Verse 2 here. Burial was thus sufficient for the idols, and therefore he hid them under the terebinth in a location which will neither be tilled nor sown.

ויטמון אותם יעקב, he buried them instead of destroying them. Seeing that they no longer had the halachic status of being idolatrous artifacts they did not need to be destroyed

ויטמן, he did not leave them above ground so as not to become the indirect cause of someone retrieving the items and using them in an idolatrous fashion.

ויטמן אותם, “he buried them there.” The reason that he did not burn these idols [which would have eradicated them, Ed.] was to demonstrate to the Canaanite population that they had violated the covenant G’d made with Noach after the deluge not to practice idolatry. Nachmanides writes that the entourage of Yaakov had not taken as loot or for any other reason, any idolatrous images, nor any chattels that had been used in idolatry so that these would have had to be destroyed utterly. They had not taken anything from Shechem until these items had first completely lost their erstwhile function as objects prohibited because of their having been used in the context of idolatry. When an idolater destroys his deities even under the influence of superior force, i.e. unwillingly, the fact that he destroyed it is sufficient to deprive them of any halachic restriction on account of their former use. What Yaakov did was to enable these chattels that had once served idols to qualify for sacred use on the altar. In order to achieve such status they first had to be interred. Only after these preparations had been made, could he and his family proceed to Beyt El.

ויטמון אותם יעקב, “Yaakov buried them, etc.” The Biblical requirement of disposing of idolatrous objects prescribes not burial but scattering to the winds or throwing such items into the sea. Moses did so when he scattered the dust of the golden calf as we know from Exodus 32,20 “he ground it until it was quite fine particles (of dust) and then he sprinkled it on the face of the water.” The fact that Yaakov contented himself with a lesser degree of destruction of these one time idols proves that actually they were no longer forbidden from a Biblical point of view.
Another way of explaining this episode is that even assuming that these artifacts had still retained their status as idolatrous and therefore forbidden objects, the fact that he could not destroy them by throwing them into the Dead Sea, made Yaakov do the next best thing, i.e. to bury them. He was also unable to burn these artifacts so that he would not be unduly delayed giving the people around Shechem a chance to organize themselves against him. Under the circumstances, he did the best he could in order to dispose of them and buried them.

A kind of non-fruit bearing tree. I.e., it does not produce fruits. סרק means רֵק (empty) of fruit. Yaakov did not want the delay of bringing the idols to the Dead Sea, [the normal way to dispose of such objects,] because he was hurrying to fulfill his vow. So he innovated [a quicker method] and buried them in the ground. And he buried them under a non-fruit bearing tree, [where people do not go,] so no one will notice later that the ground had been dug up. (Nachalas Yaakov)

In welchem Zusammenhange die Ringe mit der Abgötterei standen, ist dunkel. Dass auch das goldene Kalb, sowie der von Gideon gebildete Ephod aus solchen Ringen gemacht worden, hellt diese Beziehung nur wenig auf. Es können vielleicht zufällig auch die in Schechem erbeuteten Ringe götzentümliche Embleme gehabt haben. Bemerkenswert ist das chald. קדשיא für das hebr. נזמים.

ויטמון אותם יעקב תחת האלה אשר עם שכם, “Yaakov hid them (the alien deities and jewelry) beneath the oak tree near Sh’chem.” According to B’reshit Rabbah 81,3, the deities were images or three-dimensional replicas of pigeons which were found later on Mount Gerizim where people worshipped them. [Seeing that that mountain is near Sh’chem, it sounds very plausible. Ed.]

אשר באזניהם, “which were in the ears of those idols.”

עם שכם means by Shechem.

אשר עם שכם, near Shechem; we have a similar construction involving the preposition עם in 25,11 וישב יצחק עם באר לחי רואי, “Yitzchok settled near the place named Beer Lachay Ro-i.