Genesis 35, or, "Everybody Dies"

Okay, not "everybody," but quite a few.

Namely, Rachel, Isaac, and a bunch of innocent townsfolk.

With Jacob's sons having just slaughtered every man in a nearby ruling tribe, God decides that it's time for him and his family to get the heck out of Dodge. God tells Jacob to flee to Bethel, the site where the stairway to Heaven was revealed to him (See Genesis 28). Jacob packs his family up and they hightail it out of there.

Just to make sure nobody follows them, God then kills everybody in the nearby towns.

Okay, to be fair, this is my interpretation of this passage. The actual verse reads: "the terror of God fell upon the towns all around them so that no one pursued them." I suppose you could take this as meaning that God spared their lives, yet paralyzed them with fear. Kind of like Gotham City at the end of Batman Begins. If God were Scarecrow, the villain.

Anyway.

Jacob and his family vamoose. On their way to Bethel, Rachel dies while giving birth to one last son, Benjamin. And then, when the family reaches Bethel, Isaac dies as well.

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FYI: Rachel's tomb is still in existence and is the third holiest site in Judaism. You can visit a website about it HERE. There, you can learn more about the tomb, buy a pizza for an Israeli soldier, or, if your name happens to be Rachel, sign up for their project to collect the names of every Rachel in the world. Mazel tov!